I have not faced mobility within my family and if I have my parents made it unnoticeable. I grew up and still am in an upper middle-class family, if anything it went from middle class to upper middle class but from my personal experiences, I haven’t felt much change within that. K-5th grade my parents allowed me to be in dance, soccer, track, and basketball. 6th-8thgrade I was just in dance, because of my personal preferences, although my parents did encourage me to involve myself in sports as well. 9th-12th grade I was in cross country, dance for my freshman year, dance team sophomore through senior year, marching band, and cross country all four years. My brothers experienced something similar, karate, track basketball, baseball, football, soccer, band, cross country, all 3 of us were in clubs at some point or another a book club, chess club, theater/plays, our parents kept us involved and busy.
My dad has always worked for my grandpa, my grandpa owns a lumbar distributing company that my dad will eventually take over whenever my grandpa decides to retire; therefore, my dad has no education outside of high school but has always had a stable and secure job, even during Covid his day to day remained the same. My mom has always been the bread winner, she dropped out of college and was a waitress up in Mount Pleasant, a customer took a chance on her, gave her a job, then she got into the medical staff office department of the health field. She worked for Allegiance Health, her job wanted to promote her, but she had no degree, they promoted her and ended up paying for her degree. Now my mom works for Trinity Health, she had to work her ass off to get where shew is. She is currently one of the 3 department leads for Trinity Health’s Medical Staff Office across the nation.
It wasn’t apparent to me the connections she has until earlier this year; she knows and works with the CEO for Trinity Healthy. My reasoning for bringing this up to exemplify how my parents get and do aspirational things but stay humble and keep it to themselves. That’s how I feel about our social mobility, my mom and dad when they were putting me and my brothers though all our sports, clubs, and activities were not making anywhere close to what they do now, but they made it unnoticeable to us. I will say my family has been blessed enough to not struggle, but they showed through their actions that us being involved and just living and experiencing life as a normal kid was their priority. The long days for us and my parents driving, waiting, and pickings up caused tension and sometimes took away from the activities it felt more like obligations at points, but I have a whole childhood full on memories, experiences, and amazing friends from it.
My parents have been very wise and thought us how to be wise with our wealth and money, when I graduated high school, I had $12,000 in the bank solely from my hard work, and the lessons I learned about money from my parents, and probably a few child labor laws broken. Due to the economy I don’t think I’ll ever experience the thing my parents have or have what they own so I have not set that as the goal for myself, I don’t know what my long-term goals are because I don’t want to low ball myself but, the things I am accustomed to are not realistic for me, and I haven’t had too much experience paying rent and other bills.
I have been thought to work my ass off, achieve goals, and to reach out if I find myself struggling, my parents will provide guidance and teach me the things I am unsure of and if I need financial help may offered but I know I can rely on my parents who have given and blessed me with the life I give to the guidance that I need to push me in that direction. Overall I have been impacted by social mobility, but I have only experienced the benefits of it due to the family I was born into to, I have not been impacted by change that is noticeable if at all, but I am comfortable recognizing and valuing my privilege and advantages. In my position it is interesting hearing my classmate’s perspective who may have experienced social mobility in other ways because I learn more from firsthand experiences and has widened my perception of the social classes and what they may do to get though their day to day and life
