I’m not even in the same socio-economic class as my parents.
Pretty much the same. Both our fathers were depression era children. Her father’s father ran a bookstore which failed, but he did go to college and became a music teacher, eventually getting a Masters.
My father started rich, but his father died when my father was 10 or so, and his mother lost everything. He couldn’t afford to go to college which tells you how bad off they were, since in New York at that time college was free. But he joined the UN after the war and worked his way up to a good management job.
Most importantly my wife and I share the same attitude towards money (never be in debt) which has served us well.
I’m conscious that US and UK definitions of middle class aren’t the same, so I’ll try and describe things.
Arguably, my wife married ‘up’, as I grew up in a solidly middle-middle-class world, although my parents had grown up working-class . My Dad ran his own company, employing 50 people, and I went to a fee-paying private school. We had holidays in France and ski trips to the Alps. My parents played golf around the world. We had a large-ish 4 bedroom home with large gardens and two cars, in a smart part of town. I was given an (old) car when I passed my test.
My wife grew up in a working class home. A small 3 bed house that they lived in all their lives - they had no garage or driveway. Her father worked in maintenance at the steel works - the town’s main employer. It was, I guess, the UK equivalent of a rust belt town. They had one car, never really went on proper holidays. They were not in a position to financially contribute to her higher education.
However, my wife did go to university and we met in London through work, where we were working in very comparable careers. She earned more than me. So I guess we levelled up.
My wife and I came from fairly different backgrounds, just not in socioeconomic terms.
My parents were typical middle-class Baby Boomers. They both grew up in suburban New Jersey, my dad went to Yale, my mom went to Connecticut College, they both had graduate degrees from NYU. My dad was a lawyer and U.S. honorary consul, and my mom was a high school English teacher, and I grew up middle-class in New York and Haifa, Israel.
My wife’s parents were born in Israel soon after its founding to immigrants and refugees from Greece and Bulgaria. They grew up in what an American at the time would call poverty. By the time my wife was growing up, though, they were doing much better - my father-in-law was a civil engineer and lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army reserves, and had his own successful engineering firm.
When my wife and I met in college, I’d say our families were about the same place, socioeconomically. Culturally, however, there were some major differences.
My wife and I are from the same middle class background, so our story in that regard is boring.
I have a relative who did “marry up” in a profound way, though. He was lower middle class. Both of his parents worked service or consumer sales jobs their whole lives, for example selling hot tubs, or at a counter in a department store. They never had much money, but weren’t starving.
His wife is a billionaire. Her parents started a company, which was then sold for billions a few years before they met. Her family maintained an ownership stake in the purchasing company, and she took a leadership role in the company, and the value of their stock continued to go up.
We’re not close, but I see them for major life event type celebrations.
They’ve been married for maybe 30 years now.
We are both from middle class backgrounds. However early in our relationship all I knew was that she got all dressed up each day and went to work in Pittsburgh. I assumed she was a secretary, so when we went out I’d reach for the check.
Eventually I learned she was a hotshot advertising agency VP who made 3X what I did a year.
You were dating someone for some time and didn’t know what they did for a living?
A few weeks. She seemed reluctant to discuss work and I went along. I knew she worked for a company in Pittsburgh, I just didn’t know she was a Vice President of the company.
Our early times were kind of whirlwind. We met, went on a date, and then I didn’t go home. We really hit it off, I guess.
My first wife was a school teacher, whose father was civil service. She was devout Catholic, while I was agnostic (at best). Why she married a military guy is beyond my ken, but it lasted 20 years somehow.
My second wife’s father was a union organizer, her mother a housewife. Her dad died when she was twelve and her mother had to educate herself for the workplace. My father left us when I was maybe a year old and my mother worked two jobs to keep us fed and housed. My stepfather was a bartender. So basically we both grew up in lower middle class homes.
My present wife has an MBA in finance and I have a BA in social sciences (both hard-earned). I spent a career in the military (in construction), while she worked as a property manager. We met when we were both 45 years old. She’s more artsy than I am, while I like working with my hands. Evenly matched, I’d say.
Very much the same. Both raised in the burbs, low end of upper middle class, college educated parents with white collar jobs.
I grew up in a very upper middle class home in a nice wooded town in Connecticut to professional parents with advanced degrees. My Dad has an engineering degree and an MBA and spent his entire career as a sales executive in a Fortune 500 company and my Mom had multiple Ivy League degrees and did something in nursing/hospital administration. We didn’t live in a McMansion or spend money ostentatiously, but money never seemed like an issue.
My wife grew up in a very rural town to parents who are not particularly well educated or successful. Her Dad IIRC worked selling advertising for a local newspaper until he was laid off in his 50s and then worked various odd jobs until he retired and her mom was a medical secretary or something. They’re just very unsophisticated simple folk with simple interests. Like they grew up in the most boring town in the world on the NJ/PA border and never had any desire in going anywhere or doing anything more. I think they went on vacation to Yellowstone like 30 years ago and still talk about that.
I feel like our combined extended families are more similar in that they range from almost working class to various aunts or cousins who married extremely well.
Generally though, I feel like my wife is the one who married “up”. Aside from the fact that my parents are wealthier than hers and I grew up in a wealthier town, my wife has a number of attitudes and behaviors and affectations that I think comes from growing up in a home where money was tight and the parents weren’t particularly…how should I put this…smart.
My husband ‘came from money’, pretty old New England and Tidewater Virginia money. They weren’t extremely wealthy but they had a lovely house in a gated community when I met them. My family might have exceeded them in income by the time my husband and I met, but both my parents were poor when they met. My dad’s parents were pre WW2 Jewish refugees from Europe who settled in Brooklyn in the Jewish community there, and my mother’s parents were hardscrabble Wisconsin dairy farmers. They met at U of Wisconsin at Madison where my dad got his MA in journalism on the GI bill. They built a small newspaper empire in the Santa Clara Valley in California in the 1960’s-70’s, riding the development boom there.
Although we came from relatively similar income brackets, the cultures we grew up in (genteel old east coat money vs west coast entrepreneurs) were really foreign. However, since we were both essentially intellectual hippies (we met at an American Zen center), it wasn’t that noticeable unless I went to visit his parents.
Eh, pretty much dead level in my case. Both from lower middle class families - comfortable enough, but for both of us growing up, a family vacation meant youth hostels and camping - which was fine. Like myself, Mrs T was first in her immediate family to go to university. The only real difference is that I hail from the far north of England, and she was born in London. So yeah, dead level.
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My father ended up working in a factory, so I suppose we were lower middle class. He had owned a gas and service station, but the gas price wars in the 30s defeated him. Then he had to change his name to one that didn’t sound Jewish to get a job in the late 30s. (It didn’t help; he was eventually hired by my mother’s uncle who owned a factory making dental instruments.)
My wife’s father was a NYC school teacher, which is solidly middle class. Then her parents divorced and her mother married a chiropracter in southern NJ. He was moderately well-off, maybe upper middle class. So I married up–a bit. I was the first in my family to go to college. Even so, I went part-time for three years, working full-time. My FIL had a degree from City College and there was never any doubt that she would go to college.
My wife and I have remarkably similar backgrounds. My parents are immigrants from Europe; hers are immigrants from China. We’ve found a lot of commonalities based on the immigrant experience, even though the specific places they came from were vastly different.
Hi, that’s me and mine.
My SO’s story: He was born and raised in the desert out west, where there’s not a whole lot to do besides drugs. His father was a plumber. His mother had issues with substance abuse that got bad enough that his father began bringing the mother along on his jobs, to keep an eye on her and keep her away from alcohol and drugs. He was often left with his grandparents while his parents worked, but when they couldn’t watch him, my SO was brought along on the jobs with his mom and dad and put to work. Child labor laws be damned, he was seven years old when he started working.
When he got older, he fell victim to some of the same vices, and went through drug addiction, homelessness, and jail time before moving to the east coast and making a better life for himself.
My story: Born and raised in one of the wealthiest towns in this entire country. It’s so wealthy that it can be uncomfortable to tell people where I’m from, because they’ll make a face and say “Oh, you’re from [hometown],” as if to say, “Oh, you’re part of the filthy rich that’s never known hardship or struggle.” My father had a doctorate in math and worked as an engineer in the aviation sector of a large government contractor. My mother had worked as a computer programmer until quitting her job to raise children and homeschool my sister. I did, indeed, go to boarding school, as well as a small, private liberal arts college, then immediately joined corporate America with a desk job.
I’d put my family into lower-to-middle middle class in central europe (say, a 45%er). Small but nice/tidy house, vacations at the sea, our own smallish car. I was the first one to go to university in the family and acquire a mag.econ. and worked for many years in consumer goods marketing. I am quite introvert (except when on the job), intelectually curious and constantly thinking/tinkering …
Wife’s family background … slightly below LatAm avg (say, a global 25%er), smallish construction family business, lower education, lower in culture, but rather rich in family and social contacts and life and friends. Wife is all emotion (think: cliché italians) but gets her stuff done her way (lots of drama ;-).
So, technically she married up, but where we live (LatAm) her social contacts, abilities and friends are a layer of “fortune / asset / insurance”, that is hard to put a dollar sign to it, but it is very relevant in every day life. She is not very intelectually curious, rather likes repetitive patterns to keep complexity out of her life.
On the farmer’s market she goes to the more expensive stall to buy the same tomatoes, b/c she likes the person more. I’m more the type that goes to the market when they start to pack up, get a 3kg for the price of 2kg at the cheapest stall (same tomatoes) and be happy on my own. We have grown to accept the other’s personality, I guess.
Our teenage kids sit somewhere (mentally speaking) in between us.
I feel like this is somehow somewhat relevant to the thread:
Online Dating Caused a Rise in US Income Inequality, Research Paper Shows - Bloomberg
Not sure if that is a cause or just an indicator.
Rom-coms not withstanding, I think people always tended to try to marry at least within their socioeconomic class.
My parents were from different groups; mom’s father was a well-to-do businessman; dad’s parents were definitely working class.
My husband’s parents were from similar groups; both well-to-do (hers owned a business; his father was a doctor).
Both of our parents wound up being fairly solidly middle class, though there was some downward mobility on the part of the in-laws. Education was certainly an expectation, on both sides.