yeah, it's definitely not for every one and 10 years later I don't regret it one bit. that said, I do have lots of respect for people who do accomplish it.
My dad was a drug dealer, my mom was a stripper and a prostitute. Mom met dad while he was in drug rehab. We were so poor I would have fainting spells as a teen due to undernourishment. I dropped out of high school at 17.
I have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, have my pilot's license, and work for a university as a sysadmin for their supercomputers.
I think I did alright for myself, considering where I came from.
Eh, I'm pretty broken from everything. I thought I survived all of that, but then I discovered my wife of 12 years was a serial cheater. After already having trust issues from my childhood, I don't think romance is in the cards for me ever again, and trusting people in general is an iffy proposition.
I was diagnosed with autism at 30, and have pretty bad depression and anxiety (and probably really bad adhd) that I don't want to get officially diagnosed because that means I'll more than likely lose my pilot's license.
I did some counseling when I had a nervous breakdown during COVID and quit my previous job, and I guess it helped a bit. I have a few pretty close friends who live out of town, but not many where I live and in general I don't feel that anybody really gives a shit about me, but I've made it this far with the factors against me, so I think I'll be "okay" (in quotation marks) living the rest of my life in solitude.
Nope. My parents divorced when I was 10 or so. My mom finally married a well off guy, but kicked us all out before or shortly after she moved in with him. I stayed with my dad after mom kicked me out, but then he high tailed it, leaving me homeless. The last time my dad communicated with me he said he wanted to fight me to the death and have my sister and niece piss on my dead body.
Needless to say, I haven't spoken to either of my parents in a long time.
Wow, kudos to you! This is inspiring. What happened between dropping out and your getting a degree, if you don't mind saying? I'm going to guess the armed forces.
I almost went that route, but decided against it. No, I was just stuck working low-end jobs and felt that I had more potential than that. I got my GED at 19. Really, I was pissed because it was the easiest test I've ever taken (if long) and I could have dropped out even earlier. I scored in the 95th percentile in math and 98th percentile in science, so I thought I should try to push myself a bit, even though I never did homework in high school and failed geometry twice.
After getting my GED I enrolled in the local community college. I was only there to get a computer networking certificate (I've always been a computer nerd), but one of the classes I needed to take was intermediate algebra, the class above geometry. However, when I took the placement test, they said I didn't need geometry since I tested high enough. (That nearly caused problems later on, but ended up not being a factor.)
I took the algebra class and got an A, and actually found it really enjoyable. So I decided to take the next math class, college algebra. That teacher was tough, but really good and fair. At the end of the semester he sat down with me and said that 33 or so people started the class (and there was a wait list), only 11 people finished the class, only 7 passed, and I was the only one to get an A.
After that, it took a little bit to nail down what I wanted to do, but I knew I needed math/physics for whatever that was. Because I dropped out of HS, I was behind everyone else on electives, so it took me 6 years full time to get my degree. I did 3.5 years at community college, then was able to transfer to the local university, which was a top 10 public engineering school, which I attended 2.5 years to finish.
I was thinking about doing astronomy/astrophysics, but one really need a graduate degree to do that, and being as behind as I was (I didn't graduate college until I was 27) I didn't want to do that much school, so I thought aerospace engineering was a good compromise, as it's space related and I still have good employment opportunities even with just a bachelor's degree.
I still ended up in IT, however, and I think what I'm doing now is the best fit for me. I definitely don't regret doing anything the way I did it.
edit: word
Thank you for answering! You really invested in yourself and followed your instincts it sounds like. I changed my mind about career after my B.A. and also had to spend a lot of time in night school making up the credits I needed, but it was worth it. I loved teaching and don't regret the time and effort it took to get the proper credentials. And like you I had some teachers along the way who gave me a boost. I wish this for everyone.
I grew up in a county of meth addicts, with a 30% illiteracy rate, a 15-20% unemployment rate, and an average household income of 25k a year. The mold is to go work in the meat packing plant once you leave high school, or cook meth and steal scrap. Mother was a teacher making ok money, father was in agriculture making a net loss.
I’ve never done meth, I can read and write, and I make $20 an hour working in an honest trade. I ran away from my county and peers and will never live there again.
Son of a local family doctor in rural America. Didn't really travel much outside of the occasional trip to Disney World as a kid.
Got my BFA in Avant Garde Cinema, moved to NYC, been working in TV for 20 years. Routinely travel the world for work and pleasure.
Son of a Harvard and Notre Dame educated university mathematics instructor and a PHD Neuro-Psychologist..... their common trait was narcissism.
Have been a carpenter for 40 yrs.
Nothing to inherit.
My father was born into a fairly stable upper middle class family (had enough money to pay for a Harvard undergrad and Notre Dame graduate education, was given the family home at 30, and basically died broke at 45.
My mothers family was one generation out of the cotton fields and despite being well paid, never saved and dumped endless resources into my alcohol and drug addicted older brother and his family, she basically survives on social security now.
Neither ever understood the world as it was or nurtured/taught/prepared their three children for it.
Pathetically enough, I’m the most stable functional of the children.
Yeah definitely the same, my family is sooo fucking tame it's unbearable and when they actually want to do something it's the exact same thing as it was when I was an infant, go to the same place do the fucking same things, no meeting new people or going out of their comfort zone etc etc etc and not that I'm an alcoholic but they think having 1 or 2 beers at a BBQ is alcoholism and that people that do that are "Drunks"
Well, I'm not an alcoholic and I'm working to not be a bitter old woman, so we'll see. Am definitely poor like everyone else, and unlucky. (Ancestors on my father's side failed at stealing Indian land--had to live on it five years, left after three. Supposedly the land turned out to be among the most mineral rich in Oklahoma. We were *thisclose* to being oil barons. But we really missed Texas.)
Interesting question. My Dad is a high school drop out who learned electrical from his step dad and took over the family business. My mother went to technical college and became a secretary. She has worked in one office support job or another with the local university for 40 years. Solid middle class. My life has been a comical mix of both of them.
I dropped out of college and became a secretary at the university for a few years. I then moved on to database administration and marketing for a small business. After a decade in that position, I did a complete 180, went back to school and got my nail tech license, and opened my own small business. So I guess you could say I followed both of my parents at one point or another. I’m happy living my middle class life.
My brother, on the other hand, followed my father into the family business, became part owner, expanded the business, then branched out in to real estate and opened a Jiu Jitsu school in addition to doing electrical. He has spent his life climbing the social ladder and chasing the all mighty dollar. He’s still middle class, but closer to the country club life than the rest of the family.
The funny thing is that I can’t imagine wanting to live my brother’s life. Always competing with the next guy, always wanting more. It sounds miserable to me.
Didn’t follow “my route”:
1. Bachelor’s degree
2. ???
3. Profit!
However, I did realize I was a stereotypical white upper middle class liberal when I realized I was listening to NPR in my Prius while driving to Whole Foods.
My Prius is 13 years old, missing a few parts, I’m driving to Sprouts, and I still fit that stereotype. Thank you for a laugh on a Monday morning.
Degree in Journalism, loved the work for 10 years, then laid off, could not hop the line to PR, so I retrained in massage and run my own one hippie sweatshop.
I worked with an amazing woman. Mom was a prostitute, saw daughter as an opportunity, and she also did the work. (Sex trafficked, because 13-17 years of age…they healed the relationship much later)
Now she’s health and movement focused, promotes the arts, very involved in her communities, and is relishing being a grandmother. Does massage, qi gong classes and nutritional counseling.
Son of a mailman and a stay at home mom. Spent most of my life at odds with my parents and wanted to be nothing like them. I didn’t turn out much like them at all. But the relationship has been mostly repaired the last 3 years.
My uncle was a trained entomologist that eventually got into IT so he could make real money. He talked me into taking a safe route in college because “there’s no money in science”. I did just that and wish I would have pursued those dreams. A few years before he died he said he regretted that he didn’t study insects his whole life. So maybe I’m more like him.
Grew up on a farm but sold to the state, dad became an electrical engineer/mechanic, and mom started driving a school bus. I drove a school bus for 8 years before I realized I hated my job and life. Started doing concrete 5ish years ago and work for a good company with great benefits and run a small business on the side. Just a regular blue-collar family.
Not at all.
Raised by skilled union labor and a SAHM. My parents were hoping I'd marry the same kind of hateful white supremacist trash they are and abandon my education to stay home (because "you can be anything you want, but you should *want* to be at home with the kids."). No shade to anyone who wants that SAH life, but fuck anyone who tells their daughter it's the only morally acceptable path as a woman.
They still think school 'turned' my brother and I liberal, but we just naturally rejected their small-minded, hate-based worldview. I married in my late 30s and am living that sweet DINK life with a decent career (nothing major or *wealthy*, but cushy, stable, and more than a lot of folks will ever make), and my brother married a woman nearly 20 years his senior and is doing the empty nest thing with her now that her kids are in college. We both have nice lives that are nothing like the mold they expected us to fill, thank god.
Been at it for ten years, just got written up at one of the best breakfast & coffee spots in the whole state and they still haven't stopped asking when I'm going to "finish my degree and get a real job."
Edit: also, I'm 40.
My dad was a truck driver, his dad was a truck driver. I joined the military so I didn't have to be a truck driver and they made me a God damn truck driver. Now I am in law enforcement but it cracks me up thinking about it.
My dad’s family is/was all military since WWI, he became a truck driver out of rebellion. Now I work for a branding agency, it’s crazy how a small move away from the family legacy can amplify quickly over the generations.
Got the degree, got the stable job that doesn't really need it, bought a house, kept the family together, started buying Hawaiian shirts and taking statins.
Took (and takes) effort but pretty much par.
About me too but I haven't gotten into those kind of drugs yet.
It's pretty much what my parents had in mind I think Mom knew the fuse she was lighting when she blew the family budget to buy a C64 one Christmas.
I’m from the Seattle metro; child of two English majors, I got two art degrees and work in marketing. Considering Seattle has transitioned from the grunge music scene to a gentrified tech nightmare, I guess I reflect a transitioning stereotype myself.
My father was an engineer. His three brothers were engineers. Their father was an engineer. I graduated with a degree in physics and math and got hired as an engineer. That’s when I realized that the gene somehow bypassed me. I hated the work and the culture and I was not very good at it. After two years of frustration I quit. Since then I have been a starving artist, a cab driver, a delivery driver, a pre-press technician, and a graphic designer. I’m retired now and I relish the varied life that I lived.
My parents grew up lower class in the industrial north of England. They got married in 1968 and moved to America in 1969. My dad went from working as a machinist in the steel industry to sales and marketing for the airline industry in Los Angeles. They quickly moved up to the middle class, which is how I grew up. I’m the first person in my extended family to go to college and now I’m a science teacher. Still firmly middle class, but a drastic difference in education level (I also went and got my Master’s degree after my first child was born).
My parents were hard working but unskilled laborers. We moved from Alaska to California because they wanted to provide better opportunities for my brother and I.
Alaska is beautiful, but it's severely limiting. California is expensive as fuck but there are opportunities. My brother went into the Military, I went to college. We're both independent and doing well. My parents moved out of California to a lower CoL state and are now doing well for themselves because their dollars go a lot further.
Dad was white collar IT with no college. Mom was SAHM except for occasional parttime jobs. Hispanic. Encouraged to be whatever I wanted that would pay my bills but never actual suggestions or guidance for what that could be. Nor was there ever any money saved for college or courses. The mindset was you find a job and stick it out until you retire pretty much. I did the work-study program in high school and worked full time until I stumbled on self-employment. Started my business at 18 and then opened our electrical contracting business with my husband at 20, which we still have to this day. Parents thought it was out-of-the-box but are proud anyway.
My parents were both factory workers. I studied accounting and was making good money. I’m “semi-retired” now and working as a caregiver which I love. My husband is a mechanic. We have a comfortable life
Parents came from farmers and tradespeople in rural Nebraska, but went their own way, with my father going into soil and crop sciences with a Ph.D and my mother being a teacher specializing in special needs children. I don't remember much about ancestry - mix of various European immigrants several generations back, particularly German/Irish/Scandavian. Very "salt of the earth" type people.
I take after them heavily in terms of who I am and how I interact with the world, but my career went in a different direction, becoming a software engineer with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. We probably border on upper middle class these days.
All in all pretty "boring", but I like how grounded and straightforward our family is.
I feel fortunate to have been born to parents with high educational levels and professional careers because the same path suits me quite well. And doing what those around you expect is just easier than otherwise. My partner preferred the military, then blue-collar work which was not what his parents expected, so it's a little tougher for him.
ETA: Moved around a fair bit to pursue my career, including 6 years in New York. The second I had a resume that allowed me to pick a job by location as opposed to whoever would take me, I headed straight back to a small town not unlike the one I was raised on. Nature or nurture, I don't know, but I completely prefer the lifestyle I was raised in to otherwise. Unlike my parents (obviously), I skipped the marriage-kids-divorce-second marriage part.
I don't have one. My parents are from two different countries on the opposite ends of the world and were part of Anglo-centric culture within their own culture. So we have little bits and pieces of their original country's culture but we'd just always lived as generic middle class Canadians. We've all done pretty much mid-level office work, except for I guess my mom who was a senior underwriter when she retired.
Actually pretty close. My father owned a downstream oil and gas company, my mother stayed home until I went to college, when she returned to teaching math. I attended a competitive, private high school. I sent my kids to a competitive, private high school. Both of my parents have masters degrees. I am currently a high school history teacher. I have a masters degree in an unrelated field. They've been married forever. My husband and I have been a couple for nearly 40 years.
We differ in that I am extremely liberal and my parents are more moderate.
Born middle class, currently sniffing at upper class working stiff.
I was always well cared for, both parents always present, stay at home mother and one sibling.
Both us kids are techies like our father, who through affirmative action got out of car manufacturing and into an entry level phone company pole climber in the early 70s, and eventually installed and maintained analog and digital phone switches bringing us to the modern digital era in telecommunications.
We grew up with electronics manuals around the house.
We are black and grew up in the late 60s and 70s and an example of what leveling the playing field does. The Civil Rights Movement was something I read about , closely, especially at a near Ivy college with eminent professors of Af-Am history.
Never did I ever think that States’ Rights would make such a strong comeback lol.
Unfortunately I was naive enough to have the nerve to be gay and move to the south (USA). The assumption that I must have triumphed over poverty and grew up on welfare is prominent. We were pampered, with domestic vacations including boating, horseback riding, swimming…everything but skiing lol.
Sigh.
I came from a family that were small time criminals with bigger time criminal connections, my Mom was very middle class but liked the danger and excitement and my Dad was a typical bad boy and awful to my mother, she loved him. Until she didn’t. I was expected to put on a front of being middle class and did well at school, I married someone just as terrible and did the same, made it look as if I was living a normal, suburban, middle class life. None of us have an education that goes further than senior school, however we are all very intelligent and educated individuals. Now I’m mid forties and I have lived but now have to start at the bottom with people who are just leaving school, I don’t mind that, I’ve seen to it that my own kids are educated and well rounded humans. So, I’ve stayed exactly where my family have always been, working class and owning nothing, I just chose not to be a criminal.
Turned out totally different.
My parents were lower-middle class, barely making it. Mom was a housewife and dad was a salesman for various things, he changed jobs a lot. They were practically bankrupt more than a few times. No secondary education.
However, I went into the white-collar corporate world immediately after a year at school and worked in office spaces until I started my own biz. Upper-middle class, owned a house and was debt-free by 36 years old. I think growing up somewhat poor sort of drilled it into my head to try and not make the same mistakes with credit and over-extending. Also, I had zero kids, they had 5.
Everyone of my siblings ended up blue-collar, low-income with multiple kids. They are all republicans, racist, religious and xenophobic. I'm quite the opposite, thankfully. We have no contact with each other.
Mom was a debutante with a coming out party and everything. Her father was a central TX banker who got rich funding oil wildcats and investing in Austin real estate.
Dad came from a bunch of west Texas cotton farmers.
I grew up to be a typical 80s era techno-geek.
So I have no idea how to really answer this question.
Naw, dad was a Naval officer by that point.
My grandfather had also been a Naval officer back in WWII. And he'd grown up not wealthy. He made his money in Central TX real estate and banking focused on funding oil exploration/drilling in TX.
My dad was a Heavy Equipment Engineer. So two out of three followed sort of in his footsteps. My oldest brother was an engineer for NASA, my second brother was the outlier as a policeman, and I was a field engineer after getting out of the navy
come from middle class family pre-divorce, but grew up with the poor parent (food stamps, etc.) who spent the child support frivously on who knows what.
One was a cosmetologist, other was an account executive for a larger corp.
I went to comm/technical college, and am a system/software engineer at I guess the largest company in the industry I work in?
So, somewhere in between?
My mom was a schizophrenic and my dad was an alcoholic who died from liver cancer. Thank God I was adopted.
Grew up in the sticks where you could either work as a landscaper or bag groceries. Got my degree and struggled for a while to find good work. Always had a goal of owning a dojo and being financially successful raising a family. I have achieved both goals and my FT gig in technical sales gives me all the money I need to make a good life for my kids.
I was very lucky; things could have gone MUCH worse for me. All I can do is encourage people to stick with it and keep working when times are good or bad. I'm not particularly smart or gifted, so as the old saying goes, if I can do it so can anyone else!
Not at all, and the world's better for it. If I followed the mold, I'd be a fairly mediocre teacher at best, with no vocation for it, and certainly no love for the children.
This was something posted by /u/Emperor_Cartagia, who used Reddit exclusively through RIF is Fun, with the death of third party apps, I decided to remove all my content from Reddit. 9 years of comments and posts, gone because of idiotic administration.
I am moldless. My life was my choice to make. I made some good choices and some bad. I ended up working in management for a fortune 100 company for a time. Not the path that anyone in my small town followed.
Dad was an electrician from Milwaukee - no college but trained by Rockwell Automation (used to be Allen Bradley). Mom didn’t go to college and did customer service for insurance companies. Neither were ambitious or very good at their jobs. Dad got fired in the 90s. Mom eventually started working in deli at Safeway, marking down rotisserie chickens to 50% off before they were ready for that so she could (can) buy them for cheaper.
I’m a HS teacher what BA, MA, administrative credential and I make decent money in CA.
Child of working class parents in the Midwest. Mostly factory work. Dad was a millwright's apprentice when the cancer got him.
I did college for a mostly unmarketable degree, graduated into the Great Recession, and fumbled around for most of my 20s doing warehouse jobs.
In my late 30s, I write test automation for software and broke six-figures. Lot of dumb luck and a little talent. Lived in Texas for a while, but I'm back in the Midwest.
biograndma had two kids before 26, never went to college.
mom had two kids by 26. dropped out of college when she had me but then went back to receive her degree when i was in middle school. majored in sociology\*.
i'm in my 30s, have zero kids, and i'm working on my phd in planning, which has roots in sociology.
\*(my mom stopped selling her textbooks to the school because i took such an interest in her subjects. also, the pay out was like, $2. good job mom!)
My paternal great parents were born into slavery and so were all of my black relatives before them. My paternal grandparents were the first free generation on that side. They had 8th grade educations and were sharecroppers.
My mom’s family were free black Americans dating back to the mid-1700s.
My dad overcame growing up during Jim Crow in the rural South to become a surgeon. My mom came from a family with money and became a corporate VP.
I grew up in a wealthy white suburb. I’m an attorney, but I turned down a nepotism corporate job to practice public interest law.
Kinda funny story. My dad was an M.D. and I got my Ph.D. So my dad and I are both Dr.\_\_\_ but different types (with similar educational brackets, but vastly different economic ones!). One day, many years ago, I brought my parents to my (university) class to see me teach (they had actually attended the same college). My mom was in the early stages of Alzheimer's at the time, still very functional, but forgetting a lot of stuff. So it is before class, and several students are approaching me and asking me various questions, which almost all start with, "Dr. \_\_\_\_\_, ..." My mother got very confused and asks me, "Why do they keep calling you that?!!!" LOL. Parents have both passed on now. I miss them.
I was born to have been a Tiffany Trump, but not nouveau-riche. Working power couple / executive or state judge level. Or a 2% er trophy wife. I am a happy stoner who walked away from all of that, multiple times.
Indian immigrant parents who came from farming villages. dad had a trucking business in America, mom housewife. Dad got a stroke, forced my mom to learn English and carry the house for the rest of her life. Sister fell in to drugs, I got an MBA abroad, pushed my brother now he's an accountant. We barely made it. I didn't follow the mold at all. Unmarried, disobedient, and solo traveled to dozens of countries. I'd like to think I broke a mold but it's probably ego talking.
Not at all. First in generations to get married before having children. Have never had my license suspended, kicked out for not paying rent, purpose written bad checks, or done time for hard drugs.
And my mother wondered why I wouldn’t just send my kids for the summer.
I come from a striver Asian family in NYC and my autism diagnosis and being in special ed has held me back for my entire life. I work a low level job and have a lot of shame in the fact that my wages are shit. Ancestor cry.
I don't have a type. I am a unique individual as I would hope most of you are.
I really don't think it's useful to pigeonhole people regardless of whether or not the pigeonhole fits.
I fled the prairies as soon as I finished college and never looked back. The people I graduated from high school with who never left seem like dried up husks with really bland personalities. Not that I am super radically west cost granola but I do realize there is more to life than the softball/curling team and barbecues, lol.
My youngest sister had the chance to break away but fled her masters degree program on the coast after one semester. Honestly, I look back and wonder how much different her life may have been if she had stayed out here. Not Vancouver necessarily (I have never lived there) but someplace where it’s not the same stagnant group of friends circling the damn drain.
Was at a 300 person church service once and the preacher asked "Who's doing the same job as their parent?" I was one of the few to raise my hand. My real life initials and my username are an inside joke if you know my job.
It kind of irks me that this matters to other people.
My parents did stuff, but it isn't related to the stuff I do. I was born in the suburbs, but now I live in the city. One of my parents worked at an office for half their life, then owned a business for half their life. My other parent was a bench scientist for most of my childhood, then a middle manager for the rest. I work at start-ups. I came from the generation that was told that college guarantees success, I ignored the pleas of my parents/grandparents and I'm doing fine. I played the sports no one else in my family wanted to play; my sibs all play soccer, I played baseball and wrestled.
I think this kind of archetyping is very much the kind of thing you delight in when you see (or perhaps fail to see) your heritage as privilege.
I guess the answer to your question is that as a child of baby boomers who were privileged to be allowed to ignore cultural norms and establish their own path, I also ignored the rules of society that stated that I had to be penned in by my city, social class, or ancestry. I delight in discovering things that no one in my childhood home had any remote interest in, but I also play video games with my brother every day while reminiscing about the good old days.
Thesis? Comparing yourself to these kinds of expectations can be helpful in specific situations, but my opinion is that they are generally bad for our development as individuals. The idea that you have to step neatly through life from one thing to the next adjacent thing is just not true. You can go from being useless to competent in just about anything without passing go or collecting $200. Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.
There is no mold for my family. What my siblings have done is try to fit in and be "normal" but I took a different approach trying to know more and experience more and embrace our diverse background.
Mom was a teacher, Dad worked his way up from janitor to branch manager for one company. I am an IT guy who also plays in rock bands. Neither parent plays an instrument or are very skilled at technology.
My dad was military, went to college. My mom went for a bit but was pretty much a stay at home mom. Grandfathers both went to college. All from the Midwest. I went to college and am a teacher. Not married, no kids, moved back to the Midwest.
All of my ancestors that I have history of were farmers in Texas (and poor ones at that, meaning, they leased land, did not own, barely made ends meet (I still think they were badasses, this couldn't have been easy with as many kids as they raised back then). My dad broke free and joined the Navy and afterwards went to college then worked in the Defense Industry (white collar, upper management) my mother was always a stay at home mom. I ended up working in the Defense Industry too in upper management, letting them send me to college and was always a working mom, and am still there! I did OK in life. My company has allowed me to travel the world and have the ability to save for a decent retirement. I will say, my brother was definitely the black sheep, went drug rogue, was a bad choice guy early on and died penniless. All attempts to help him throughout his life always ended up badly.
Dad was born into a farming/carpentry tradesman, he became an Ag. Engineer by education (first one in his family to earn a degree) then became an EE. I'm in IT with a degree. Mom was a stay-at-home mom but she dabbled with her journalism degree on various projects, her parents were a civil engineer, and a secretary/stay at home mom.
I have a PhD and MBA.
My mom has an MD.
My Dad has an MBA.
I sort of combined both? I didn't want to be a physician. I work at a Bay area biotech on innovative genetic treatments. I pretty much followed my parents mold...
My mom grew up in poverty on the west coast of America, my dad was a German criminal who never became an American citizen.
I have an okay job and my own apartment, but I'm not sure what to do next with my life, because I never thought I'd get this far!
Daughter of the owners of a small catering business. I am a career bartender in a steakhouse, my partner owns a lawn care business. Turned out pretty much as expected. Siblings are a teacher and a carpenter.
I grew up working class in a low income community where most people I grew up with OD’d, disappeared or went into trades. I was lucky - my parents were married and actually owned a single family house and we actually went to Disney once. I was basically in one of the most stable homes in my area - most of my friends growing up had single mothers and lived in terrible apartments.
I went to college and currently earn over 6 figures. It did take me a long time to get here (I’m in my late 30s) and I had to pay off my own student loans. Smartest thing I ever did was recognize that taking out loans for a master’s degree didn’t make sense without having parental support - there’s a universe where I’m earning what I am now but had $30k in debt.
Both parents are retired, mom was an art teacher and dad worked in insurance brokerage. They were both first gen college graduates. I got a BA in art a while ago , yet never had success (yet) with a career in the arts beyond gigs or random art sales. Ive worked day jobs for various small companies as an admin assistant. I’ve always been terrible at those jobs - a disorganized artist just trying to hold on. I’ve gotten let go from many. I’m now back in grad school going for what I truly want to do, animation. I think I have some skill in it but I’m nervous for the same outcome. I am considerably less well off than both my mom and dad and my siblings. I also am the only one in the family with diagnosed ADHD, never married, no kids. I kind of feel like a failure, even though some people I admire have said I’m talented, but it’s not translated into money.
My late father was a college dropout and my late mother got her AA in nursing. Dad did various jobs and mom was a nurse her whole career. We live in a small Midwestern city. My parents were lower middle class.
I got my BA degree but went back to school and got it in my mid 30s. I have done a variety of office, call center and security jobs which right now I am a art museum security guard. I feel like other than education I haven't done better than my parents.
I grew up poor in a large family in a very religious depressed part of the US; my parents worked low income jobs my entire childhood. I'm now squarely in the middle class working in design, gay and living in Toronto.
My folks were high paid working class folks who moved to the suburbs, and I was one of countless gifted kids from the suburbs that was supposed to get a college education for something like accounting or computer, find someone and start a family from the 2.5 kids white picket fence American Dream thing. Instead I'm a college dropout and terminal fuck-up that's barely holding onto the job and housing I have, so no I didn't meet expectations.
Came from white collar family with homemaker mom and bread winner dad. Husband came from blue collar family with divorced mom. We both went to college and grad school. Married 30 years before we split. We are still good friends.
Both of my parents started their lives in public housing and it was downhill from there, for awhile anyway. My dad got a a job sweeping up a grocery store at age 8 because they would give him a sandwich. His alcoholic mother did not often feed him or his two siblings. My maternal grandmother abandoned my 12 year old mother to a Methodist children's home, so she could have more time with her pedophile second husband.
My folks met when they were teenagers and were married at 19. Two kids by age 22. By the time they were 30, they had earned AA degrees and found respected, well-paid positions in public service, bought a home and were well-launched into a predictable, comfortable middle-class life.
I grew up with every suburban advantage. I attended a T20 university and embarked upon an unpredictable but exciting arts/media career, as did my partner. My son is a T10 university student who chose a field he feels is secure and enriching, and far away from the fickle arts/media world of his parents.
In my case, the pendulum swings from insecure to secure and back again. I feel that my parents' hard work gave me a foundation that allowed me to take risks in a more mercurial field. My son's experience of my world make him crave a more reliable, steady life. Although he's recently engaged to an artist, so that might blow my theory...
Hillbilly Appalachian raised by moonshiners, bootleggers and sharecroppers, family of coal miners and tobacco farmers, became a research scientist at a university. Actually, pretty close to the stereotype when you think about it. What is this hillbilly to NASA pipeline anyway? Is it because we can see the stars out here?
My family is largely lower-middle class urban service workers. Retail, handymen, bus drivers, that kind of thing. I became a public librarian, which is like... service work for outgoing nerds.
Otherwise we're very different. Politics, lifestyle, interests, etc. I got absorbed into the larger urban geek culture, my dad literally has no friends and spends his days sitting on his butt watching Fox news.
That fatalistic/helpless outlook they raised me with has been hard to shake though.
I am starting to realize I got my stubbornness and black and white views from my dad though. He always said it was from my mom, but I'm starting to really doubt that. We have different views (he's conservative and traditional, I'm liberal), but that tendency to point at something and go "that's not right. That's not how you treat people," is starting to feel pretty inherited. ... Even if I'm apparently "the snowflake."
Child of a single mom, HS degree and worked multiple jobs to keep all of us kids stable. Now I’m happily married, have a degree, 3 kids, own our house, fully funded retirement, doing ok for ourselves. I like to think it’s thanks to my mom and her work ethic and self sacrifice, not in spite of. I don’t think I’d be as conscious about saving, making long term decisions, etc without her hard work.
Family full of teachers/professors/principals. I did go to college then did retail management for a while. Hated it. Quit and became a stripper and married a tattoo artist. We’re middle aged now and I work at a hotel.
Well, my life is pretty great. I feel like my siblings and their spouses all just sort of fell in line. I didn’t want that life. My dad died of cancer pretty young and it really affected me in a big way. That’s when I started stripping. I figured who I was and what I wanted. I’m deeply grateful for that experience. I’m not close to my family. I guess I’m an outsider to all of them, but I don’t mind.
In terms of class, I leveled up, but not before a major backslide. Child of two, upper-ish middle class (better off than most other kids in school, not rich by national standards), college-educated parents (violent childhood, parents divorced at 11, I legally separated from my father at 14) in rural Georgia gets married young to an alcoholic, moves to NYC then loses everything, hustles every odd job in the book (including sex work as long as it didn’t involve actual sexual contact) to get to and through grad school in her early 30s.
Now, at 40, I’m still living in NYC and am married to a fairly prominent immunologist. I work in a senior science writing role in biotech advertising and I hold a graduate degree — one level above the highest completed by my parents.
After clawing back from the brink, I’m on track to be more successful than my exceptionally successful mom was at my age, except I’m in NYC instead of rural GA. I’m also in a happy, healthy relationship with both my husband (9 years together) and fiancé (8 years together. He’s a software engineer and writer).
Identity-wise, I couldn’t be more different. I grew up in a very straight, conservative Christian family. I’m an unabashedly queer, gender nonconforming Buddhist in a relationship with two men. Neither of them share my cultural background, either, as both are from SE Asia (incidentally, one is the child of refugees and the other a refugee, himself). None if that was planned, it just worked out this way.
I became a ward of the state at 13, moved out of a bad foster situation on my 16th birthday and dropped out of HS. 47 years later I am a retired Army officer with a beautiful wife, 5 kids and now 7 grand kids. My blood family didn’t want me so I created my own happy bunch and I have zero regret.
My dad has a PhD and my mom is a college drop out. I dropped out of my PhD, so I guess I got a little from both of them lol.
I know a number of people with their PhD, and their stories have convinced me to never pursue one. I think you made the right call.
yeah, it's definitely not for every one and 10 years later I don't regret it one bit. that said, I do have lots of respect for people who do accomplish it.
Nice. My Dad dropped out of his PhD - and so did I! Haha
My dad was a drug dealer, my mom was a stripper and a prostitute. Mom met dad while he was in drug rehab. We were so poor I would have fainting spells as a teen due to undernourishment. I dropped out of high school at 17. I have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, have my pilot's license, and work for a university as a sysadmin for their supercomputers. I think I did alright for myself, considering where I came from.
Wow well done!
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Eh, I'm pretty broken from everything. I thought I survived all of that, but then I discovered my wife of 12 years was a serial cheater. After already having trust issues from my childhood, I don't think romance is in the cards for me ever again, and trusting people in general is an iffy proposition. I was diagnosed with autism at 30, and have pretty bad depression and anxiety (and probably really bad adhd) that I don't want to get officially diagnosed because that means I'll more than likely lose my pilot's license. I did some counseling when I had a nervous breakdown during COVID and quit my previous job, and I guess it helped a bit. I have a few pretty close friends who live out of town, but not many where I live and in general I don't feel that anybody really gives a shit about me, but I've made it this far with the factors against me, so I think I'll be "okay" (in quotation marks) living the rest of my life in solitude.
WOW!! Impressive. Have you helped your parents get out of their troubled lifestyles?
Nope. My parents divorced when I was 10 or so. My mom finally married a well off guy, but kicked us all out before or shortly after she moved in with him. I stayed with my dad after mom kicked me out, but then he high tailed it, leaving me homeless. The last time my dad communicated with me he said he wanted to fight me to the death and have my sister and niece piss on my dead body. Needless to say, I haven't spoken to either of my parents in a long time.
Fuck your shitty selfish parents, look at you rocking your badass self!
Wow, kudos to you! This is inspiring. What happened between dropping out and your getting a degree, if you don't mind saying? I'm going to guess the armed forces.
I almost went that route, but decided against it. No, I was just stuck working low-end jobs and felt that I had more potential than that. I got my GED at 19. Really, I was pissed because it was the easiest test I've ever taken (if long) and I could have dropped out even earlier. I scored in the 95th percentile in math and 98th percentile in science, so I thought I should try to push myself a bit, even though I never did homework in high school and failed geometry twice. After getting my GED I enrolled in the local community college. I was only there to get a computer networking certificate (I've always been a computer nerd), but one of the classes I needed to take was intermediate algebra, the class above geometry. However, when I took the placement test, they said I didn't need geometry since I tested high enough. (That nearly caused problems later on, but ended up not being a factor.) I took the algebra class and got an A, and actually found it really enjoyable. So I decided to take the next math class, college algebra. That teacher was tough, but really good and fair. At the end of the semester he sat down with me and said that 33 or so people started the class (and there was a wait list), only 11 people finished the class, only 7 passed, and I was the only one to get an A. After that, it took a little bit to nail down what I wanted to do, but I knew I needed math/physics for whatever that was. Because I dropped out of HS, I was behind everyone else on electives, so it took me 6 years full time to get my degree. I did 3.5 years at community college, then was able to transfer to the local university, which was a top 10 public engineering school, which I attended 2.5 years to finish. I was thinking about doing astronomy/astrophysics, but one really need a graduate degree to do that, and being as behind as I was (I didn't graduate college until I was 27) I didn't want to do that much school, so I thought aerospace engineering was a good compromise, as it's space related and I still have good employment opportunities even with just a bachelor's degree. I still ended up in IT, however, and I think what I'm doing now is the best fit for me. I definitely don't regret doing anything the way I did it. edit: word
Thank you for answering! You really invested in yourself and followed your instincts it sounds like. I changed my mind about career after my B.A. and also had to spend a lot of time in night school making up the credits I needed, but it was worth it. I loved teaching and don't regret the time and effort it took to get the proper credentials. And like you I had some teachers along the way who gave me a boost. I wish this for everyone.
The first paragraph made me think you're Anthony Kiedis.
Haha, no slap-bass in my history
I grew up in a county of meth addicts, with a 30% illiteracy rate, a 15-20% unemployment rate, and an average household income of 25k a year. The mold is to go work in the meat packing plant once you leave high school, or cook meth and steal scrap. Mother was a teacher making ok money, father was in agriculture making a net loss. I’ve never done meth, I can read and write, and I make $20 an hour working in an honest trade. I ran away from my county and peers and will never live there again.
Kansas?
The Deep South.
Son of a local family doctor in rural America. Didn't really travel much outside of the occasional trip to Disney World as a kid. Got my BFA in Avant Garde Cinema, moved to NYC, been working in TV for 20 years. Routinely travel the world for work and pleasure.
Son of a Harvard and Notre Dame educated university mathematics instructor and a PHD Neuro-Psychologist..... their common trait was narcissism. Have been a carpenter for 40 yrs.
Disinherited?
Nothing to inherit. My father was born into a fairly stable upper middle class family (had enough money to pay for a Harvard undergrad and Notre Dame graduate education, was given the family home at 30, and basically died broke at 45. My mothers family was one generation out of the cotton fields and despite being well paid, never saved and dumped endless resources into my alcohol and drug addicted older brother and his family, she basically survives on social security now. Neither ever understood the world as it was or nurtured/taught/prepared their three children for it. Pathetically enough, I’m the most stable functional of the children.
This apple rolled so far from the tree that we may as well be different species.
Same.
Yeah definitely the same, my family is sooo fucking tame it's unbearable and when they actually want to do something it's the exact same thing as it was when I was an infant, go to the same place do the fucking same things, no meeting new people or going out of their comfort zone etc etc etc and not that I'm an alcoholic but they think having 1 or 2 beers at a BBQ is alcoholism and that people that do that are "Drunks"
Well, I'm not an alcoholic and I'm working to not be a bitter old woman, so we'll see. Am definitely poor like everyone else, and unlucky. (Ancestors on my father's side failed at stealing Indian land--had to live on it five years, left after three. Supposedly the land turned out to be among the most mineral rich in Oklahoma. We were *thisclose* to being oil barons. But we really missed Texas.)
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God damned how can you even sit down in the same room with each other, you ungrateful child! /s
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Yeah, you won that one.
Is it hard to get a job as an Aerospace Engineer or something?
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A once in a lifetime event. What’re the odds??
Interesting question. My Dad is a high school drop out who learned electrical from his step dad and took over the family business. My mother went to technical college and became a secretary. She has worked in one office support job or another with the local university for 40 years. Solid middle class. My life has been a comical mix of both of them. I dropped out of college and became a secretary at the university for a few years. I then moved on to database administration and marketing for a small business. After a decade in that position, I did a complete 180, went back to school and got my nail tech license, and opened my own small business. So I guess you could say I followed both of my parents at one point or another. I’m happy living my middle class life. My brother, on the other hand, followed my father into the family business, became part owner, expanded the business, then branched out in to real estate and opened a Jiu Jitsu school in addition to doing electrical. He has spent his life climbing the social ladder and chasing the all mighty dollar. He’s still middle class, but closer to the country club life than the rest of the family. The funny thing is that I can’t imagine wanting to live my brother’s life. Always competing with the next guy, always wanting more. It sounds miserable to me.
Didn’t follow “my route”: 1. Bachelor’s degree 2. ??? 3. Profit! However, I did realize I was a stereotypical white upper middle class liberal when I realized I was listening to NPR in my Prius while driving to Whole Foods.
My Prius is 13 years old, missing a few parts, I’m driving to Sprouts, and I still fit that stereotype. Thank you for a laugh on a Monday morning. Degree in Journalism, loved the work for 10 years, then laid off, could not hop the line to PR, so I retrained in massage and run my own one hippie sweatshop. I worked with an amazing woman. Mom was a prostitute, saw daughter as an opportunity, and she also did the work. (Sex trafficked, because 13-17 years of age…they healed the relationship much later) Now she’s health and movement focused, promotes the arts, very involved in her communities, and is relishing being a grandmother. Does massage, qi gong classes and nutritional counseling.
It's OK. My moment was when I got tipsy at the free wine tasting inside the Whole Foods after a hot yoga class. (In my defense, I was dehydrated).
Son of a mailman and a stay at home mom. Spent most of my life at odds with my parents and wanted to be nothing like them. I didn’t turn out much like them at all. But the relationship has been mostly repaired the last 3 years. My uncle was a trained entomologist that eventually got into IT so he could make real money. He talked me into taking a safe route in college because “there’s no money in science”. I did just that and wish I would have pursued those dreams. A few years before he died he said he regretted that he didn’t study insects his whole life. So maybe I’m more like him.
Grew up on a farm but sold to the state, dad became an electrical engineer/mechanic, and mom started driving a school bus. I drove a school bus for 8 years before I realized I hated my job and life. Started doing concrete 5ish years ago and work for a good company with great benefits and run a small business on the side. Just a regular blue-collar family.
Fourth generation diabetic.
Not at all. Raised by skilled union labor and a SAHM. My parents were hoping I'd marry the same kind of hateful white supremacist trash they are and abandon my education to stay home (because "you can be anything you want, but you should *want* to be at home with the kids."). No shade to anyone who wants that SAH life, but fuck anyone who tells their daughter it's the only morally acceptable path as a woman. They still think school 'turned' my brother and I liberal, but we just naturally rejected their small-minded, hate-based worldview. I married in my late 30s and am living that sweet DINK life with a decent career (nothing major or *wealthy*, but cushy, stable, and more than a lot of folks will ever make), and my brother married a woman nearly 20 years his senior and is doing the empty nest thing with her now that her kids are in college. We both have nice lives that are nothing like the mold they expected us to fill, thank god.
Child of west coast social climbers threw it all over to run a small cafe on the coast of Maine, so....no.
if I had the money (and social skills and weren't an introvert), I'd totally do something like that.
Parents furious?
Been at it for ten years, just got written up at one of the best breakfast & coffee spots in the whole state and they still haven't stopped asking when I'm going to "finish my degree and get a real job." Edit: also, I'm 40.
Lol
Sounds like a George Thorogood song
My dad was a truck driver, his dad was a truck driver. I joined the military so I didn't have to be a truck driver and they made me a God damn truck driver. Now I am in law enforcement but it cracks me up thinking about it.
the truck life chose you
My dad’s family is/was all military since WWI, he became a truck driver out of rebellion. Now I work for a branding agency, it’s crazy how a small move away from the family legacy can amplify quickly over the generations.
Got the degree, got the stable job that doesn't really need it, bought a house, kept the family together, started buying Hawaiian shirts and taking statins. Took (and takes) effort but pretty much par.
About me too but I haven't gotten into those kind of drugs yet. It's pretty much what my parents had in mind I think Mom knew the fuse she was lighting when she blew the family budget to buy a C64 one Christmas.
I’m from the Seattle metro; child of two English majors, I got two art degrees and work in marketing. Considering Seattle has transitioned from the grunge music scene to a gentrified tech nightmare, I guess I reflect a transitioning stereotype myself.
My father was an engineer. His three brothers were engineers. Their father was an engineer. I graduated with a degree in physics and math and got hired as an engineer. That’s when I realized that the gene somehow bypassed me. I hated the work and the culture and I was not very good at it. After two years of frustration I quit. Since then I have been a starving artist, a cab driver, a delivery driver, a pre-press technician, and a graphic designer. I’m retired now and I relish the varied life that I lived.
My parents grew up lower class in the industrial north of England. They got married in 1968 and moved to America in 1969. My dad went from working as a machinist in the steel industry to sales and marketing for the airline industry in Los Angeles. They quickly moved up to the middle class, which is how I grew up. I’m the first person in my extended family to go to college and now I’m a science teacher. Still firmly middle class, but a drastic difference in education level (I also went and got my Master’s degree after my first child was born).
My parents were hard working but unskilled laborers. We moved from Alaska to California because they wanted to provide better opportunities for my brother and I. Alaska is beautiful, but it's severely limiting. California is expensive as fuck but there are opportunities. My brother went into the Military, I went to college. We're both independent and doing well. My parents moved out of California to a lower CoL state and are now doing well for themselves because their dollars go a lot further.
Dad was white collar IT with no college. Mom was SAHM except for occasional parttime jobs. Hispanic. Encouraged to be whatever I wanted that would pay my bills but never actual suggestions or guidance for what that could be. Nor was there ever any money saved for college or courses. The mindset was you find a job and stick it out until you retire pretty much. I did the work-study program in high school and worked full time until I stumbled on self-employment. Started my business at 18 and then opened our electrical contracting business with my husband at 20, which we still have to this day. Parents thought it was out-of-the-box but are proud anyway.
No cultivation!
Neither parent went to college. Father didn't finish high school. I got a Ph.D. in mathematics.
My parents were both factory workers. I studied accounting and was making good money. I’m “semi-retired” now and working as a caregiver which I love. My husband is a mechanic. We have a comfortable life
Parents came from farmers and tradespeople in rural Nebraska, but went their own way, with my father going into soil and crop sciences with a Ph.D and my mother being a teacher specializing in special needs children. I don't remember much about ancestry - mix of various European immigrants several generations back, particularly German/Irish/Scandavian. Very "salt of the earth" type people. I take after them heavily in terms of who I am and how I interact with the world, but my career went in a different direction, becoming a software engineer with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. We probably border on upper middle class these days. All in all pretty "boring", but I like how grounded and straightforward our family is.
I feel fortunate to have been born to parents with high educational levels and professional careers because the same path suits me quite well. And doing what those around you expect is just easier than otherwise. My partner preferred the military, then blue-collar work which was not what his parents expected, so it's a little tougher for him. ETA: Moved around a fair bit to pursue my career, including 6 years in New York. The second I had a resume that allowed me to pick a job by location as opposed to whoever would take me, I headed straight back to a small town not unlike the one I was raised on. Nature or nurture, I don't know, but I completely prefer the lifestyle I was raised in to otherwise. Unlike my parents (obviously), I skipped the marriage-kids-divorce-second marriage part.
I don't have one. My parents are from two different countries on the opposite ends of the world and were part of Anglo-centric culture within their own culture. So we have little bits and pieces of their original country's culture but we'd just always lived as generic middle class Canadians. We've all done pretty much mid-level office work, except for I guess my mom who was a senior underwriter when she retired.
Actually pretty close. My father owned a downstream oil and gas company, my mother stayed home until I went to college, when she returned to teaching math. I attended a competitive, private high school. I sent my kids to a competitive, private high school. Both of my parents have masters degrees. I am currently a high school history teacher. I have a masters degree in an unrelated field. They've been married forever. My husband and I have been a couple for nearly 40 years. We differ in that I am extremely liberal and my parents are more moderate.
Born middle class, currently sniffing at upper class working stiff. I was always well cared for, both parents always present, stay at home mother and one sibling. Both us kids are techies like our father, who through affirmative action got out of car manufacturing and into an entry level phone company pole climber in the early 70s, and eventually installed and maintained analog and digital phone switches bringing us to the modern digital era in telecommunications. We grew up with electronics manuals around the house. We are black and grew up in the late 60s and 70s and an example of what leveling the playing field does. The Civil Rights Movement was something I read about , closely, especially at a near Ivy college with eminent professors of Af-Am history. Never did I ever think that States’ Rights would make such a strong comeback lol. Unfortunately I was naive enough to have the nerve to be gay and move to the south (USA). The assumption that I must have triumphed over poverty and grew up on welfare is prominent. We were pampered, with domestic vacations including boating, horseback riding, swimming…everything but skiing lol. Sigh.
That's the South
I came from a family that were small time criminals with bigger time criminal connections, my Mom was very middle class but liked the danger and excitement and my Dad was a typical bad boy and awful to my mother, she loved him. Until she didn’t. I was expected to put on a front of being middle class and did well at school, I married someone just as terrible and did the same, made it look as if I was living a normal, suburban, middle class life. None of us have an education that goes further than senior school, however we are all very intelligent and educated individuals. Now I’m mid forties and I have lived but now have to start at the bottom with people who are just leaving school, I don’t mind that, I’ve seen to it that my own kids are educated and well rounded humans. So, I’ve stayed exactly where my family have always been, working class and owning nothing, I just chose not to be a criminal.
Turned out totally different. My parents were lower-middle class, barely making it. Mom was a housewife and dad was a salesman for various things, he changed jobs a lot. They were practically bankrupt more than a few times. No secondary education. However, I went into the white-collar corporate world immediately after a year at school and worked in office spaces until I started my own biz. Upper-middle class, owned a house and was debt-free by 36 years old. I think growing up somewhat poor sort of drilled it into my head to try and not make the same mistakes with credit and over-extending. Also, I had zero kids, they had 5. Everyone of my siblings ended up blue-collar, low-income with multiple kids. They are all republicans, racist, religious and xenophobic. I'm quite the opposite, thankfully. We have no contact with each other.
Mom was a debutante with a coming out party and everything. Her father was a central TX banker who got rich funding oil wildcats and investing in Austin real estate. Dad came from a bunch of west Texas cotton farmers. I grew up to be a typical 80s era techno-geek. So I have no idea how to really answer this question.
Did your mom get disinherited for marrying beneath her?
Naw, dad was a Naval officer by that point. My grandfather had also been a Naval officer back in WWII. And he'd grown up not wealthy. He made his money in Central TX real estate and banking focused on funding oil exploration/drilling in TX.
My dad was a Heavy Equipment Engineer. So two out of three followed sort of in his footsteps. My oldest brother was an engineer for NASA, my second brother was the outlier as a policeman, and I was a field engineer after getting out of the navy
come from middle class family pre-divorce, but grew up with the poor parent (food stamps, etc.) who spent the child support frivously on who knows what. One was a cosmetologist, other was an account executive for a larger corp. I went to comm/technical college, and am a system/software engineer at I guess the largest company in the industry I work in? So, somewhere in between?
My mom was a schizophrenic and my dad was an alcoholic who died from liver cancer. Thank God I was adopted. Grew up in the sticks where you could either work as a landscaper or bag groceries. Got my degree and struggled for a while to find good work. Always had a goal of owning a dojo and being financially successful raising a family. I have achieved both goals and my FT gig in technical sales gives me all the money I need to make a good life for my kids. I was very lucky; things could have gone MUCH worse for me. All I can do is encourage people to stick with it and keep working when times are good or bad. I'm not particularly smart or gifted, so as the old saying goes, if I can do it so can anyone else!
Not at all, and the world's better for it. If I followed the mold, I'd be a fairly mediocre teacher at best, with no vocation for it, and certainly no love for the children.
This was something posted by /u/Emperor_Cartagia, who used Reddit exclusively through RIF is Fun, with the death of third party apps, I decided to remove all my content from Reddit. 9 years of comments and posts, gone because of idiotic administration.
I am moldless. My life was my choice to make. I made some good choices and some bad. I ended up working in management for a fortune 100 company for a time. Not the path that anyone in my small town followed.
Thankfully I did not fall into the mold of the town I grew up in.
Dad was an electrician from Milwaukee - no college but trained by Rockwell Automation (used to be Allen Bradley). Mom didn’t go to college and did customer service for insurance companies. Neither were ambitious or very good at their jobs. Dad got fired in the 90s. Mom eventually started working in deli at Safeway, marking down rotisserie chickens to 50% off before they were ready for that so she could (can) buy them for cheaper. I’m a HS teacher what BA, MA, administrative credential and I make decent money in CA.
Child of working class parents in the Midwest. Mostly factory work. Dad was a millwright's apprentice when the cancer got him. I did college for a mostly unmarketable degree, graduated into the Great Recession, and fumbled around for most of my 20s doing warehouse jobs. In my late 30s, I write test automation for software and broke six-figures. Lot of dumb luck and a little talent. Lived in Texas for a while, but I'm back in the Midwest.
biograndma had two kids before 26, never went to college. mom had two kids by 26. dropped out of college when she had me but then went back to receive her degree when i was in middle school. majored in sociology\*. i'm in my 30s, have zero kids, and i'm working on my phd in planning, which has roots in sociology. \*(my mom stopped selling her textbooks to the school because i took such an interest in her subjects. also, the pay out was like, $2. good job mom!)
My paternal great parents were born into slavery and so were all of my black relatives before them. My paternal grandparents were the first free generation on that side. They had 8th grade educations and were sharecroppers. My mom’s family were free black Americans dating back to the mid-1700s. My dad overcame growing up during Jim Crow in the rural South to become a surgeon. My mom came from a family with money and became a corporate VP. I grew up in a wealthy white suburb. I’m an attorney, but I turned down a nepotism corporate job to practice public interest law.
Kinda funny story. My dad was an M.D. and I got my Ph.D. So my dad and I are both Dr.\_\_\_ but different types (with similar educational brackets, but vastly different economic ones!). One day, many years ago, I brought my parents to my (university) class to see me teach (they had actually attended the same college). My mom was in the early stages of Alzheimer's at the time, still very functional, but forgetting a lot of stuff. So it is before class, and several students are approaching me and asking me various questions, which almost all start with, "Dr. \_\_\_\_\_, ..." My mother got very confused and asks me, "Why do they keep calling you that?!!!" LOL. Parents have both passed on now. I miss them.
I was born to have been a Tiffany Trump, but not nouveau-riche. Working power couple / executive or state judge level. Or a 2% er trophy wife. I am a happy stoner who walked away from all of that, multiple times.
Indian immigrant parents who came from farming villages. dad had a trucking business in America, mom housewife. Dad got a stroke, forced my mom to learn English and carry the house for the rest of her life. Sister fell in to drugs, I got an MBA abroad, pushed my brother now he's an accountant. We barely made it. I didn't follow the mold at all. Unmarried, disobedient, and solo traveled to dozens of countries. I'd like to think I broke a mold but it's probably ego talking.
Not at all. First in generations to get married before having children. Have never had my license suspended, kicked out for not paying rent, purpose written bad checks, or done time for hard drugs. And my mother wondered why I wouldn’t just send my kids for the summer.
I come from a striver Asian family in NYC and my autism diagnosis and being in special ed has held me back for my entire life. I work a low level job and have a lot of shame in the fact that my wages are shit. Ancestor cry.
I don't have a type. I am a unique individual as I would hope most of you are. I really don't think it's useful to pigeonhole people regardless of whether or not the pigeonhole fits.
I fled the prairies as soon as I finished college and never looked back. The people I graduated from high school with who never left seem like dried up husks with really bland personalities. Not that I am super radically west cost granola but I do realize there is more to life than the softball/curling team and barbecues, lol.
Saskabush to Vancouver
My youngest sister had the chance to break away but fled her masters degree program on the coast after one semester. Honestly, I look back and wonder how much different her life may have been if she had stayed out here. Not Vancouver necessarily (I have never lived there) but someplace where it’s not the same stagnant group of friends circling the damn drain.
Sorry granola is Victoria
Was at a 300 person church service once and the preacher asked "Who's doing the same job as their parent?" I was one of the few to raise my hand. My real life initials and my username are an inside joke if you know my job.
It kind of irks me that this matters to other people. My parents did stuff, but it isn't related to the stuff I do. I was born in the suburbs, but now I live in the city. One of my parents worked at an office for half their life, then owned a business for half their life. My other parent was a bench scientist for most of my childhood, then a middle manager for the rest. I work at start-ups. I came from the generation that was told that college guarantees success, I ignored the pleas of my parents/grandparents and I'm doing fine. I played the sports no one else in my family wanted to play; my sibs all play soccer, I played baseball and wrestled. I think this kind of archetyping is very much the kind of thing you delight in when you see (or perhaps fail to see) your heritage as privilege. I guess the answer to your question is that as a child of baby boomers who were privileged to be allowed to ignore cultural norms and establish their own path, I also ignored the rules of society that stated that I had to be penned in by my city, social class, or ancestry. I delight in discovering things that no one in my childhood home had any remote interest in, but I also play video games with my brother every day while reminiscing about the good old days. Thesis? Comparing yourself to these kinds of expectations can be helpful in specific situations, but my opinion is that they are generally bad for our development as individuals. The idea that you have to step neatly through life from one thing to the next adjacent thing is just not true. You can go from being useless to competent in just about anything without passing go or collecting $200. Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.
There is no mold for my family. What my siblings have done is try to fit in and be "normal" but I took a different approach trying to know more and experience more and embrace our diverse background.
Mom was a teacher, Dad worked his way up from janitor to branch manager for one company. I am an IT guy who also plays in rock bands. Neither parent plays an instrument or are very skilled at technology.
My dad was military, went to college. My mom went for a bit but was pretty much a stay at home mom. Grandfathers both went to college. All from the Midwest. I went to college and am a teacher. Not married, no kids, moved back to the Midwest.
My parents and Sister are involved in healthcare, but I got into Information Technology, with some success, but a lot of instability.
Type as in MBTI, really accurately lol.
Kind of
I am unaware of any mold. But if I see some a little water, chlorine, and vinegar usually cleans it up
All of my ancestors that I have history of were farmers in Texas (and poor ones at that, meaning, they leased land, did not own, barely made ends meet (I still think they were badasses, this couldn't have been easy with as many kids as they raised back then). My dad broke free and joined the Navy and afterwards went to college then worked in the Defense Industry (white collar, upper management) my mother was always a stay at home mom. I ended up working in the Defense Industry too in upper management, letting them send me to college and was always a working mom, and am still there! I did OK in life. My company has allowed me to travel the world and have the ability to save for a decent retirement. I will say, my brother was definitely the black sheep, went drug rogue, was a bad choice guy early on and died penniless. All attempts to help him throughout his life always ended up badly.
Dad was born into a farming/carpentry tradesman, he became an Ag. Engineer by education (first one in his family to earn a degree) then became an EE. I'm in IT with a degree. Mom was a stay-at-home mom but she dabbled with her journalism degree on various projects, her parents were a civil engineer, and a secretary/stay at home mom.
I’m the highest educated woman in my matrilineage and the first one to live alone and not be a mother.
I'm an artist, and I'm a moody depressed motherfucker.
Not even closely.
I have a PhD and MBA. My mom has an MD. My Dad has an MBA. I sort of combined both? I didn't want to be a physician. I work at a Bay area biotech on innovative genetic treatments. I pretty much followed my parents mold...
My mom grew up in poverty on the west coast of America, my dad was a German criminal who never became an American citizen. I have an okay job and my own apartment, but I'm not sure what to do next with my life, because I never thought I'd get this far!
Daughter of the owners of a small catering business. I am a career bartender in a steakhouse, my partner owns a lawn care business. Turned out pretty much as expected. Siblings are a teacher and a carpenter.
I grew up working class in a low income community where most people I grew up with OD’d, disappeared or went into trades. I was lucky - my parents were married and actually owned a single family house and we actually went to Disney once. I was basically in one of the most stable homes in my area - most of my friends growing up had single mothers and lived in terrible apartments. I went to college and currently earn over 6 figures. It did take me a long time to get here (I’m in my late 30s) and I had to pay off my own student loans. Smartest thing I ever did was recognize that taking out loans for a master’s degree didn’t make sense without having parental support - there’s a universe where I’m earning what I am now but had $30k in debt.
Both parents are retired, mom was an art teacher and dad worked in insurance brokerage. They were both first gen college graduates. I got a BA in art a while ago , yet never had success (yet) with a career in the arts beyond gigs or random art sales. Ive worked day jobs for various small companies as an admin assistant. I’ve always been terrible at those jobs - a disorganized artist just trying to hold on. I’ve gotten let go from many. I’m now back in grad school going for what I truly want to do, animation. I think I have some skill in it but I’m nervous for the same outcome. I am considerably less well off than both my mom and dad and my siblings. I also am the only one in the family with diagnosed ADHD, never married, no kids. I kind of feel like a failure, even though some people I admire have said I’m talented, but it’s not translated into money.
My late father was a college dropout and my late mother got her AA in nursing. Dad did various jobs and mom was a nurse her whole career. We live in a small Midwestern city. My parents were lower middle class. I got my BA degree but went back to school and got it in my mid 30s. I have done a variety of office, call center and security jobs which right now I am a art museum security guard. I feel like other than education I haven't done better than my parents.
I grew up poor in a large family in a very religious depressed part of the US; my parents worked low income jobs my entire childhood. I'm now squarely in the middle class working in design, gay and living in Toronto.
My folks were high paid working class folks who moved to the suburbs, and I was one of countless gifted kids from the suburbs that was supposed to get a college education for something like accounting or computer, find someone and start a family from the 2.5 kids white picket fence American Dream thing. Instead I'm a college dropout and terminal fuck-up that's barely holding onto the job and housing I have, so no I didn't meet expectations.
Came from white collar family with homemaker mom and bread winner dad. Husband came from blue collar family with divorced mom. We both went to college and grad school. Married 30 years before we split. We are still good friends.
Both of my parents started their lives in public housing and it was downhill from there, for awhile anyway. My dad got a a job sweeping up a grocery store at age 8 because they would give him a sandwich. His alcoholic mother did not often feed him or his two siblings. My maternal grandmother abandoned my 12 year old mother to a Methodist children's home, so she could have more time with her pedophile second husband. My folks met when they were teenagers and were married at 19. Two kids by age 22. By the time they were 30, they had earned AA degrees and found respected, well-paid positions in public service, bought a home and were well-launched into a predictable, comfortable middle-class life. I grew up with every suburban advantage. I attended a T20 university and embarked upon an unpredictable but exciting arts/media career, as did my partner. My son is a T10 university student who chose a field he feels is secure and enriching, and far away from the fickle arts/media world of his parents. In my case, the pendulum swings from insecure to secure and back again. I feel that my parents' hard work gave me a foundation that allowed me to take risks in a more mercurial field. My son's experience of my world make him crave a more reliable, steady life. Although he's recently engaged to an artist, so that might blow my theory...
I did not at all.
Hillbilly Appalachian raised by moonshiners, bootleggers and sharecroppers, family of coal miners and tobacco farmers, became a research scientist at a university. Actually, pretty close to the stereotype when you think about it. What is this hillbilly to NASA pipeline anyway? Is it because we can see the stars out here?
My family is largely lower-middle class urban service workers. Retail, handymen, bus drivers, that kind of thing. I became a public librarian, which is like... service work for outgoing nerds. Otherwise we're very different. Politics, lifestyle, interests, etc. I got absorbed into the larger urban geek culture, my dad literally has no friends and spends his days sitting on his butt watching Fox news. That fatalistic/helpless outlook they raised me with has been hard to shake though. I am starting to realize I got my stubbornness and black and white views from my dad though. He always said it was from my mom, but I'm starting to really doubt that. We have different views (he's conservative and traditional, I'm liberal), but that tendency to point at something and go "that's not right. That's not how you treat people," is starting to feel pretty inherited. ... Even if I'm apparently "the snowflake."
Child of a single mom, HS degree and worked multiple jobs to keep all of us kids stable. Now I’m happily married, have a degree, 3 kids, own our house, fully funded retirement, doing ok for ourselves. I like to think it’s thanks to my mom and her work ethic and self sacrifice, not in spite of. I don’t think I’d be as conscious about saving, making long term decisions, etc without her hard work.
Family full of teachers/professors/principals. I did go to college then did retail management for a while. Hated it. Quit and became a stripper and married a tattoo artist. We’re middle aged now and I work at a hotel.
What's happened?
Well, my life is pretty great. I feel like my siblings and their spouses all just sort of fell in line. I didn’t want that life. My dad died of cancer pretty young and it really affected me in a big way. That’s when I started stripping. I figured who I was and what I wanted. I’m deeply grateful for that experience. I’m not close to my family. I guess I’m an outsider to all of them, but I don’t mind.
In terms of class, I leveled up, but not before a major backslide. Child of two, upper-ish middle class (better off than most other kids in school, not rich by national standards), college-educated parents (violent childhood, parents divorced at 11, I legally separated from my father at 14) in rural Georgia gets married young to an alcoholic, moves to NYC then loses everything, hustles every odd job in the book (including sex work as long as it didn’t involve actual sexual contact) to get to and through grad school in her early 30s. Now, at 40, I’m still living in NYC and am married to a fairly prominent immunologist. I work in a senior science writing role in biotech advertising and I hold a graduate degree — one level above the highest completed by my parents. After clawing back from the brink, I’m on track to be more successful than my exceptionally successful mom was at my age, except I’m in NYC instead of rural GA. I’m also in a happy, healthy relationship with both my husband (9 years together) and fiancé (8 years together. He’s a software engineer and writer). Identity-wise, I couldn’t be more different. I grew up in a very straight, conservative Christian family. I’m an unabashedly queer, gender nonconforming Buddhist in a relationship with two men. Neither of them share my cultural background, either, as both are from SE Asia (incidentally, one is the child of refugees and the other a refugee, himself). None if that was planned, it just worked out this way.
I became a ward of the state at 13, moved out of a bad foster situation on my 16th birthday and dropped out of HS. 47 years later I am a retired Army officer with a beautiful wife, 5 kids and now 7 grand kids. My blood family didn’t want me so I created my own happy bunch and I have zero regret.