I just read this on Pandagon and had a sense of “Oh! Oh! Ohmigod! Oh!” — not so much because of it’s analysis of the breastfeeding issue speficially, but because I’d never thought of this aspect of how the middle class works before. For me, it was very enlightening, and just in case it works like that for anyone else, I thought I’d pass it on.
But it’s also because breast feeding advocacy has been structured around what Barbara Ehrenreich called the “fear of falling”—since middle class people don’t inherit wealth, but they do inherit opportunities, recreating the middle class every generation requires hard work and competition with each other. So parents are deeply invested in getting an edge for their children, and every little thing starts to loom large as the very trick that will put your kids a leg up over everyone else. That’s the carrot—and the stick is the fear that if you skip any of these crucial steps, your child will fail to recreate your middle class life. Breast-feeding also gives people the feeling of control over the situation, and it’s obvious that anything that can be packaged to give middle class parents the feeling that they know best and that they and only they have the power to set their children on the right path will be eaten with a spoon. (That’s why anti-vaccination sentiment—or even the unscientific “spacing the schedule” soft version—is so popular, despite being routinely disproven by science.)
In particular, this part — “since middle class people don’t inherit wealth, but they do inherit opportunities, recreating the middle class every generation requires hard work and competition with each other.” — was an enormous OH! moment for me.
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Edited to add: Oh, and inasmuch as it matters what my take is on the breastfeeding issue (which is to say, probably not much), I’d like to second Chingona on what she said at Pandagon:
if we go too far in casting this as a purely individual decision, incentives to provide accommodations wither away and women actually end up with no real “choice” in the matter. That’s the situation many poor women and even middle-class women find themselves in right now, and I don’t think there’s anything feminist about enabling that status quo.
I actually think this should be the focus of the majority of feminist blogosphere conversations on breastfeeding. There may be some benefits to formula feeding for mothers who think that it may enhance egalitarianism in *their* (emphasis their) relationships, or for mothers who don’t want to breastfeed — not to mention those who can’t! But there are also definite, proven benefits to breastfeeding, and women of all classes, in all situations, should have access to them. There may be bad feelings going on for both sides of the Mommy War in this mess, but it seems like the structural issues are real screw yous to those choosing to breastfeed — who are challenged on their right to do it in public, and whose livelihoods are structured in such a way so as to make real choice impossible.
I suspect this is actually why breastfeeding advocates sometimes go too far with their rhetoric. They want to impress upon the public *just how necessary* breastfeeding is so that the public will be willing to try to help them ameliorate the structural issues that make breastfeeding difficult. I know personally that I’m appalled by how many of my otherwise-liberal acquaintances recoil at the notion of women breastfeeding toddlers. Those people need to understand that such breastfeeding has been a norm in certain times and places, and that it has benefits. They represent only one segment of an ignorant public that needs education.
So, since the breastfeeding advocates are arguing with such high stakes — stakes that affect real mothers and real children — I think it becomes easy to slip into rhetoric that contributes to the concept of total motherhood perfection. And I do sometimes feel alienated by that rhetoric, as a woman who doesn’t even have children, but who’s thinking about potentially not breastfeeding if I do.
But Chingona’s right in the core of what she says. All that’s basically an interesting, but superfluous, derailment from the real feminist heart of this issue, which should be making sure that as many women as possible have structural access to breastfeeding.
OK, that turned out longer than my original post. Sorry about that.
Bingo. Amanda’s whole article is worth the read, btw.
So much of what parents (and more to the point, mothers) are told is that they have to worry about every single thing their children do, lest the butterfly effect mean that giving them mac and cheese instead of broccoli one day when they’re three is the reason they don’t get into Harvard. It’s ludicrous, and it’s making it difficult to parent, because you’re afraid of making any mistakes, ever, because that one mistake could be the proverbial straw.
I think some of those aha! moments around class are totes fascinating.
So much abt the cultural dimensions of class that we never ever discuss, even amongst left/progressive folks.
Even in my Women’s & Gender Studies classes… we could talk a great analysis of “capitalist imperialism,” but when the conversation turned to class as a category of identity, dead silence.
That is an aha! moment. It makes my own family history (I’m the first generation to have grown up middle class) and the odd class anxieties (mother screaming ‘Do you WANT to go to technical college?’ as though it were a fate worse than death) make… sense. Maybe. Off to read the entire piece…
Oh, I’m blushing. Thanks. I don’t think I could have articulated it as well without the discussion on Rachel’s post, particularly La Lubu’s comments, so … credit where credit is due.
I actually wanted to comment on that description of being middle class. I think Amanda is right on about that, but it’s bit odd to me that we see it this way because I think middle class kids are very likely to replicate middle class habits of behavior and thought without a ton of intervention. When my brother was failing out of school, doing tons of drugs, getting arrested, etc., a high school guidance counselor told my father that he shouldn’t worry too much – most middle class kids right themselves because they’re accustomed to a certain standard of living, and there is only so far they’ll let themselves fall. Obviously, there are exceptions, but that’s how I’ve seen my brother’s life play out and that of most of the “fuck-ups” I was friends with in high school. To me, the biggest difference between being middle class and being poor is the margin of error is a lot bigger for middle class kids. No, our parents can’t pass on wealth, but they can pass on second and third chances (and so does the court system).
The real reason the middle class is in a precarious or vulnerable position is the general erosion of our earning power, to the point that income that seems like it should be more than enough in an abstract sense doesn’t allow us to have the lifestyle – or more importantly, the security – we think middle class people ought to have – can’t buy a house, can’t go on vacation, don’t know how you’ll pay for college, etc. But that’s something that’s out of our control and very hard to change, while making sure your kid doesn’t have processed sugar is within your control.
So when I look at the obsession with providing the very best of everything, the main thing I see is the desperate attempt to delude ourselves into thinking we control our lives, and if we just make all the right decisions, nothing bad will happen to us.
I’m not exactly a fatalist myself, but after living some places where people were much more fatalistic, I’ve come to see maintaining this illusion that we control our lives as a defining feature of American middle-class culture.
…when the conversation turned to class as a category of identity, dead silence.
When I was in college, one of my political science professors did an exercise where he asked everyone to write on a piece of paper how much money their parents made and what class they considered themselves. Students whose parents earned $20K, and students whose parents earned $200K all put themselves down as middle class. The professor said this is why there is no Labor Party in the United States. We have no class consciousness.
Given that the $20k and $200k kids were sitting next to each other getting the same education, I can kind of see why we don’t have as much class consciousness in the U.S. — people are heavily invested in the belief that there is class mobility and our institutions to some extent try to prop that up. (Cf. places like France, where the educational system seems to be very stratified.) This can give people hope* (if they started in a lower class), or it can give them fear (if they’re middle or upper and afraid any misstep will cause them to become lower class). The increased importance of higher education and geographic mobility also play into this; if you don’t live where your parents live, nor work at the job your dad worked, you lose a sense of connection to a group and to an identity.
* This is why you can get a good third of the country upset about the estate tax, aka “death tax,” even though less than 1% of deaths result in a taxable estate. Everyone wants to think that s/he will *eventually* make the kind of money that would result in a taxable estate, and by gosh the gummint isn’t going to take that money away.
Given that the $20k and $200k kids were sitting next to each other getting the same education, I can kind of see why we don’t have as much class consciousness in the U.S. — people are heavily invested in the belief that there is class mobility and our institutions to some extent try to prop that up.
I think this is a good point. I just want to add that students whose parents made less than, say, $50K would have been a tiny minority at the expensive, private school I went to. Kids whose parents made less can get there, but it’s harder.
That ETA is exactly what I’ve wasted too many words trying to say, the last few years.
And this, from chingona – “the biggest difference between being middle class and being poor is the margin of error is a lot bigger for middle class kids. ” Exactly, exactly.
I wonder if, in the past, white working-class kids had the same kind of second chances – sure, go try to be a painter for a year, get in a fistfight with your supervisor, whatever, when you’re ready to be a grownup Uncle Bob’s got a line on an apprenticeship for you – and they’ve lost it to the general loss of blue-collar living wage jobs in the last generation or so. And we’re the generation where the middle class is losing it too.
I don’t think it takes anything away from this realization or this argument to point out that “second and third chances” are young middle class people inheriting wealth. Middle class people inherit wealth in the sense that middle class parents are able to pay the way for their children, both in the routine situations of paying for school or travel or helping with a down payment on a car or house and in the less routine situations of posting bail or paying for rehab or for major medical expenses or providing a room for an adult child who would otherwise be homeless. As chingona says, these second and third chances are what separate the children of the middle class from the children of the poor, and it is the money of the middle class that makes this possible (although status doesn’t hurt either in getting second chances).
And people who are descended from the entrenched middle class often do inherit wealth literally, just not in the sort of quantity that makes them independently wealthy at a young age (it seems like in the middle class, wealthy older relatives leave their wealth to the next generation; while in the upper class, wealthy older relatives (or the family foundation) leave their money to the youngest generation).
In my own life, my solidly middle class (sub-$100k for most of my childhood) parents inherited substantial sums of money from my mother’s parents and my father’s great aunt, and looking at the experiences of people around me who seem like third or fourth generation members of the middle class, this experience doesn’t seem particularly atypical.
This entrenched family wealth is also a critical part of third and fourth chances. This is actually one of the ways that the new middle class (which is racially and religiously mixed) differs from the established middle class (which is overwhelmingly white and Christian). There was a post Amp had ages ago about research that showed that the academic success of children was independent of race if family wealth (instead of family income) was incorporated as a controlling variable, and I think that the role of wealth in providing second and third chances is a big part of that.