Is downward mobility a thing?
I just finished reading Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class by Rob Henderson. I picked up the book because my husband and I are exploring adopting from the foster system, and I wanted to learn more about his experience and hopefully pick up some advice on how to parent someone who had experienced a tumultuous early childhood.
I was surprised when the book took a hard pivot near the end to critique social class and “luxury beliefs.” Rob went from foster care to a poor adopted family in California to the military to Yale, Stanford, and Cambridge, so definitely had some hot takes.
I also recently finished Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez, which features a protagonist, Raquel, a Latina who struggles to find her place in Brown’s Art History department after growing up in Brooklyn.
Both protagonists talk about the culture shock of entering the Ivy League, the new language and markers of class to be learned and adopted. Rob mentions no one using the soda fountain and students espousing but not living ultra-progressive beliefs (e.g., decriminalizing hard drugs, normalizing polyamory). Raquel mentions luxury toiletries, the idolization of thinness, the refutation of raw anger, parent-funded trips to Europe, and the ease of speaking with professors.
I remember the culture shock of elite vocabulary and norms in college and my first job afterwards. At McKinsey, I learned that diners with booths and fluorescent lighting are not a good choice for team dinners, and I should stick with New American farm-to-table spots. I learned about new foods like quinoa and arugula (as well as learned the hard way that sweetbreads were calf organs?!). I learned how to pronounce Syrah and ceviche. I learned the difference between a carry-on and full-size suitcase and how to hold chopsticks. I learned that head to toe cheetah print and pink heels were tacky, and it was not appropriate to wear jean Bermuda shorts to Casual Fridays in the office (who knew?).
At 32-years-old, I’ve now spent over a decade wrapped in elite culture, but I still feel of two worlds, especially when I’m around my family or back in my hometown. Stories like Troubled, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, and my own are often told; stories of high-achieving, ambitious, wanting-more children clawing their way into the selective worlds of prestige.
Tales of upward mobility are well-documented, but what of the narrative of downward mobility? How does one reconcile the potential loss of a birthright, the adjustment from a life of affluence to one of modest means?
Recent encounters have brought this quandary into sharper focus. My husband and I were out to dinner Friday night at a neighborhood Asian-inspired vegan restaurant (bougie, I know). My favorite dish there is the General Tsoy’s Protein, an $18 entree, which is deep-fried seitan.
Just as our entrees came out, a couple in their 30s with a young boy, maybe around 7-years-old, sat next to us. The boy was perfectly well-behaved and spent the majority of dinner playing with crayons and his coloring book, but when it came time to order, his parents were explaining that seitan is plant-based chicken and they think he’d like it.
This was on the heels of another Brooklyn experience: I treated myself to a $8 frozen yogurt at a neighborhood spot. While I was in bliss, savoring each nip of my Nutella frozen yogurt with dark chocolate sauce, I overhead a group of maybe five adults with an equal number of kids. The kids were saying they didn’t like their yogurts and had stirred them into a gloopy messes. The parents smiled, reassured their kids, laughed at the mess, and tossed the half-eaten cups into the garbage, before the whole crew set off down the block.
I didn’t know who I was more angry with — the unknowingly bratty kids or the flippant parents. Don’t either of them understand how crazy it is to pay $8 for a cup of frozen freaking yogurt?! Or $18 for a plant-based chicken dish that the child will almost certainly not appreciate?!
Just in voicing this, I’m betraying my class of origin, because another luxury belief is that it’s rude to talk about money. But this casual acceptance of such indulgences is a stark contrast to my own upbringing, where every dollar was meticulously accounted for, and the value of even the most modest purchases was ingrained from an early age.
For those of us who have journeyed from more modest beginnings, each new discovery — be it a culinary delight or a cultural experience — carries with it a sense of cherished wonder.
What happens when the luxuries and privileges that define one’s childhood become the norm? When seitan and artisanal frozen yogurt are mere commonplaces, what is left to experience, to marvel at, as an adult? If you start at the top, doesn’t any change feel like a fall? Or does it never really change, because there’s the soft landing of inheritance?
What if that child wants to become a teacher like my mom? Or a physical therapist like my sister? These unbelievably fulfilling vocations are great jobs, but they don’t support a posh Brooklyn lifestyle. If that lifestyle is normalized so young, how does one adjust? Is it the same adjustment as it was for me, accepting your adult life looks a lot different than your childhood? It seems much harder. I’ll have to confront this as a parent, but hope to work to ensure my kids are grounded, grateful, and unshackled to a material lifestyle that unintentionally stunts the expression of their callings.
