Amanda's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 4/9/07 -------------------- 3/12/07 2/16/07 1/5/07 11/29/06 11/13/06 10/27/06 10/11/06 9/19/06 8/13/06 7/30/06 7/19/06 7/15/06 7/4/06 6/26/06 6/21/06 6/19/06 -------------------- Amanda's Introduction

Middle Class Dreams

October 11, 2006

Right now we are living at the poverty line.  Mostly this is by choice; Ben and I are both attending school full time, and because of this neither of us are working at our potential.  Most of the time it doesn't really bother me.  I am spoiled with "new" stuff from freecycle.org, and Cai's relatives provide enough noisy plastic junk to last a daycare ten years.  We have food to eat and a lovely house with a privacy fence around the back yard, so it doesn't really matter that we live in a rougher neighborhood. 

But wow, it's hard to look at the manicured yards and gunshot-free sidewalks of the middle class neighborhood a few blocks away and not think that it would be better to raise my son there.  I look at parenting magazines and see new strollers and matching bedroom sets for children, and I am conditioned to want them, even though I know somewhere in my rational mind that no matter how much is spent on "new", nice things, children will wreck them.  Maybe the difference is that people who can afford those things can afford to lose them?

I splurged during spring sales last year and got a discounted cashmere sweater.  It feels NICE.  But I don't get things dry-cleaned.  In addition to the cost, I don't have the time to run dirty clothes around town.  I figured I would get some of those Dryel at-home dry-cleaning sheets and be done with it.  Last week I was in such a hurry to get the piles of laundry done that I didn't notice my cashmere sweater falling into the washer.  Now it's a cashmere sweater that would fit my niece.  I am just not good at middle-class!

And television doesn't help.  Even though I know that the well-decorated, spacious apartments of sitcom characters are way out of budget for, say, a frequently-unemployed chef (such as Monica on Friends), or a hospital intern in a big city (Gray's Anatomy, ER, Scrubs).  Why can't I have those sponge-painted walls and deeply cushioned courderoy couches they all have?  Well, for one thing paint is expensive.  And those couches?  Not only expensive, but impossible to get spilled chocolate milk out of. 

But why not travel like those "EveryJoe Families" on the commercials?  A cruise?  A trip to Disneyland that seems a prerequisite for a healthy childhood?  Not only do they cost money, they assume time off from work and cooperative children!  Does that mean I still can't dream?  No... but it does mean I am torn in two by what society is selling and by what is realistic. 

I look like the people in the commercials; I am white, married, college educated, and have a beautiful child.  That should be my ticket to all the middle-class joys of suburbian life, vacations, nicely coordinated furniture...  But you know what?  Even the middle-class people I know who actually make middle class money don't look like those people.  They have roofs to re-shingle, school tuition to pay, messy yards full of toys just like mine, and real jobs that make them too tired to sponge-paint their dining rooms, even if they could scrub off the crayon first. 

But I see those pictures of back-deck barbeques, and I think to myself that it would be fantastic to have friends over in the summer to drink beer and watch the kids play.  Even if I can't grill and there's no room for a deck in my urban yard...

Maybe I should stop watching television and reading magazines.