Probably the wealthiest guy in my high school graduating class is a plumber. He is loaded.
Hmmm…come to think of it, out of all my cousins, I’m the only one with a 4-year degree. We’ve got a mechanic, a chef, 2 nurses and a sailor-turned-civillian. I’ll guarantee they all make more than I do.
Also, the guy who’s whispered to be the most well-off in my extended family is my dad. A high school dropout who worked on the floor at Ford for 38 years. I grew up in a blue collar family with a middle-class income.
I think this phenomenon dates back at least to Jesus’s decision to go into carpentry.
I’m a lawyer and award-winning filmmaker with a master’s degree in English Literature. If there’s a Heaven and I get to go there, watching football and shooting pool in dive bars will be Priority One.
And some of them just happen to be happier with manual labor. I’m a bit tired of parents who wouldn’t ever have a conversation with a mechanic and who freak out when their child wants to be one… but hey, if the car breaks down, everybody wants a good mechanic!
(I’m an engineer, I do talk to mechanics)
There is a statistical reason for this to happen. If by middle class you mean “above average,” which is typical US usage…you mean above blue-collar (trades), working class (not a trade), and poor (irregular work/welfare) you will expect to see regression to the mean. If you select parents that are all average, their children will tend to cover the whole spectrum, including below average, average, and above average.
True, having above average parents does give you some advantages in life. This lifts the *mean * of middle class children above the overall mean. However, those advantages are apparently not enough to always overcome the natural tendency of regression to the mean. IMHO, this is actually a good thing. Its flipside is that being born to blue-collar, working-class, or poor parents does not guarantee you a life of the same.
Other than the dropping out of school, I don’t really see a problem.
My brother did something similar (though stayed in school and got his high school diploma) he’s now in construction and making better than I do and hiring his buddies.
Many of those jobs, you need to stay in school because you have to take courses to make the good money, otherwise you’re stuck as a grunt. As long as he realizes that and gets his GED and courses, he’ll make it just fine.
This is not at all how regression toward the mean should be interpreted, so I don’t think you want to explain this choice in terms of statistics. There is some underlying probability that anyone would choose the trades over the jungle, but it is not obvious how regression toward the mean has anything to do with this.
For what it’s worth, I am an extremely well-paid financial statistician, I own my apartment in Manhattan, and I graduated with a “useless” degree in Latin & Greek. You will have to pry the pool cue out of my cold, dead hands.
I don’t personally believe that middle-class values are about how much money you make or the type of job you have. It’s more about working hard, having a family & taking care of them, putting down roots in the community, etc. My HS & college boyfriend got a degree in finance, but since about age 25 has been working construction and loving it. I don’t know what kind of money he makes, of course, but I don’t think money is driving his desire to not have an office job. His parents used to protest when he would joke that he’s “blue collar” now, but the fact is, he IS blue collar, and there’s nothing wrong or not middle-class about it. It’s just a job, and it’s a job he seems to enjoy.
As far as hanging out in bars and drinking, I don’t see how that’s different from most young guys!
I think there are two large issues at play here, besides what may be happening to this family on a personal level:
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As already said, college does not guarantee employment anymore, nor does it guarantee good employment. We all know an Art History major working at Starbucks. He’s making WAY less than the guys working at the Midas next door.
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The rising cost of college, even at a middle priced school, means that it’s getting beyond the point where a middle-class family can afford the gamble. Even if the parents don’t feel this way, the kid’s looking at spending upwards of $200,000 on tuition and thinking, “fuck that! I like cars, I’ll go work on cars and get paid for it NOW!” Middle-class is actually a disadvantage for financial aid at state schools - the really poor or blue-collar kids can often get better packages than the better off, because the “family contribution” is based on income and assets.*
I admit, I’m torn. My son also wants to go to trade school instead of college. He’s a fantastically bright kid, well into the 90th percentile on standardized tests (although craptastic in the classroom because he’s lazy as sin.) That little voice in the back of my head keeps whining that I shouldn’t “let him” waste his intellect, that he’ll be more financially stable in the long run with an engineering or architectural degree than he will be as a machinist or mechanic…but when it comes down to it, it’s really his decision. I guess I could insist that he go to college, but then what? If it’s not what he wants, he’ll blow it off anyway, just like he blows off high school, and he’s out a year in the workforce and I’m out a year’s tuition for a degree that will never happen.
*Although as was recently pointed out to me in another thread, this does not apply to many private expensive schools - they have enough funds to find grants and scholarships for every student after the family contribution. I’m now encouraging my kid to apply at Princeton and Notre Dame instead of U of I - if he applies anywhere at all.
ETA: Oh, and I would have pegged “putting down roots” as a blue-collar value, not a middle-class one. The middle-class people I know pull up roots and move to other states for jobs; the blue-collar ones are living within 50 miles of their childhood homes and often on the same block as their high school buddies, 20 years later.
I often wish I had learned a trade and joined a union, rather than pushing myself through college, then law school, and now grad school (through a combination of merit-based scholarships, government loans, and working). My great-uncle and all my second cousins are hard-working plumbers and tradesmen in Brooklyn, and while they worked their asses off, the unions took good care of them, and they and their families had great quality of life. My great-uncle is retired to South Florida now, but constantly goes on cruises and trips, and showers his grandchildren with extravagant gifts. Meanwhile, I’m looking at an average-paying career in a field with very uncertain job security. Skilled tradesmen will always be needed, whereas librarians… sometimes I wonder about that.
I remember talking to my plumber two years ago before he retired. One day, he came by to pick up his check in his non work car. It was a relatively new BMW 7 Series. He was griping about the cost of building his retirement home in Florida and how damned expensive something to do with the pool was. I also found out that he and a partner of his owned a motel somewhere and had a few other investments.
An electrician I know owns a nice home in an expensive neighborhood in Arlington, bought another one to fix up and sell and drives really nice cars.
I’m not even going to mention what the guy who owns a body shop makes.
Truth be told, I think that a vocational degree can be a lot more useful than a liberal arts degree that the kid isn’t interested in.
My parents “strongly encouraged” all three of us to go to college, even if we didn’t pursue a career that required it. They just said the experience would be good for us later, and I think they were right. We weren’t incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for the life experience, though. That would change things.
Ditto to this. My high school had a pretty broad economic mix. My classmates without four year degrees are in many cases much better off financially than I am. (BA in English, which while they are WORTH a dime a dozen cannot be obtained for same). The electricians and auto repair guys own their own businesses, own not one but two homes, and take regular “real” vacations (with hotels and restaurants, and assorted attractions as opposed to my 5 day road trip staying with relatives). The classmates who are cops are now retiring with full benefits. If I’m lucky I’l be able to retire at 70 or 75.
My son has said consistently for years that he wants to be a construction worker when he grows up. If thats still what he wants to do when he graduates I won’t try and discourage him. I think a couple of years o f “real world” experience before college would help students be more focused when they do go to school.
I think perhaps we are painting a picture that’s a little too rosy. I have a friend in the building trades who makes about $25 an hour, or about $55K a year. He was making a king’s ransom when he was a kid, and he makes okay money now. He is by no means on easy street, though. Another friend of mine went to law school and hasn’t seen the short side of six figures since the Clinton Administration, and that was largely because he worked in Rochester.
My Brother-In-Law is a nearly retired Plumber. He has been nearly retired for 6 years now. He pretty much retired at age 55. My wife and I make very good salaries. We will be lucky if we can pull off retirement by the time I am 60. I think 62 is more likely. My BIL made some sound decisions, planned for an early retirement and achieved it.
I guess I just cannot understand where the Op is coming from on this. If one of my kids chooses the military or a trade instead of college someday, I won’t be devastated. I went Military, then HVAC Mechanic and then finally into Programming when I realized my prospects in Electrical Engineering were dismal in the early 90s.
The kid in the Op drinks in “dive bars”. Okay, so at least he is frugal. He dropped out of High School. Well that kind of sucks, even in automechanics it might cost him some potential jobs, maybe he will go back and get his GED.
I do understand the part about wanting ours kids to get off to a good start in life, but at the same time, I understand that some kids aren’t going to enjoy or get anything out of college.
My brother makes a good wage as a parts manager at a car dealer. Every full time mechanic makes more than him and any other manager at the dealership except the GM himself. They also have better hours and are paid overtime in the rare cases they do work extra. Managers & “professionals” just get the privilege of working extra hours and we usually are told it is not enough extra hours.
Jim
For every Lawyer and successful professional, there is usually a college drop out or liberal arts major employed in retail. Half the Customer Service Reps in the companies I have worked for have 4 year degrees in Liberal Arts or History or Media Science or something similar and they are hourly employees that don’t make much at all. They would love to make $25 per hour.
Jim
Agreed. When I worked at the HQ of a major national retail chain, we joked it was the “home of the overeducated.” I am sure there are few people in that building (population: 2,000) who made $55K. I made $34K after working there 7 years and holding significant responsibilities. Everyone in my department (Marketing) held at least a Bachelor’s from a major, respected University. My boss had a Master’s in Journalism from Columbia. MAYBE he made $55K, I tend to doubt his pay was that high – he was deeply embittered.
Why on earth would you ever assume that someone who wants to do a “blue collar” job is a slacker? Hell, in my experience most people who work with their hands (whether on computers, on cars, or farms, or whatever) are far from being slackers, but are hard workers who put in an honest effort for their wages. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the work, they get paid well, and sometimes they get paid poorly, but to assume that someone who wants a “blue collar” job is a slacker just seems so perverse.
Exactly.
And even if they don’t earn a lot, there’s still no shame in it.
Interesting. SO many of the kids I went to HS with have moved back to the same suburb now that they have families, although you are right that most of them don’t live down the block from their parents like in my husband’s more blue-collar suburb. (Although one girl who grew up on my street now lives IN the house she grew up in…she bought it from her parents!)
But I was thinking more of involvement in the community by “putting down roots,” such as getting involved in school & sports teams, that kind of thing…not on a “future generations” level.
I have to agree with those who are saying that not everyone is college material, and we will always need people working in skilled trades. I’m personally of the opinion that this push towards college for landing a good job is overall a bad thing. There are many things to be learned at university, but in many cases job skills aren’t part of the curriculum, and all that’s really happening is that people are feeling pushed to go who really might be better off taking a different route. I also know my father has been lamenting the death of vocational schools for years. That used to be where high school drop-outs could go to learn career skills, now they’ve been replaced by community colleges (at least in the area I grew up), and they don’t teach the same programs that the vocational sschools used to. He’s been having a damn hard time trying to find an assistant, and at 54 he’s still one of the youngest people he knows in his field. What happens when his age group hits retirement age?