1) Class is not just about how much money you have. Class is about how you do things, what you expect from life and how you handle what you have. My father is upper middle class. My mother was underclass who wanted to be upper middle class. Throughout their entire lives, they have had incomes that would have placed them in many different tax brackets. My mother now has much more money than my father does (they've been divorced for years) but she is not accepted by the people among whom she lives, and she is miserable.
2) It is not that uncommon for working-class families (particularly very religious ones) to have the wife at home, at least while the children are small. There are a lot of hidden costs in going out to work when you have small children, particularly if there is no extended family available and child care must be paid for. There are a lot of people who decide that it isn't worth it and a fair number of people who decide that that's not what God wants them to do. Most women at lower income levels do work outside the home (I really wish you would stop saying women who don't have jobs don't work), and it's much harder than it used to be to stay home, but I was married to a working-class man at the time that Sam was born (the early 1980s) and there was absolutely no expectation that if we had a baby I would have a job. I am not Christian, but his family was, and all the women stayed home. None of them were anything but working class. The men worked in factories and plants. The wives sewed clothing, put up food, made everything that could be made at home and shopped at low-end stores--we didn't have Wal-Mart then, but that's where they would have shopped.
Keep in mind that Sam and Dean are now adults. The economy into which they were born was not the economy of 2008. Most of my friends' husbands (I eventually divorced and never had kids) were not doing as well as John was back then, but most of my friends (Mary seems to have been about five years older than me) were not married to men old enough to have served in Vietnam. John is from a working-class background, but he went into the military, came out a mechanic and was good enough at it to start his own shop. He was not, however, in any way or sense white-collar or educated to middle-class standards, and when John lost his mind (because that's what happened after Mary died, even though it's quite understandable and it turned out that demons were real after all) they essentially became homeless (though not food-insecure, not given how big those boys are, thanks to the scams and all).
John's attitude toward the boys' education is definitely not middle-class. John's attitude toward money was not middle-class. It's entirely possible that Mary may not have been working-class in origin, especially if she married John young and he had a business--she could have married him out of rebellion even. But after she died any influence she may have had was gone anyway.
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Date: 2008-02-27 05:27 pm (UTC)1) Class is not just about how much money you have. Class is about how you do things, what you expect from life and how you handle what you have. My father is upper middle class. My mother was underclass who wanted to be upper middle class. Throughout their entire lives, they have had incomes that would have placed them in many different tax brackets. My mother now has much more money than my father does (they've been divorced for years) but she is not accepted by the people among whom she lives, and she is miserable.
2) It is not that uncommon for working-class families (particularly very religious ones) to have the wife at home, at least while the children are small. There are a lot of hidden costs in going out to work when you have small children, particularly if there is no extended family available and child care must be paid for. There are a lot of people who decide that it isn't worth it and a fair number of people who decide that that's not what God wants them to do. Most women at lower income levels do work outside the home (I really wish you would stop saying women who don't have jobs don't work), and it's much harder than it used to be to stay home, but I was married to a working-class man at the time that Sam was born (the early 1980s) and there was absolutely no expectation that if we had a baby I would have a job. I am not Christian, but his family was, and all the women stayed home. None of them were anything but working class. The men worked in factories and plants. The wives sewed clothing, put up food, made everything that could be made at home and shopped at low-end stores--we didn't have Wal-Mart then, but that's where they would have shopped.
Keep in mind that Sam and Dean are now adults. The economy into which they were born was not the economy of 2008. Most of my friends' husbands (I eventually divorced and never had kids) were not doing as well as John was back then, but most of my friends (Mary seems to have been about five years older than me) were not married to men old enough to have served in Vietnam. John is from a working-class background, but he went into the military, came out a mechanic and was good enough at it to start his own shop. He was not, however, in any way or sense white-collar or educated to middle-class standards, and when John lost his mind (because that's what happened after Mary died, even though it's quite understandable and it turned out that demons were real after all) they essentially became homeless (though not food-insecure, not given how big those boys are, thanks to the scams and all).
John's attitude toward the boys' education is definitely not middle-class. John's attitude toward money was not middle-class. It's entirely possible that Mary may not have been working-class in origin, especially if she married John young and he had a business--she could have married him out of rebellion even. But after she died any influence she may have had was gone anyway.