My family’s experience with social mobility is extremely unique. Alike many immigrants, they came to this country with nothing. My grandpa had to work many years to even be able to bring his family here from Lebanon. After coming here, it was expected that all the children help out when they reach the age of being able to work. My mom was the only girl out of her 6 siblings to attend college, whereas all of her brothers attended college.
During college, they all had the similar experience of working part or full time to pay off college, so it took them longer than usual to graduate. However, they all ended up doing well for themselves and their families, and everyone is in a comfortable position now. However, something very unique that I observe in my family dynamic versus other family dynamic is the lack of pressure to become extraordinary. In many other Middle-Eastern families, there is high pressure to go to college and become one of the big three: Doctor, Lawyer, or Engineer. In my family there has never been any other pressure other than to help your siblings out when they need it.
I think the lack of this pressure has been a big factor in my family’s social and economic mobility. Without these expectations from my mom’s parents and the rest of her relatives, I have seen that her and her siblings spend a lot more time with family, doing family activities, being social with friends, traveling, etc., rather than working their asses of to have the biggest house on the block. Additionally, I can see that all of my aunts and uncles genuinely enjoy their careers and what they do.
Another thing I notice that is we have an extremely close, physical location and emotional, family dynamic and extremely high support from everyone in our family. It makes me think about the cost of social mobility. If my family were in a different place and the pressure to move up the economic and social ladder was high, I think things would look very differently. I don’t believe our family would be as close as we are now and look forward to spending as much time together as we do.
This reflection makes me think about the social and emotional costs of moving up the ladder. For immigrants, like my parents, and other minority groups, social mobility can cost them their raw and emotional connections with their families and friends. For some, they have to choose between selling their time and soul to survive in America’s capitalist system and the intangible things that you can never replace with money, like family.
