Reflection On Social Class

I conducted a social class interview with a friend who is a middle aged mother of three. She remembers growing up in what she considered to be a low class family. Both her parents worked in factories and neither one had any education past high school. Their family of five grew up in a small three bedroom townhouse which she reports to be only about 1000 square feet. She recalls having one small bathroom that they all shared with paint chipping off the walls and black spots of mold on the ceiling. She can remember at times even heating water on the stove to take baths, because they didn’t have hot water. Though she realized when she was young that her family was different, she didn’t actually see herself as lower class until high school. If we look at this situation even though she saw herself as low class, she seems to fall more into that of the working class commonly called low middle class. Although they may have lacked some resource and at times struggled, both her parents worked and managed to provide for their family. In this situation she seems to project on a more materialistic culture, basing her social class on her family’s possessions and physical …show more content…
She attributes most of this to her drive to make it on her own and take care or her children. She also wanted to prove to herself, family, and ex-husband that she could support herself and family. She also spent time finding local resource to help support her desire to make it and go to school. She believes the biggest thing in moving up in class was her desire to succeed. After telling me her story she firmly believes that if she can do it anyone can, that it’s merely a matter of persistence. She says, maybe you can’t go from lower class to high class, but with the enough motivation and perseverance you can have upward