Strongly encourage your child to go to college and if your kid does pick a liberal arts degree, make sure to network, internship,jobs. I have a cultural anthropology degree and I was able to market my degree to employers and I was able to get a museum job. While yes there are degrees that do lead to better paying jobs, networking is vital.
Encourage them to learn a second language since this can open doors for you in the work market.
I said that for years, but I am out east right now (Ithaca, NY). It wasn’t easy to escape, but life has gotten pretty fucking awesome.
Thanks for the local trivia! When I left to attend Purdue I didn’t even have a driver’s license, much less an appreciable civic consciousness. Coincidentally, the last company I worked for actually insured White Lodging. I’ve processed their insurance claims, but had no idea they were based in Merrillville. 
I think the main challenge is that as you go higher up the income ladder, the opportunities become fewer and more competitive. A college degree can get you an income in the $65k to $100k range within a few years, depending on the profession. An MBA or JD from a top ten school is a lot harder to get, but is almost a guaranteed six figure income. There are only a couple of openings for CEO of Goldman Sachs or next Derek Jeter.
Here are my personal observations if you want to help your kids rise up to a higher socioeconomic class:
*Make sure they read and can do math
*Get them involved in sports and / or other extracurricular shit
*Limit exposure to junk food, videogames, crap TV. You don’t have to ban it altogether. But these things are time sinks and can fill their heads with a lot of junk.
*Stress the importance of education
*Teach good social skills and proper manners
*Encourage them to hang out with “winners” who are supportive
*Discourage them from hanging out with “losers” or people who try to limit them
*Consider private school if the schools in your area aren’t good and your financials allow it.
*Send them to the best college they can get into
*Make them pick a default career in finance, law, medicine or technology. And I mean as investment banker, lawyer, doctor or management consultant. Not a nurse or paralegal or IT support. If they REALLY want to something different, that’s ok. But make it so they have to actually choose, not just float around “finding themselves”. Plus it’s a very “higher classes” thing to go to really good schools, get a high paying associate job at a fancy law, consulting or financial services firm, make some money and then quit to go off and use those acquired business and management skills to do something you really want.
*Either way, try and help them with planning by teaching them to set lofty goals and then researches the actions needed to achieve each intermediate step.
I completely agree. Don’t screw your kids up with some of the advice in this thread: 100% academic excellence over developing creativity, doing a degree you wouldn’t particularly enjoy, becoming obsessed with investment strategy… It’s all a balance, and obviously you want them equipped to deal with the world, but some of this advice will lead to screwed up kids who will never be happy with a B grade or a decent but not great salary. I mean if you are actively discouraging your child from becoming a nurse that’s just a little too obsessed with climbing the social ladder IMO.
Encourage your children to pursue what they are genuinely interested in. Remember young kids are not mini adults.
I was going to say this. Foster a love of math and science early. Being smart in general is great, and even earning a Bachelor’s in English is a good step for someone who is the first in their family to go to college. HOWEVER, it probably won’t get you a good job. Math and science will always be in demand. Your kid could become a doctor, which is a sure fire way to get them to that middle/upper-middle class.
Similarly, Catholic schools are often subsidized like crazy and can be very affordable if you qualify (I recently had to sit through a mind-numbingly boring breakfast presentation on Catholic school tax credits and vouchers because my friend’s partner is an elementary school principal and his school got money for every person who attended… so I’m pretty much an expert on this :p) I went to Catholic school all my life and absolutely breezed through my undergrad because high school was so much harder than college. I think one of the worst things that can happen is a poor-but-ambitious kid, trying to do the right thing, enrolls in college and drops out a few semesters later because the workload is just too difficult. Then, said kid has a TON of student loans to pay back and nothing to show for it. This can really cripple you for the rest of your life if you never get out of that debt. In my experience, there are always tons of scholarships and the aforementioned tax credits/vouchers to offset the expense- I think it can be managed without too much difficulty, depending on how many kids you have to send through school.
I know it sounds really silly, but a really subtle one is cleanliness. Keep your house clean and organized, and make your kids part of the process. Hold them responsible, but also give them credit for their role.
People let this fall by the wayside, but neglecting your living space reflects how you are organized in general. Somebody that thinks “its just little bit of clutter” “it doesn’t have to be perfect” “I don’t care about this” will have their apathy infest other aspects of their lives. Success in life is often identifying small problems and dealing with them early, rather than procrastinating or dumping the problem off on someone else “I’ll just pay someone else to do it.”
Being diligent and organized means a child will be better at getting homework in on time, managing time for projects, and taking ownership. But its really critical they feel as part of the process and not some domestic slave.
Growing up I saw a strong correlation between the state of a family’s home and the state of the family. Disorganized, messy and cluttered homes often had disorganized family dynamics and gave rise to kids that didn’t value organization or time management.
Just to add to my post. I am solidly upper middle class and have for long fallen into the trap of comparing myself to my peers. I get depressed when I see that those who I went to school with are earning more or in a more senior position or are published in the media or even if they own cars (I couldn’t give a fuck about cars!) I have fallen into the trap of comparing myself to my peers in a class ridden society and am just beginning to realise that this is part of why I am often depressed or anxious. When I was 17, I got a B in an important History exam. I cried. Is that healthy? (Still, at least I didn’t get an eating disorder like so many upper middle class/upper class girls.)
As a consequence I can hand on heart say that I’d be thrilled if my kid came to me with goals and desires that I knew weren’t defined by society’s measures of success. Again I recognise the need for balance and realism but really your child needs to be healthy, happy and stable. They do not need to be upper class.
Incubus, heh. In the British class system, being very clean is a bit lower middle class. A sign of insecurity, that you constantly need to prove yourself, even.
The most important thing you can do is teach your child about all kinds of financial matters. Everything from balancing a checking account to buying a house, to investing for the future.
I can’t tell you at what level i grew up, because I always thought of our family as middle class, but looking back it was probably more like lower middle. Now I make upwards of $70k. Add in my military retirement and VA disability, and I am up over $100k. I did not finish college. I started, but couldn’t finish, so I joined the Navy. I found a job that I enjoyed, and I excelled at it. At retirement, I found a job with a military contracter that takes advantage of the skills I learned in the Navy. However, if I had learned about investing and buying houses and other financial stuff long ago, I would probably be in a much better financial place.
I hope that this helped.
I (and I assume most others here) am not suggesting they pursue a career that will enable them to put a late-model Ferrari in their garage. OTOH, it’s difficult to be happy when all you can afford is a rusted-out 15-year-old Honda Civic that leaves you stranded every couple of months, and you live an a mold-encrusted apartment in the high-crime part of town because you can’t afford anything better.
Aspiring to own a modest car and modest house, and have the financial means to raise a couple of kids in a safe/secure environment, save for their college expenses at a modest university, and save for your own modest retirement along the way is not the same as aspiring to be “rich and greedy.” But it will take some foresight and some discipline to achieve even those modest goals. Screwing off in high school, pursuing a degree in basket-weaving, or destroying your credit rating really crimps your odds of getting there.
Oh no, not this again…
So many people think that sports will get them out of the proverbial ghetto. It’s a cliche, and yet a damaging and enduring one.
That’s not true.
See, there you are.
Yeah…this is nonsense. Nobody really says “I’m so glad I gave up that career as VP of Marketing so I can wait tables for minimum wage and live in the shitty side of town in a crappy rat-infested 6th floor walk-up apartment eating Raman noodles every other night.” By definition, it’s never better to be “poor”. What most people mean by “poor” is regular American middle class.
Also, I disagree with the entire premise that there is a dichotomy of “rich and miserable” and “poor and happy”. The wealthy bachelor giving it all up for the girl/family/kid he never knew he wanted is a classic Hollywood trope. In reality, happiness, ability to support your family, and income / wealth are intrinsically linked.
The OP asked “how do I help my child climb to a higher socioeconomic class”. Not “how do I help my child find a fulfilling life with the right balance.” The answer is you bust your ass to be successful at one of several pre-defined career paths. And depending on how high up the socioeconomic ladder you want to climb, those career paths become increasingly difficult to enter and require increasingly high levels of talent and luck.
Also, prep school isn’t necessarily boarding school (depends on if you sleep over or not). And every prep school isn’t the freakin’ Citadel. My wife actually loved her prep school.
I agree with you but the OP is not in the Ghetto and I don’t mean that they should shoot to become pro basketball players or anything like that.
It is my observation (having worked in K-12 and higher ed) that kids (from lower economic classes) who played sports through high school tended to have more higher economic status friends and contacts, teachers/school admins treated them better, they had higher expectations for their own success and they tended to make it into (and through!) college when compared to their peers who did not play sports. This was in economically mixed areas, not the ghetto. If you have data that shows otherwise, please show it.
My overachieving kids go to a small podunk parish elementary school, and a fancier Catholic HS. (And two at a Jesuit college next year.)
I do believe that most private schools do provide a better environment, with a more focused and involved parent population. Not only do you have to pay, but often there are volunteer hour requirements.
That being said, (And I’m not proselytizing,) in my experience Catholic schools do have an edge over private schools. Not necessarily academically, or physical school buildings in all instances, but definitely on developing the entire person. It also seems to have a better mix of socioeconomic backgrounds than a purely private school would have. Not everyone is a rich kid driving Mercedes’. But pretty much everyone has parents with high expectations. Typically there is a strong, reinforcing social component.
I also believe that as an overall general statement, you will find more commitment from the teachers. My kid who just graduated, was pulled aside by one of her teachers, and told a story about when he was young and in college, there was an adult that gave him $500 per semester to help him out all four years. He didn’t need to pay him back, just help someone else out in college in the future. She is the beneficiary of that long ago agreement, with the caveat that she needs to finish school, and she needs to pay it forward.
None of these are new ideas, but it’s the execution of these ideas that makes such a difference-in my experience that happens at a Catholic school. They will not accept failure, but more importantly, they will help you succeed.
Not every child has the talent, drive, and pure luck it takes to be at the highest levels. But they will give them the best opportunity to be successful.
I agree. Its not so much that the sport itself will provide a major source of income, but that, like attending private schools, it puts your child in company with other children whose parents are investing time and effort in raising them. The same is true of music or art or any other extra-curricular classes.
People are starting to set up these false dichotomies in this thread and bringing up the Dope’s favourite cliche of degrees in communications or basket weaving being completely useless. It is as if you either strive towards capitalist America’s definition of ‘success’ or become a economic and education drop out.
Another thing that may be useful to teach your kids is that they have to work harder than everyone else.
I got a lot of this kind of lecturin’-to when I was growing up. I didn’t grow up economically disadvantaged, but it is good advice whether you’re poor, brown-skinned, female, or one-legged. You can’t measure how well you’re doing against the “average”. People will look at your race, name, your address, what your parents do for a living, and automatically form negative judgments about you. And those judgments will always score you “below average”. So to offset those prejudices, you have to go above and beyond.
Yes, taken to an extreme it can make someone highly insecure and anxious. But it lit a fire under my butt when I was in college, struggling to keep up. I couldn’t afford to party like the other boys and girls, because always in the back of my mind was “If they screw up, they’ll have a second chance. But if I screw up, I’m out of here.”
The mentality keeps makes an individual a bit aloof, a little detached from “what everybody’s doing”. And this can be a good thing.
Ah, that’s a relief. Not everybody likes sports.
I’d recommend grabbing a coffee and some parenting books at your local book store. You don’t have to read all the books, just flip around and read the advice for things that apply to you and your child. By reading several books, you will get a variety of recommendations and reasonings to compare and contrast that could make you a better parent and help you not repeat some less effective parenting methods you may already be familiar with from your own personal experience.
I’d also consider moving to the best public school district you can afford. I bought a small, less expensive house on the edge of a wealthier area known for its excellent schools. Our house is certainly not as big or as well appointed as many and at times I think one of my children is a little class conscious about our home not being quite as nice, but it is clean, comfortable and in good repair.
I did both of these things and it seems to be working out well. My oldest will be off to college in the fall and has saved somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of her first year’s tuition. I don’t expect my kids to cure cancer and I’ve advised them that college or having smarts does not guarantee one a happy life, but that it helps.
Good luck!
Most types of businesses hire interns in the Summer time. Year-long internships are also becoming quite common. Its standard business practice.
Intern programs are a great way to establish business contacts, try out different fields, and above all, find a mentor.
Another note: Teach your kids to keep a list of everyone they work with, fromt he very beginning, along with a small blurb about how they knew the person and what projects they worked on together. I’d give a whole lot to be able to go back and do this now.
Encourage them to write thank-you notes, and send a casual once-per-year e-mail to anyone they have worked for in the past. (Even if it was mowing lawns) Just a catch-up note saying what they’ve been studying that year and wishing the former boss well.
You are reading things that aren’t there. Medicine isn’t the only degree that has internships. Engineering, Marketing, Business majors all have internships.
To the OPer, my paternal grandfather was a pole climber at the telephone company. His wife was a stay-at-home mom. They were so poor that their electric was routinely turned off. My maternal grandfather was a coal miner. After he was burned in an accident, my grandmother worked in a button factory to make ends meet. I hope that they were all poorer than you’ll ever know.
That cycle of poverty was broken thanks to two important things: First and foremost was moving to a city where there were job opportunities. There were none in rural Kentucky. We now have a lake house where they grew up, and 95% of their neighbors are still poorer than church mice.
Secondly, was our parents moving to neighborhoods with good schools. Note that we didn’t live in the finest neighborhood in that district; in fact, we lived in the poorer side. But we all made friends with kids who were in a higher socioeconomic class than we were, and they influenced us greatly. The people who surround you make a huge impact on your life. Don’t underestimate them.