32 Comments

I can completely relate to this. My family came to America from Soviet Kiev, when I was 10. I was a latch key kid, my father traveled as much as possible to get away from my mother; my mother resented me for tying her to a man. She also didn’t want to emigrate and saw the whole thing as my fault. Television was my way into America. It was a primer of both - how to be an American and what a family is supposed to be. I aped as much of what I saw, as I could. I understood very little, could relate to almost none of it - yet I intuitively knew, if there was a way out, it was through that screen.

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Okay this article got me off the fence and I subscribed. I bought your book last night too.

We have remarkably similar upbringings. I also grew up poor, was part of a broken family, lived in rural America and ended up in Red Bluff High School, where I graduated. I lived in Proberta, a little wide spot in the road near highway 99.

I have a brother, a sister, six step-siblings, and a half brother and sister from my father's third marriage to a woman my age. He was middle aged at the time. There are many stories of addiction, abuse, mental illness and runs with the law in those stories.

Unlike you, I was a good student and was constantly reading science fiction instead of watching television. I am also a generation older than you, so TV wasn't as good. While my siblings were watching Brady Bunch, I was reading Asimov's Foundation Series.

In my graduating class in the early 80s, we had one person who got into Stanford, one to Berkeley, one to Caltech (me!), one to Occidental and one to USC. It's sad to see how far Red Bluff High has fallen. Our teachers did all say that our class was "weird" and by weird I think they meant that we had a clique where studying and being smart and playing D&D and doing theatre was considered a good thing. All my step-brothers smoked and chewed tobacco and hung out by the bleachers. None of them graduated high school and all are ex-cons now. All my sisters had kids by the time they were 21.

After failing out of Caltech - partially due to being in a totally different universe class wise - I ended up homeless and then in the military. In the military, I finally learned how to "act like a grown up" which is something my parents never taught me. Since I was one of few of my family of 10 to not get into any trouble with the law or at school, I basically got ignored by my parents. I would stay home from school about one day a week and my mom would write me a note. High school was too easy, so I always did my homework at the last minute. I always worked summers (unique amongst my siblings) but never saved money. My parents were from rural and poor backgrounds themselves. At least my mother encourage my reading.

In the military I had to learn how to shower, put on clean clothes, brush my teach, and get up and go to work every day. I had to learn how to save money and not borrow from payday lenders, not bounce checks, and put aside enough for my college fund (we did not have the GI Bill). I jumped up a social class from being dirt poor and acting it to being a responsible working class person in The Army. I wouldn't really say that the military was full of middle class kids, more working class, but perhaps that distinction doesn't really matter. It also might depend on which branch of service.

I always wanted to learn, that part wasn't hard. I was a good medic. I still kept reading sci-fi. I learned to care about sports, because I needed to have something to be able to talk to the troops about. They did not care about science or science fiction, but everyone cared about the pennant race. Part of being a good medic is bonding with your platoon. I had to ditch my androgynous mannerisms though I never really passed as straight very well.

When I left the military, my Caltech advisor said that I had gone in a boy and come out a man. This is true. I also went in poor and came out middle class.

After that I finished up my transfer credits at community college and finished up at Berkeley. I ended up in a career in tech where I made more money that I could have ever imagined growing up.

I still have some class anxiety, though unlike you, I don't hide it but wear my upbringing on my sleeve. I am also a leftist, which you are not. I hope my kids go to Berkeley as I and my wife did, and there is a good chance my oldest will, though I not-so-secretly hope that she goes to Vassar or Wellesley instead. What's the point of making all the money if you can't raise your children's social standing! They are already a mile apart from where I was when I was young though. Upper middle class in every way and with many of the luxury beliefs you talk about. They are in a performing arts program at a public school in San Francisco, so you can imagine.

At some point you should consider writing about trying to date as an upwardly mobile person. It's been an interesting experience for me.

Unfortunately, my story is so unique that this narrative doxxes me. If you read this and know who I am, please do not do so. I want to feel like I can say what I like on substack. Too many of my ideas might get me into trouble in my career other places in my life.

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I”m a generation older than you are, and I found the same insight from books—especially books written in the 19th century. Louisa May Alcott’s novels are all about educated people with no money trying to fit in with more affluent and higher status people in society. Lots of children’s literature from the early-mid 20th century stressed respectability—people who maintained standards of education and behavior amidst poverty or on the frontier. My parents were both raised with that idea—-one parent was raised in poverty, and one in working class precarity, but both households put a huge premium on cleanliness, education, church attendance, etc. The most withering criticism my grandfather could give of a neighbor was that “he doesn’t keep up his yard.”

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I grew up extremely poor on my tribe's reservation. We used an outhouse until I was 7. But I commuted off the rez to a white farm high school. Nearly all of those white kids were middle class and lower middle class but they all seemed rich to me. Looking back, I think they seemed so rich because thet used a vocabulary of hope. When I first started writing and publishing in the late 1980s and early 90s, the book world had plenty of authors of all races who were formerly poor kids and blue collar kids, but that's radically changed. A vast majority of writers, especially literary fiction writers (and even the brown and black writers) come from the upper middle and upper class backgrounds.

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I find your work consistently fascinating. So few people mine this territory. One of the myths of the middle middle class - the land I come from - is that there’s no such thing as class in America. Perhaps because you could live your whole life inside the vast middle without really knowing anyone truly lower or upper class. I found Fussel’s book early and wondered why no one else wrote about this. Until then I also thought it was all about money. I also thought class mobility was possible. Not I’m not so sure. On another note, if you haven’t seen the famous blog post on Ribbonfarm on The Office, it’s truly brilliant. Not the same topic but if you’ve ever worked a soul sucking corporate job it will hit home.

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Do you know how to use google?

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What’s Google?

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The Last Psychiatrist would argue that television teaches you how and what to want.

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I am about to be 46. I loved this article, but you may have just ruined TV for me lol. I read this right before I started watching a movie called Jules about an alien that crashes its spaceship into this elderly man’s backyard. The man calls 911, calls his daughter, tells the townsfolk in a town meeting, tells a cashier, and no one believes him. Antics soon follow. Ten minutes into the movie I’m realizing that this movie is really a social commentary on how elder Americans are invisible in our society-not seen, not heard, not believed. P.S. I only read the two sentence synopsis before I pressed play. That’s all I knew. There may be reviews out there about this very thing. I haven’t Googled it. Is this supposed to be a comedy or a drama? I guess a dramedy? I haven’t even finished the movie, but I am sad. I don’t think this was their intent? Maybe it will redeem itself and give me hope by the end that all is not lost. This is what your article did to me. Thank you🤣😭🤣😭

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Frasier showed me what it takes to be in a higher class than I was born into and I don't want it. I think I could pull it off if I tried, but it all looks so miserable because of my class habits and tastes. The things those people find interesting, I find mind-numbing and superficial. So, I'll just be happy with my lot.

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I read a book called "Royal Blue" when I was 12 years old or so. It was a fictionalized version of Christina Oxenberg's autobiography as an upper-class-but-not-filthy-rich royal. That was my first eye-opening glimpse of how miserable the upper class can be. Rupert Everett's memoir of growing up with financial privilege was similarly illuminating, as I can't recall him describing a single circumstance his privileges afforded him that made me wish I were there. The documentary "Born Rich" was interesting as well.

I'd happily accept a greater net worth, but the "old money" club has little appeal unto itself.

P.S. Sorry this response is so many months after your original comment. I'm one of those readers who just became aware of Henderson's writing with the publication of his book in 2024.

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D'Angelo was a memorable tragic character from "The Wire." I talked about the series so much at work that one of my colleagues reminded confused others that it was just me believing that it was real. Certain shows draw you back to personal , often uncomfortable experiences, and that one did for me, despite the fact that I never bought, took, or sold an illicit drug.

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I thought about this article while doing my lunchtime swim (local YMCA, not country club, har har). I grew up in 1980s/1990s America in a comfortably off family but I do remember Roseanne. There wasn't much TV allowed (no surprise) but kids have a way of knowing what the popular shows are. Roseanne was supposed to be about a working class family in a blue collar town outside Chicago. So it's intriguing to see Rob mention that from his childhood perspective, the Conners were "better off" because of their house and that the parents were married.

It made me wonder if Rob's experience as a youth is as exotic to the great swathes of middle class America as the derring dos of the Fifth Avenue-Hamptons-Beverly Hills set? America is supposed to be a diamond shaped socio-economic ladder rather than the traditional class pyramids. But who knows. Television is both a mirror of society and a distortion of society.

But I also found the other comments on here just as illustrating as Rob's article about class in America. My mother grew up in what we'd call a respectable working class family who saw themselves as firmly "middle class" but with occupations like carpenters, bookkeepers, floor refinishers, plumbers and so forth. They lived in modest but tidy houses in modest but tidy neighborhoods, supported their local Methodist church, believed in mom, apple pie and the flag, and bitterly resisted the notions of class. No one disputed that there were more affluent people and they were also keenly aware of the less affluent, who typically lived in the "next neighborhood over." But resistance was to the notions of implied superiority and inferiority traditionally associated with class.

But I do see the world changing greatly from the 50s. Even in the 90s it was clear a divide was widening. The fascination with the Conners for some would be their bad taste in interior decorating but morally the family practiced what the middle classes believed in, working hard, sending their children to college, and getting on decently. No one attempted to imply a moral failure if the Conners struggled. But I wonder if we are witnessing a new class divide emerge in America and with it, a new moralism that is entrenching the haves and have nots in a way the older class differences never did. I do think about it when writing about justice and how our society now views justice and why it's both a new development and a harkening to something much more ancient.

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Strange. My family is broke, but there was always an emphasis on proper speech. I never used yall, or aint, or dropped Gs until I was an adult. I like the flavor that it adds. This was my first taste of "burnt tongue".

This provides a lot of ammunition for the story. Thank you.

One thing: Although poverty doesnt guarantee that youll be born into chaos, it does occur at a higher rate amongst poverty, yes?

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My parents weren’t broke, but their parents did struggle. They were both maniacs about table manners. To this day I notice other people’s table manners, and yes I am judging…:-)

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Oh the stories I could tell you about going to Yale in the ‘80s as a Sopranos-American, except without the cash or criminal empire. Sore thumb. The elite still had a sense of decency then, though, especially the oldest families whose earlier antics you can watch in “The Gilded Age.” They were surprisingly conservative in their habits, making them a bit more understandable to working-class ethnics. The aspiring upper middle class was the worst, then as now, clawing for acceptance like crabs in a bucket.

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My wife and I have stories that are like yours but less extreme. We have your book on pre-order and are looking forward to it.

I grew up in a small city in West Virginia. When I was two my father died in an industrial accident. My mother did not remarry until I was 29. She worked at the same small company throughout my youth, first as a secretary, later evolving to become the office manager, a role at which she was remarkably successful. While my early childhood might be described as poor - we lived in a tiny apartment above my great-uncle’s garage, a decade later my mother was making a middle-class income, supplemented by the income I got from Social Security and the Veterans Administration for being an orphan. My father’s life insurance money my mother never spent, but always held as a reserve.

Until it came time to take the PSAT - which I only took because I heard a few of my classmates were going to take it - I was likely not considered exceptionally bright by my teachers. I’d never before been in the Honor Society until junior year. I surprised everyone by attaining the highest score in the school - a score that indicated that I could go to college almost anywhere. My top choice, chosen out of a college guidebook, was a far-away college in a part of the country I’d never been near: Dartmouth. I chose it because it seemed to be the best small college in a rural area. As a West Virginia country boy, I did not like cities. My mother told me not to get my hopes up because she didn’t think such a college would accept someone of my background.

At Dartmouth I was immediately teased for my West Virginia accent. This was a surprise to me because I had for years tried to speak like the people on TV and not those around me. There was a girl in my freshman class from North Carolina with a particularly strong accent. She didn’t come back after Christmas break. I quickly made friends with a classmate from Texas, and later a kid from Brooklyn. The accent issue was surely an unspoken thing that bonded us.

While I made a group of friends who were from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds, it was clear that a huge proportion of my classmates were way more than upper-middle class. Such as the time one of my fraternity brothers invited some of us to visit him as he summered alone at his family’s vacation home on Nantucket - a house more than twice as large as the one I grew up in. It was impeccably furnished with antiques, and it was just one of the family’s five vacation homes.

My wife was born out of wedlock. She and her mother lived in low-income housing. Her mother worked as a secretary at Ford. She died of cancer when my wife was seven, and arranged for my wife to be adopted by a woman she knew there, a childless researcher who was married to a Chrysler executive. Her adoptive parents tried hard - and often not nicely - to mold her into a proper upper-class girl, but she resisted. She hated her freshman year at Wellesley where she flaunted her Midwest accent. She transferred out to U. Michigan.

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It was different for me. I grew up on the lower edge of middle class economically. But my family were all educated. Engineers and artists both - I grew up with the certain understanding that I would go to college. But I was just outside , mostly of the elite zone, partly because I only had one parent. I couldn’t go to camp or even girl scouts. Many of my clothes were home-made.

But we had books, and my mom took me to art galleries, and we went to ‘classy’ things like the ballet.

I also watched TV to learn how to be. But it didn’t really help. Instead, I was like an anthropologist , watching everyone all the time.

I remember , much later, watching “Roseanne” and “The Cosby Show” when I was at home with our infant child. And I was struck by how little they were like either the blue collar class or the upper class. “Roseanne” had a great set with details like the laundry baskets , and the cluttered kitchen, but there was never quite the level of trouble, or disfunction in the family or neighborhood. And there was some sort of magic over at the Huxtable household. I knew families like that - with two very successful working parents and some children - they had a higher level of chaos too . They had unfolded laundry too. I’m not sure what this means, it was just notable.

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Excellent work Rob. Never quit.

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Your best post!

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