At Christmas time, I was looking on Craigslist for something and saw a request from a pregnant woman who was expecting a son in March and had nothing.  To me this is unimaginable.  I didn't buy a lot during either of my pregnancies, but people bought a lot of things for me.  I had what I needed.  I couldn't imagine having a baby without that kind of support.  

I called this girl up and spoke with her.  She didn't have transportation and lived far enough away that it would be an ordeal.  I promised I would get in touch with her before her baby was born so we could work something out.  However, though I feel guilty about it, I never did.  Her reluctance to meet me at a mutually convenient public location made me nervous.  I started imagining a meth addict boyfriend who would steal my identity, or a woman looking to lure my newborn and me to her apartment so she could kill me and steal him.  

I told a friend about this, and she knew of a 17-year-old girl pregnant with her second child.  This girl was very stressed that she was having a boy.  Not for any of the luxurious angst I felt when I learned I was pregnant with a son, but for practical reasons.  Her first baby was a girl and she didn't have any boy clothes, nor could she count on friends or family giving them to her.  I'm happy to have a son older than hers so that I can give her things for the forseeable future.  My friend is happy, too, because she wants to be able to buy this girl things and tell her that they're hand-me-downs from me, because did I tell you that my friend is fabulous?

This gets me thinking about generational class.  This 17-year-old mother of two is very smart.  She is where she is because of the culture in which she was raised.  She does what she does because that's the life script she was given.  I'm not so different.  I was raised middle class, and it shows.  Forgive the shoddy link, but if you look to left, you'll notice the could you survive quiz.  A more extensive version of this quiz is difficult to find, but those sample items are pretty reflective of the whole thing.  Elsewhere I have seen the differences between what each class values in food.  The wealthy?  Presentation.  The middle class?  Quality.  The poor?  Quantity.  

I once saw a financial planner who worked primarily with the very wealthy.  She explained to me that she could tell by looking at me that I had ideas about money (too much is bad) that would prevent me from ever having enough.  This woman had started out as a social worker, but had three babies die the first year she was working.  Not because of abuse, but because of poverty.  She decided that she would do better to eradicate poverty, and works to do so.  She works with wealthy clients, some of whom share her own values.  In order to break me of my prejudice against the wealthy, she told me about a woman who was a millionaire living off of inherited wealth who worked in social services.  Her wealth allowed her to ruffle a lot of feathers at work, where no one knew that she didn't need her paycheck.  

I did some research and found responsible wealth.  I continue to work on knocking down what the financial planner consider a cosmic block that was holding me back.  Occasionally perusing responsible wealth helps.

In my early and mid 20's, I worked for Head Start and made very little money.  But I knew that there was a cultural difference between many of the people I saw every day and myself.  At 24, I was just starting out.  I knew that I would probably not live my entire life in poverty.  In my world, 24 was young.  In the world of the young mother I mentioned earlier, she will have a ten-year-old at that age.  I know full well that some people are able to escape this path, but I also know that that doesn't happen to as many as I would like to think.

What about you?  Does your cultural identity match your income?  What kind of judgments and preconceived notions do you hold?  How difficult do you think it is for people to break out of what they have been taught?