You mentioned the general difficulty that Americans have talking about class, and I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t plow through all the comments, so someone may already have mentioned it, but one good book to read on this topic is “The Imperial Middle” by Benjamin DeMott. It’s not the most rigorous study out there, and he clearly has a POV to push, but it’s still a worthwhile read:

http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Middle-Americans-Think-Straight/dp/1557100233

I quickly read through your blog essay and your response to the responses. Interesting reading and lots of it. hugs!

Junior High School never prepared me for a very grown up loss of friendships and community.

Please know, I do not make a cause-effect case for my experience with classism and the deterioration of my mental health. They were coincident. As I understood it and as my psychiatric treatment as an adult was ongoing, regaining mental health and my intelligence and mental firepower was most effectively accomplished by taking responsbility for myself and not to blame situations or groups.

I am 63, since age 22 living in rural Utah. I grew up in the middle-class Protestant 50′s and 60′s of Nebraska,attending college in Kansas, and Iowa, finishing my degree at University of Utah in ’72. Starting in ’89 I have had friendship and much fondness amongst a group of all women, up to 8 years younger than myself, and all having outdoor experience. In ’93, I experienced the beginnings of a severe emotional decline coincident with the convergence of an incident on a many day backpacking trip in Grand Canyon with a major episode of my illness of clinical depression. I lost those friendships and my community on that day but I held onto some semblence of it until I finally let it go this past year,’08. I always thought the dynamic of the group was a combination of variables: all women, my medical condition of depression, my personality and habit toward timidity and shyness, and that I was in a regional culture I didn’t give its due. The fondness and closenss of friendship falsely seemed adequate in dealing with any life or death problems.

Perhaps I “jumped class” when I challenged the wise, reasonable woman of majority utah religious heritage. It was all very subtle and the workings of conformity, and peer pressure stayed afloat as I rejected it.

Over the past 15 years, it has been a situation of failure on my part to communicate with the group and to effectively defend myself, as I was finding myself on the outside of all norm,being excluded a little more every year.

In ’99 perhaps I “jumped class” a second time when I divorced from my marriage of 30 years, began 5 years of psychiatric care for my illness, started living alone and working in service jobs, after years of a stay at home Mom raising two beautiful children and helping my ex build a successful business. After the split, I continued to live in my home on an acreage in beautiful Southern Utah that allowed me to futher my connection to the natural world and companionship with my dogs. I did well for myself, in the past 4 years I’ve started a business that I intend to see to its fullest potential, all things willing, hopefully by age 72.

Interestingly though, my growing success and ability to take care of myself wasn’t enough to win back my women friends. I am an adult though, and able to walk away from a group sitaution that I choose not to kiss up to. Teenagers are not so fortunate to have the same kind of say over their social lives.

Yes, I would agree when you say that in the US we find it difficult to talk about class: I do think that concerning.

I wonder what kind of data there is on the emotional and physical toll class divisions takes on modern day teens.

Thanks dana, for all of your big efforts and continuing work to study teens.

I quickly read through your blog essay and your response to the responses. Interesting reading and lots of it. hugs!

Junior High School never prepared me for a very grown up loss of friendships and community.

Please know, I do not make a cause-effect case for my experience with classism and the deterioration of my mental health. They were coincident. As I understood it and as my psychiatric treatment as an adult was ongoing, regaining mental health and my intelligence and mental firepower was most effectively accomplished by taking responsbility for myself and not to blame situations or groups.

I am 63, since age 22 living in rural Utah. I grew up in the middle-class Protestant 50′s and 60′s of Nebraska,attending college in Kansas, and Iowa, finishing my degree at University of Utah in ’72. Starting in ’89 I have had friendship and much fondness amongst a group of all women, up to 8 years younger than myself, and all having outdoor experience. In ’93, I experienced the beginnings of a severe emotional decline coincident with the convergence of an incident on a many day backpacking trip in Grand Canyon with a major episode of my illness of clinical depression. I lost those friendships and my community on that day but I held onto some semblence of it until I finally let it go this past year,’08. I always thought the dynamic of the group was a combination of variables: all women, my medical condition of depression, my personality and habit toward timidity and shyness, and that I was in a regional culture I didn’t give its due. The fondness and closenss of friendship falsely seemed adequate in dealing with any life or death problems.

Perhaps I “jumped class” when I challenged the wise, reasonable woman of majority utah religious heritage. It was all very subtle and the workings of conformity, and peer pressure stayed afloat as I rejected it.

Over the past 15 years, it has been a situation of failure on my part to communicate with the group and to effectively defend myself, as I was finding myself on the outside of all norm,being excluded a little more every year.

In ’99 perhaps I “jumped class” a second time when I divorced from my marriage of 30 years, began 5 years of psychiatric care for my illness, started living alone and working in service jobs, after years of a stay at home Mom raising two beautiful children and helping my ex build a successful business. After the split, I continued to live in my home on an acreage in beautiful Southern Utah that allowed me to futher my connection to the natural world and companionship with my dogs. I did well for myself, in the past 4 years I’ve started a business that I intend to see to its fullest potential, all things willing, hopefully by age 72.

Interestingly though, my growing success and ability to take care of myself wasn’t enough to win back my women friends. I am an adult though, and able to walk away from a group sitaution that I choose not to kiss up to. Teenagers are not so fortunate to have the same kind of say over their social lives.

Yes, I would agree when you say that in the US we find it difficult to talk about class: I do think that concerning.

I wonder what kind of data there is on the emotional and physical toll class divisions takes on modern day teens.

Thanks dana, for all of your big efforts and continuing work to study teens.

I quickly read through your blog essay and your response to the responses. Interesting reading and lots of it. hugs!

Junior High School never prepared me for a very grown up loss of friendships and community.

Please know, I do not make a cause-effect case for my experience with classism and the deterioration of my mental health. They were coincident. As I understood it and as my psychiatric treatment as an adult was ongoing, regaining mental health and my intelligence and mental firepower was most effectively accomplished by taking responsbility for myself and not to blame situations or groups.

I am 63, since age 22 living in rural Utah. I grew up in the middle-class Protestant 50′s and 60′s of Nebraska,attending college in Kansas, and Iowa, finishing my degree at University of Utah in ’72. Starting in ’89 I have had friendship and much fondness amongst a group of all women, up to 8 years younger than myself, and all having outdoor experience. In ’93, I experienced the beginnings of a severe emotional decline coincident with the convergence of an incident on a many day backpacking trip in Grand Canyon with a major episode of my illness of clinical depression. I lost those friendships and my community on that day but I held onto some semblence of it until I finally let it go this past year,’08. I always thought the dynamic of the group was a combination of variables: all women, my medical condition of depression, my personality and habit toward timidity and shyness, and that I was in a regional culture I didn’t give its due. The fondness and closenss of friendship falsely seemed adequate in dealing with any life or death problems.

Perhaps I “jumped class” when I challenged the wise, reasonable woman of majority utah religious heritage. It was all very subtle and the workings of conformity, and peer pressure stayed afloat as I rejected it.

Over the past 15 years, it has been a situation of failure on my part to communicate with the group and to effectively defend myself, as I was finding myself on the outside of all norm,being excluded a little more every year.

In ’99 perhaps I “jumped class” a second time when I divorced from my marriage of 30 years, began 5 years of psychiatric care for my illness, started living alone and working in service jobs, after years of a stay at home Mom raising two beautiful children and helping my ex build a successful business. After the split, I continued to live in my home on an acreage in beautiful Southern Utah that allowed me to futher my connection to the natural world and companionship with my dogs. I did well for myself, in the past 4 years I’ve started a business that I intend to see to its fullest potential, all things willing, hopefully by age 72.

Interestingly though, my growing success and ability to take care of myself wasn’t enough to win back my women friends. I am an adult though, and able to walk away from a group sitaution that I choose not to kiss up to. Teenagers are not so fortunate to have the same kind of say over their social lives.

Yes, I would agree when you say that in the US we find it difficult to talk about class: I do think that concerning.

I wonder what kind of data there is on the emotional and physical toll class divisions takes on modern day teens.

Thanks dana, for all of your big efforts and continuing work to study teens.

“MySpace is still home for … kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools… MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.”

So let me get this straight. You’re actually implying that geeks are mostly from families whose parents didn’t go to college? And that they are expected to get a job when they finish high school?

To add a qualitative generalization of my own, what is “hegemonic” in HS often becomes downwardly mobile after college. The frat boy who wears Abercrombie and Fitch just doesn’t have the smarts or the drive to go beyond the typical professional lifestyle that his parents worked so hard to attain. Conversely, the true elites of society were often “freaks and geeks,” but of a different kind than your MySpace “art fags.” Instead, they belonged to a middle-to-upper class family, with college-educated parents. They were aware, intelligent, ambitious and the mindless popularity game probably bored them.

Ironically, you make my point very well with your example of Bill Gates and yourself. I doubt that the majority of American leaders and cultural elites were jocks or preps in HS.

On the whole, while your “hegemonic teen” may indeed typify a social value hierarchy among the 12-19 set, this social order does NOT necessarily correlate with the intended target of your essay, “American Class Divisions” at large. I find it strange that you would make a connection between “the popular kids” in HS and successful Americans in general.

Otherwise it is a very depressing world we live in–no one ever gets out of high school. And thank God, that isn’t the case!

I really appreciated your discussion of qualitative vs quantitative research. This is an area that many people don’t consider. (And, of course, both types of researcher often have their own prejudices about which is the One True Way. I lean toward quantitative myself.)

At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed reading both the essay and the response. I hope you translate the essay into academicese and publish it.

*hugs*

I fortunately missed all the MSM coverage, so {{hugs}} to you and keep up the good work.