[Venus007]

I grew up very poor, not just my generation but for many extending back to our country of origin, Ireland, where my great grandpa was a worker in a coal mine and before that were tenant farmers on English land. I always heard “Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you can’t be clean” like a mantra growing up. I know it is cliché (lace curtain Irish) but we ALWAYS had beautiful curtains and it was practically a moral obligation to keep up appearances. Oddly enough one of the worst insults that could be heaped on someone’s head was that they had gone “Above their raising”, meaning that someone was putting on airs or acting as if they belonged to a higher social class than they did. Education and physicians were viewed with GREAT suspicion. Education because it would get you nowhere since a good woman just needs to be able to raise good god fearing children anyway and education pulls you away from god. Physicians were suspect because not only were they expensive but also they didn’t know what the heck they were doing and made too much money to be trusted.

Money was fleeting and to be spent while you had it and it was irresponsible and absolutely selfish to save since there was never enough to cover basic expenses and bills. Needless to say one of my core struggles is with money and my relationship to it. Also money and assets were to be shared with your family, period. No matter what you had it wasn’t yours it was ours, everyone was expected to throw whatever assets into the family pot (literally and figuratively).

The only acceptable way to get more money was to marry well, and even then you were expected to behave yourself appropriately and not get trapped into that higher class better-than-everyone-else behavior and of course marrying well also meant that the new wealth needed to be used to help the other people in the family.

I was shown not to be too flashy, not to dream unrealistically, not to save, not to dress too well, not to have too many books, that women only got ahead by aligning themselves with desirable husbands, family matters above all and the wealthy are NOT to be trusted because they are inherently different from the “salt of the earth” regular people and that god was the ultimate source of everything from food to healing.

I, personally, don't subscribe to these ideas any longer, but it has taken A LOT of work and way too much money in therapy to get to the heart of it and move beyond it. Even so, my base position is still reflective of my class, even after all that work.

Alright I am rambling here, I think. I have a lot of ideas bouncing around about this but I thought I would get started somewhere and voila.