Memories of a Trailer-Trash Girlhood: Mormons and Social Class

By: Guest - May 20, 2006

In these environs Eve is probably best introduced as the sister of Kiskilili and Lynnette, and online she lives at the recently revived Zelophehad’s Daughters. She considers her ten-year marriage to her patient and adored husband the greatest achievement of her life. Eve is a lifelong Mormon, a graduate student in comparative literature and philosophy, and although she is reserved around strangers, she has a really big smart-mouth which she is–unsuccessfully–trying to tame.

A few years ago, I found myself in a Barnes & Noble with time to kill while I was waiting to pick my husband up from a trip when I happened on Martha Beck’s Expecting Adam. The stuff about Harvard and unborn children with Down’s Syndrome sailed right past me, but I was riveted by her description of her family’s paradoxical class situation. I had never in my life heard of a family like mine, in which we had to be relentlessly, contemptuously intellectual to compensate for the fact that we looked and lived like freaks. I wanted to race home and call her up just to verify her existence.

By birth and upbringing, my brother and sisters and I are, to put it bluntly, trailer trash. We weren’t in any meaningful sense poor. We never went hungry or lacked shelter. Even through years of unemployment and underemployment, our parents always managed to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. And our white-trash life was mitigated by education. My parents both read and wrote, and still do, like maniacs, the way they breathe. Their house was and is crammed with books, and they transmitted to us a fierce passion for learning. But we lived an undeniably trashy life. Our house was dirty and disorderly, the carpets stained, the kitchen floor perpetually sticky, cobwebs hanging from the ceilings, junk everywhere. It was embarrassing to invite anyone over. We ate cheap, trashy frozen food. Our cars were old and uncared for. Our yard was trashy. And our clothes were especially trashy. When I was in junior high I was profoundly humiliated when one of my peers noticed that my bra was held together by safety pins. I remember having to wear the same threadbare, frumpy skirt to church in our very middle-class ward every week for years.

Class marks us for life. It’s hard to explain the shame of a trailer-trash existence to those who haven’t experienced it, a shame that I found, and still find, more vivid at church than anywhere else. Even though I now inhabit it, middle-class life, with its clean houses and variety of nice clothes, remains a scene of indescribable luxury to me—just as, no doubt, the trailer-trash life of my youth must be a scene of luxury to most people throughout the world. In the United States, the problem of being trailer-trash isn’t a problem of scarcity, or even always of income. It’s a problem of relative means, of cleanliness and order, of nutrition, of a certain physical decency. Sustaining class status is a gendered labor. It remains the exhausting toil of women to keep the house clean, to supply nutritious food, and to keep the children bathed and well clothed. Women keep the family far from the contemptuously policed border of trailer-trash land, and so just as poverty is a failure of masculinity, a trailer-trash life is a failure of femininity.

In the Mormon world, excessive consumerism is constantly and rightly denounced. Such denunciations seem one of the few things that North American and European Mormons of all political positions and degrees of orthodoxy can agree on. Yet I am constantly struck by how often such denunciations implicitly assume the necessity of middle-class life—a life that there is simply no way everyone on the planet could simultaneously sustain. (We all seem to have our own definitions of excess that start somewhere well above our own incomes.). Everyone scorns the identification with material goods as a failing of other, more shallow people with proverbial low self-esteem, but few confess the ways fashion and advertising shape us all. (My middle-class and aspiring-middle-class students earnestly inform me, to a person, that dress doesn’t matter, that they themselves have advanced well beyond such petty concerns. Really? Why then do so many sport Abercrombie & Fitch and Tommy Hilfiger?) The real test of such claims, for Mormons, is this question: would I be willing to arrive at church dressed not immodestly, not too informally, but completely unfashionably? I still occasionally hear stinging comments at church about ensuring that one’s children make the “right” (middle-class) friends or avoiding particular venues where the “poor white trash” congregate, contempt for those who shop at Goodwill and D.I., contempt for smoking and obesity, two sins not just against health—but worse—against class. Trailer trash scum, c’est moi. Pass the Moon Pies.

There are aspects of my trailer-trash background that I repudiate. And there are middle-class ideals—cleanliness, order, nutrition, and self-discipline—I value. Yet I hope I never arrive in the middle class completely; I remain skeptical of the endless, trifling, and unacknowledged consumerism, the unconscious sense of entitlement, and the acceptable contempt for the unlovely poor, values I have sometimes accepted far too readily in a desperate bid to belong.

I have measured my progress to a healthier life, at least to some degree, by my renunciation of a trailer-trash life. I now hope to measure the depth of my conversion by my renunciation of a middle-class one.

88 Comments »

  1. You could have been writing a story of my own life. I was born when my family lived in a trailer, actually. On a farm, which gave us more room to run around and fewer friends of our class to run around with, but a trailer nonetheless. Things didn’t change much class-wise when we moved to the run-down farmhouse my parents still live in. The only reason why the house was ever clean was because my sister and I were more or less slaves for our stepmother, and the only reason we had enough to eat was because we had enough land for a garden and a large freezer.

    I believe I even had a safety-pinned bra episode, myself. If it wasn’t that, it was the jeans that were a good ten inches too short, or my $5 yard-sale prom dress.

    I would disagree with you and say that we were definitely poor. Not as poor as some living in other countries, but definitely living just barely at subsistence. One of the reasons I’m probably still single is because I fear taking any LDS guy, who usually would be from the middle class background I used to consider “being rich,” home to my family. Okay, there’s also never been anyone willing to meet them, which probably emphasizes my point.

    I do agree with it being culturally considered a failure of femininity, but I would go one step further and say it was a failure of masculinity as well. Our home was very traditional in gender roles, and my dad spent all his time either driving his truck making a living, or out on the farm working on machinery or with the animals, helping to feed the family. It was my stepmother’s job to do the other part of the labor–taking care of the house and the kids, and managing the household budget. Rarely did the money Dad made get put into the most important things first, like my asthma medicine, or the leaking toilet that caused the floor to rot out, or clothes for us kids (I’m talking Wal-Mart here, not the mall), or even school lunches (reduced-price). No, that money fed their addictions first, and only after the weekend bender, the carton of cigarettes, and the gambling addiction was paid for, were the kids or the house considered.

    And in his ignorance of what was going on in the house emotionally, my dad implicitly approved of the abuse that our stepmother heaped upon us. It’s one thing to expect your teens to help out around the house; quite another to expect them to do everything while you laze about the house. She was (and is) very much the bon-bon type.

    I really don’t care if one particular couple agrees that in their marriage, they’ll have the traditional gender roles. But if they agree upon that and the wife isn’t doing her part, I think it’s a failure of the husband–a failure of masculinity–to allow abuse to result from it.

    I suppose that’s tangential from your post, but I think it’s important to recognize that it’s not always a gendered issue, or rather, that if it is, it is often both gender’s issue, inter-related.

    Comment by stacer — May 20, 2006 @ 5:42 pm

  2. […]so just as poverty is a failure of masculinity, a trailer-trash life is a failure of femininity.

    Interesting angle. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. It does seem to fit how I would percieve such things. I have a friend who can barely cook, tends to eat only once a day and who seems to clean her floor only when it gets too crunchy. Her general reaction is to shrug and say that her mother was never very domestic. Now to me, “domestic” means folding your napkins fancily, cooking 5 course meals yourself and stenciling flowers on your walls. Knowing how to prepare basic, nutritious food and maintain a minimum level of cleanliness seems to me to be a basic life skills and I can’t help but feel that her mother failed her in that way.

    Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve — May 20, 2006 @ 5:48 pm

  3. Oh, and I also meant to say that I agree with you that it’s something we feel especially acutely at church. I think one part of church culture hates the lower class life because we’ve experienced it, and another part other looks down upon it because they’re scared of ever being there. Then there’s the part, on both sides, who try not to look down upon it, but still would rather never experience it. That, and it’s just harder to deal with people who don’t fit in or who are needy.

    When I was in high school, I was living 15 miles away from church with my non-member parents who didn’t have the money for gas to take me to church, for one, and didn’t have the interest to take me, for another. One time in YW, on a Sunday I had actually made it to church, and they were all talking excitedly about a recent activity. I asked why I hadn’t been told that it was happening.

    The bishop happened to be there, and he said, in front of everyone, “Well, if some people would make it to church more often, they’d know what was going on.”

    I stopped attending for a good year after that, I think, and the only thing that got me coming again was a beautiful new YW president who didn’t care about my SES, and in fact gave me rides to activities every week for two years.

    Earlier in my life, there were only two girls who were my own age in my ward. One was from a family as poor as we were, living in a dugout house out in the country. We didn’t see her much because she went to a different school. We lived in low-income housing then, with my mom right after my parents divorced–a double whammy, being poor and being the child of a single mom, according to the other girl, whose family was solidly middle-class.

    This girl and I were always in the same classes at school, and I thought she’d want to be my friend–we had so much in common, being from the same church! But every time I tried to talk to her, she’d dismiss me, even going so far as to push me in a mud puddle once, when I was trying to show her the hideously awful new white patent leather shoes I’d gotten from Goodwill or something, of which I was so proud, simply because they were patent leather.

    Of course, being trash, I just didn’t get that white patent leather with square toes showed I just didn’t get it, and that I wasn’t worthy of her friendship.

    I don’t feel that as much nowadays, but when I was in grad school I still found the attitude that if we were in college, if we were in grad school, then we must be from at least a middle class background. I had Sunday School teachers who would tell about the poverty they’d seen on their missions in Europe or in the South, and then make the remark that “of course, none of us has ever experienced that ourselves.”

    Don’t bet on it. Sure, I never was entirely homeless, thanks to public housing and the charity of my grandparents letting my dad live on their land. I have experienced only having a barrel of wheat in the pantry, and throwing up on the bus because all I had for breakfast was homemade raw wheat noodles. I have experienced my mom having to juggle three jobs just to put food on the table, and I’ve experienced trying to stretch the food stamps long enough to last the month. And I think there are plenty of church members who have experienced the same.

    I think the problem lies in making assumptions and in not remembering that the poor (the Other) are children of God, too. I find myself struggling with those feelings about my own family, to be honest–I worked hard to separate myself from that life, but in doing so, have I lost the *gift* that perspective gave me? Your post really hits on that–those of us who have experienced such trials have been given a gift, if we let it become one. We can have compassion in a way that some people who have never known want will never get, unless they do travel to another country or something. We have been given eyes to see the problems right here, where we are.

    I think that’s one reason I find such satisfaction in volunteering to help kids and teens, and even why I chose to become a children’s book editor. I figure it’s a way of giving back, to help make life easier for another generation who are having a tough time, whether because of class status or other struggles.

    Comment by stacer — May 20, 2006 @ 6:02 pm

  4. Whew…. I hadn’t thought of it that way before either, but you hit a sensitive nail right on the head. My husband wonders why I wig out when the house gets too messy- and I’m not a clean freak or Martha Stewart my any means, but there are just some things that send me spinning, and the reasons are exactly what you wrote. It’s burried deep, and I hate acknowledging it, but one of my scarriest fears is being like when I was little. I was born in a trailer, and while things got better when I was older and my mom re-married, I have run hard and fast from anything that looks like my young girlhood.

    What Eve said is pertinent- I don’t need fancy napkins or gourmet meals, but when the floors are dirty, or the kids are in dirty t-shirst for too long, my fears bubble to the surface. And this is definately about me, not my husband. Hmmm. Things to think on….

    Comment by tracy m — May 20, 2006 @ 6:04 pm

  5. I have a friend who can barely cook, tends to eat only once a day and who seems to clean her floor only when it gets too crunchy . . . Knowing how to prepare basic, nutritious food and maintain a minimum level of cleanliness seems to me to be a basic life skills and I can’t help but feel that her mother failed her in that way.

    I don’t know. What one person considers to be “basic, nutritious food” and a “minimum level of cleanliness” might strike another person as completely unacceptable. Perhaps the issue here isn’t so much “basic life skills” as “basic middle class life skills?”

    Like Eve, I don’t deny that there’s something to be said for at least some middle class values. But one of the things I find most painful at church is the tendency to assume that such values are the norm, and even at times to conflate them with the gospel.

    Comment by Lynnette — May 20, 2006 @ 6:43 pm

  6. Tom Bodett, of Motel 6 commerical renown, wrote an essay called “Cleanliness and Godliness”, where he describes visiting two friends’ homes. The first asked him to remove his shoes as he entered, and had uncomfortable plastic covers on the sofa. The second friend had to move a stack of old newspapers before he could even sit down, and when he did, he found a hammer that had been borrowed months before. Before he left, they played a game of broom hockey in the living room with a piece of toast left over from breakfast. He concludes by saying that when and if he enters the pearly gates, he hopes that God moves a stack of old newspapers and invites him to take a load off.

    I was once in a ward where, as part of the annual drive to solicit donations to D.I., the RS president stood to make the announcement in sacrament meeting and closed by saying that the dress she was wearing had been bought at D.I. two days before. She looked great in it, and I have always held her in high esteem.

    I grew up in the country, and I think my mother tried to make us middle class, but failed. The only rule she successfully enforced was: You always had to put on a shirt before coming to dinner - no bare chests at the table. I can remember that my brothers and I bucked her on this, but she stood firm. My wife, naturally, is appalled.

    Which brings me to my point. I’m not sure how much most men will be able to understand your point here. You’re right, men understand poverty as not being able to buy something you want or need, but, in general, most men are more comfortable with stacks of used dishes and piles of laundry that most women.

    Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Zelophehad must have done a lot of things right - they raised a formidable family. In the great words of the band Confederate Railroad, “I like women a little on the trashy side”. Confederate Railroad, now that’s trashy. No wonder I like them.

    Comment by Mark IV — May 20, 2006 @ 7:32 pm

  7. I don’t know. What one person considers to be “basic, nutritious food” and a “minimum level of cleanliness” might strike another person as completely unacceptable. Perhaps the issue here isn’t so much “basic life skills” as “basic middle class life skills?”

    *deep breath* My husband knows I have ranted often enough about the way this friend lives. I tend towards the judgemental but I’ve been trying to arrest that impulse. “We are what we think” and I want to be inclusive, not exclusive. So I will refrain from specific examples. However, we are not talking about a house with a bit of dirt and dust here and there. We’re talking about a house that I am afraid to visit because there is so much dust and mold there that my sinuses are irritated for days afterward.

    Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve — May 20, 2006 @ 7:44 pm

  8. Yes, all of us tend to have our issues, especially those hot button things we had to endure as children.
    I was not in a trailer but I was a poor child of the welfare system, with parents who epitomized the trailer trash persona with hearts of fraud. Combine that with being non LDS as a teenager (until I converted, to the chagrin of my family) and I was persona non grata on many levels.

    I was only allowed to take a bath and wash my hair once per week. I had incredibly greasy hair (still do!) and I was never clean enough for my own tastes…so I would kype a washcloth and bar of soap and a baggie, and try to surreptitiously clean myself in the mornings on the way to school while riding the bus. Of course the other children didn’t admire me for my desire for cleanliness!

    I resented my childhood for many reasons, and poverty of mind and body was part of that. While I can look back at it rather dispassionately now, the thing that bothers me the most is that I wasn’t able to break the cycle for my own children.

    I believe I didn’t do enough for them as they were growing up, I always felt inadequate for money and never could give them all that I wanted to. I’m not talking luxuries, I’m speaking of things such as new clothes at school time and such.

    If Téa hadn’t decided to go Goth around Jr High, and therefore love to shop at DI and yardsales, she would have had it even worse. (All her prom dresses she borrowed from her friends who had money.)

    I, too, look at my abode regularly to see if I’m sinking into the depths of classlessness. I just told my husband yesterday that our doors, which were installed years ago but never ‘finished’ made us look like trailer trash…so the burning desire not to be seen in that way never leaves.

    Comment by Darlene — May 20, 2006 @ 7:59 pm

  9. Well said, Eve. Bravo!

    Comment by Stephanie — May 20, 2006 @ 10:24 pm

  10. I can relate to almost every thing said in the above posts- the clothes, the food stamps, the absentee addict parents, the role of housekeeper/babysitter shoved on me before I was a double digit age. I dealt with it by mercilessly bringing it up- making endless jokes about it, sometimes shocking those close to me with how callously I would talk about horrible abuses/experiences. I also dealt with it by throwing myself into school, studying, and the full time jobs I had since I was 14. I do buck the ideas of the middle class though- it seems insanely extravagant to me to pay more than twenty dollars for a pair of jeans, maybe five or ten for a shirt, and I pride myself on being able to say, in response to a compliment on my clothes “Thanks, it was two dollars”. I guess my college educated, middle class job, world traveling successful self feels like an undercover identity for who I really am- a poor white trash girl from the South. So many times I have defended the poor, the welfare recipients, the underpriviledged, in the face of horribly insensitive remarks, and I do get a certain joy out of saying “That used to be ME you’re talking about, and in a lot of ways, it still is dammit”.
    But I think what hurts the most is when my success in overcoming my poor background is used to take away the validity of the horrible conditions of the poor in America- “Well, but you worked hard, and studied, and made something of yourself, they can too!” It just kills me when people make that kind of connection, drawing a line between two disparate dots in my life and completely missing the saga of pain and struggle and pockets of good fortune that allowed me to pull myself out. I will never be “middle class” in my mind. I can enjoy the security I have from it, but I think it would be a shame to ever forget where I came from, and the values it gave me. I love those values, and yes, I do think they were worth the struggle, because I appreciate the things I have so much more, and I have a level of compassion and understanding of the poor that many people, even with the best of intentions, can never have, simply because they have never experienced it.
    I loved readinng your post :)

    Comment by sophia*rising — May 20, 2006 @ 10:28 pm

  11. Lynette,

    “Perhaps the issue here isn’t so much “basic life skills” as “basic middle class life skills?””

    I definitely have to agree with you here…and explain a few things about myself.

    We are 1) poor and 2) do not fit the middle-class “cleanliness” standards…and it does interfer with our Church attendance.

    My husband would very much like to be able to provide our family with a middle-class living, but he cannot. And it breaks my heart to hear the variety of people who demean him for that, especially those in our own Church. My husband has mental health issues that make it difficult for him to hold a job for long, let alone climb the corporate ladder of success. Part of these issues is his self-esteem, which gets shot to pieces by attending Church at the wrong time. It breaks my heart that a man who tries so hard, studies the BoM so much, and loves his family so deeply, cannot find acceptance in this Church that is supposed to be based on Christ’s teachings. Christ loved the poor!!! Yet sometimes we, who are poor members of the Church, are met with pure scorn. And, I sometimes I really, truly wonder, how that happens when the BoM stresses over and over again how damaging and disastrous it is for a people to put too much weight on costly apparrel, yet our Church does time and again.

    Second, I am the mother of three children with special needs. While it may be a middle-class travesty that I’d rather devote my time to my children than cleaning my house…I don’t care. Yes, sometimes our carpet crunches. Sometimes the only clean cups we have are the clear plastic ones that can be thrown away. It’s true that I don’t cook very well (luckily my husband does). And, you know what, I don’t care. My children are loved. My children are cared for, even if that doesn’t mean they’re always freshly bathed and their hair is rarely combed. My children are happy and they know as much as their development will allow about Christ and Heavenly Father. For me, that’s enough. And it’s a shame that many of those within our ward do not agree, despite the fact that our Stake President and our Bishop try to welcome us with open arms as often as it takes to re-activate us…again.

    One thing I know: In a Church founded on the teachings of Christ, a member should never have to leave Church in tears, because it hurt too much to be rejected by their peers. It shouldn’t happen, and yet it does. We are all children of a Heavenly Father who loves us all very much–even when our peers cannot find room in their hearts to love us, too.

    Comment by Stephanie — May 20, 2006 @ 11:00 pm

  12. Sometimes I think it’s only the people who traversed class lines who really see what’s going on. Thanks for this post

    You might really enjoy Mountains Beyond Mountains, written by Kidder about Paul Farmer, who, because he grew up in a trailer in an unconventional family, and is genius-smart, has been so amazingly effective helping poor and sick people in Haiti and all over the world. He says amazing things that cut right through middle-class sensibilities about the poor.

    Comment by motherofAll — May 21, 2006 @ 12:14 am

  13. stacer, you make a very good point about the interrelatedness of gender success and failure in such circumstances. (I guess I was thinking in terms of traditional gender roles that if there’s no money, the man is considered a failure, while if the house is filthy, the woman is–although as you rightly point out, those two circumstances are usually profoundly intertwined.) I also completely agree that if one parent is abusing the children, the other is also guilty if he or she passively permits it to happen.
    I especially like what you say here:

    I think one part of church culture hates the lower class life because we’ve experienced it, and another part other looks down upon it because they’re scared of ever being there.

    I think that nicely encapsulates the fear and the contempt of poverty that so deeply marks middle-class (and Mormon) culture.

    I also hear you about how hard it is to bring people home. It brings back some painful memories.

    Your experiences of rejection at church, and Darlene’s, and sophia’s, and Stephanie’s, really break my heart. I think so much of the pain of poverty in this country is the pain of being an object of contempt. And it’s particularly harsh when it happens at church.

    Tracy m, your observations made me think about my own tendencies to organize things when I get stressed out. I’ve done that since early elementary school–I’d never realized it, but I think keeping my room militantly tidy was my way of carving an island of order out of a tide of chaos. To this day whenever I feel overwhelmed, I start straightening things up.

    sophia (and others,), I _love_ your comments about the torment of passing as middle class, about the sense of having what you call an “undercover identity,” of knowing that you will never truly be middle class, of listening to others spew contempt over the poor. That’s paricularly galling to be used as an example in such a way as to minimize the profound struggle between two almost entirely disparate worlds. (I think I know what you mean about callous humor as a defense.) And I’ve noticed what stacer mentions–so often, in church and in grad school, people speak as if we were all middle class. It’s alienating. I also relate to the fear tracy and Darlene mention of slipping backward into that world.

    Mark IV raises another interesting point about gender, one that in general fits with my experiences as well. In general, men seem to care less about stacks of newspapers and undone dishes–and for what it’s worth, I’m with him and Tom Bodett–I’d much rather hang out in the messy house than a house with plastic covers on the furniture! But to this day I feel a tremendous unease about letting Mormon women into my house (one reason I don’t like to be visit-taught). I’ve heard way too many judgmental observations about housekeeping, or the lack thereof, behind peoples’ backs. A couple of years ago a Mormon woman who was helping us move spent the entire time expostulating scornfully on the horribly dirty houses she had had to deal with during her tenure as Relief Society president. Our next move, we did ourselves rather than let the Relief Society get involved.

    And Mark, thanks for the very kind words about the Zelophehad family! I’m so glad to hear there are men like you out there who like your women a little trashy. ;> I should clarify, partly in response to stacer, that my family’s class status was a really bizarre mixture of middle-class intellectual pursuits and poor-white-trash lifestyle, and that we weren’t–for the most part–poor (in the sense of living hand-to-mouth or having to work three jobs) in the same way many of you here were. We were just trashy. So while there’s a level of this I can understand, I know there are levels of this that are far worse than anything I experienced and that I can’t understand.

    Proud Daughter of Eve, I think I can understand your discomfort in visiting a house that really is filthy. Filth isn’t pleasant, and cleanliness and order are a much preferable way to live. But my question is, why do we have so much contempt and so little compassion for those who live in filth? As Stephanie points out, Christ seemed to prefer the company of the poor to the company of the wealthy. He spent a lot of time with tax collectors, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and other despised people, and he himself was homeless.

    People live in filth for a variety of reasons. Poverty, mental illness, disabilities, the demands of special-needs children, and addictions all often play a role. These problems are not easily or quickly solved. But when middle-class people treat the poor and people who live in filthy houses with contempt, we put them in an impossible situation in regards to their own problems. Why on earth should they accept help from people who despise them? What could be more corrosive to one’s self-respect than having to crawl to one’s self-appointed judges and beg for help?

    Comment by Eve — May 21, 2006 @ 12:19 am

  14. motherofAll, thanks for the recommendation! I admit I’m fascinated by stories of people trying to traverse or caught between class lines. Still trying to make sense of my own experiences, I guess.

    Comment by Eve — May 21, 2006 @ 12:23 am

  15. I absolutely love this post.

    The “acceptable contempt for the unlovely poor” and “unconsious sense of entitlement” so perfectly sums up this discomfort I so often feel in my present circumstance and the place I fear I’ll let myself come to.

    I grew up skirting very near poor, but like you I was never hungry or homeless. Eight kids, low wages, layoffs. But other experiences were very different, I never did have the feeling that we were trashy, (although by the standards of this suburban ward I now dwell in, I suppose we were). Most of this probably falls to the credit of my parents, who were very responsible in a middle-class kinda way. Although, I’m sure it helped that where I lived, everyone was poor (ish). Everyone had unstylish poorly-fitting, worn out hand-me-downs. No one drove nice cars. Houses were usually well maintained, but certainly not pretty.

    Somehow, while money was always tight to non-existant, and I knew better than to ask for stuff, still, I always felt safe and clean and nourished and mended. My mom says her house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy. She was a very middle-class sort of mother, I suppose, with the order and nutrition and whatnot. So I guess I always felt middle-class, even though our financial status didn’t always reflect that, probably, as you say because my mother created that sense. Interesting, I’d never thought of it that way.

    I distinctly remember the process I went through after I left home, as I came to realize that I dressed like a poor hick. That I wasn’t really as comfortably middle class as I’d thought. How mortified I was as I learned to look at my clothes with new eyes, clothes that I’d been quite proud of and comfortable in (they were new, and they fit), and realized what other people saw, a hick. And how uncomfortable and out of place I felt in restaurants. And how stupid I was about . . oh geez so many things.

    Even now, when I go home, I can look at my childhood home through new suburban middle-class eyes and see how basic and “unlovely” it is. But I never saw it that way as a child, and in many ways ashamed that I see it that way now. I remember being so proud when I got curtains and matching bedspread, and now it all looks so gauche and naive. I guess sometimes I wish I could have innocent child’s eyes back. I make so many sweeping, nearly unconsious judgements now, based in fashionable frivolities. And while I try to disregard it, live above it, I’m not sure it really works entirely.

    It’s so weird, I so don’t want to be the SUV-driving soccer mom, but sometimes I just can’t seem to help thinking like one. It’s very scary. (and for the record, even if I could, I’m never buying an SUV)

    Comment by fMhLisa — May 21, 2006 @ 12:44 am

  16. Fantastic post, Eve!

    I think I must be a freak. I grew up in a small but clean house, with parents acutely aware of finances and the reality of their paycheck-to-paycheck life. Unlike yours, Eve, my family’s poverty was accompanied by perky thrift and a certain pride in growing our own vegetables and knowing how to clean the house without forking over a fortune on ridiculous cleansers (I mean, really–how many types of cleanser do we need to clean a bathroom? The sanitation aisle at the grocery makes my head spin). And my parents were better educated than the majority of our working class town. I was poor by U.S. standards, sure–but I liked it. Had I grown up in a less blue-collar town maybe things would’ve been different.

    BUT, and this is why I think I’m a freak: I am embarassed not of my former poverty or the fact that I was diagnosesd with malnourishment in college, but rather by my now middle-class life. I constantly apologize for being able to buy a new pair of pants–something that only happened at Christmas or birthday when I was a kiddo. I’m freakishly PROUD that I got through college without using a credit card. My best friend hauled me into Nordstroms last year and strong-armed me into buying a skirt. I’m still embarrassed that it did not come from ebay or the Goodwill. When I was dating my husband, I tried to convince him to practice rural medicine–so we could be poor and noble–rather than the (to me) clearly sinful specialties which might make things like vacations possible.

    For me, excess funds and the ability to buy rather than make my own jam seems a failure of feminity. I tend to think women with money are somehow not “real,” that any virtue is illusory. I admit this makes me an idiot, but it’s a hard bit of conditioning to overcome. I am comfortable as a poor woman. I am acutely aware of the fact that my mother, who lived in a one-room cabin in a cow field until she was 12, thinks I am a spendthrift. Since DH and I are upwardly mobile, I’m afraid I’ve got a real struggle ahead. I feel the need to buy a farm and make jam by the gallon.

    Comment by Janet — May 21, 2006 @ 1:48 am

  17. It’s a problem of relative means, of cleanliness and order, of nutrition, of a certain physical decency

    Very well said.

    I lived in a lot of trailers growing up. My wife had to buy all of her own clothes from the age of twelve on.

    Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — May 21, 2006 @ 5:00 am

  18. #10, sofia, you hit a nerve with the “I could do it, why can’t you?” thought. I had this problem of perception for awhile.

    I ended up in a welfare programs career, and my first job into that area was as a caseworker. This paid better than anything I’d ever done. (However, it came as my children were in their late teens, too late for impacting them as children.)

    I held the “I could do it…” attitude for a long time. I would encounter someone who didn’t seem to be trying to better their situation, and try to explain my frustration that they weren’t moving past their issues and getting on with the business of self reliance. Many times I was accused of not being able to understand where the person was coming from, what hardships they had, etc, because I was obviously ‘middle class’.

    I would always explain that I also had their background and I continued to work my fanny off until I got better jobs, that’s just what you do unless it’s okay by you to continue to be poor…(I thought at the time.)

    It took a long time, in fact, I was well past the caseworker stage of employment, before it finally dawned on me that I was really fortunate…I had tremendous intelligence and drive, and despite a lack of education, I was able to finally make it out of poverty using those tools. (I think the lack of education is what caused me to take so long to do it…I still wish I had more than 1 semester of college!)

    Now I recognize that not everyone has those character traits, or other abilities which would assist them to escape poverty. I know I was being judgmental that my clients didn’t do what I was able to do…in most of their cases it was probably a matter of ability and they didn’t have the same life tools that I did. Those who had a personal desire for betterment, without mental and/or physical problems, weren’t in my caseload for very long.

    None of my siblings, who are all still in the poor south and are all still on welfare, possess the capabilities or drive to better themselves. Even my parents both died while on the welfare system. And my siblings’ grown children are also learning from their parents about the world of entitlements and how to cheat the system to get a better life, instead of how to work to get a better life. But I had a wise coworker who once said that it was almost impossible to get by on the system unless you committed some degree of fraud, so she tried to be empathetic even while she was writing up the investigative referrals.

    I try not to judge, now, for the most part. I am not always successful (I distance myself from my siblings in more ways than physically) but I no longer think everyone can do what I did.

    Comment by Darlene — May 21, 2006 @ 6:33 am

  19. In a lot of ways, these are the same issues large families, or families with mentally disabled children face.

    Our society no longer appreciates the unsanitized reality of children. If you’re going to have children, they’d better look spotless, or frankly darling, we’d rather not have to look at them.

    Check out the looks on the faces of others the next time a family of 8 walks into a McDonalds. The look on some faces wouldn’t be much different if a swarm of rats entered the room. And this is even when the kids are fairly “normal” looking.

    “Suffer the little children and forbid them not.”

    These words have been utterly forgotten. Today, the self-righteous, and the selfish simply can’t countenance the snotty little urchins.

    Family is messy. I doesn’t look good in public and it never really jives with our own “self-fulfillment.”

    I think the main reason God has commanded us to raise families is because it goes a long way to keep us from becoming pompous, self-righteous, fastidious twits.

    Comment by Seth R. — May 21, 2006 @ 6:56 am

  20. I had tremendous intelligence and drive

    It is easy to miss the importance of those things.

    Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — May 21, 2006 @ 7:23 am

  21. Darlene-
    It is so hard to reconcile my pride in improving my situation, with my guilt that my situation is used to take away the very real immovable poverty that many people find themselves in. Like you, I was lucky to just have a drive- I don’t know where it came from, no one in my family had gone to college, no one had told me “hey, do this, it will be good for you”. I seem to have been a fluke. But many opportunities that came to me were pure luck and good fortune, and I firmly believe that my intelligence and drive alone would not have been enough had it not been for those chance lucky experiences to act as springboards.
    I had a different experience than you, in that my reaction to other’s poverty wasn’t a feeling of “Why can’t you do it?? What’s wrong with you?” but more of “Why COULD I do it? What is so special about me, that I was able to get out, to get an education, and have so many more opportunities? I feel a lot- A LOT- of guilt.

    Comment by sophia*rising — May 21, 2006 @ 10:02 am

  22. Economic survival taught me at an early age the value of hard work and gave me the constant desire to better myself. Our family now is comfortable and I fear that my children may not have that hunger and settle on the comfortable materialism that surrounds them. I try to teach them the value of things, but words cannot manufacture the feelings of want.

    Comment by cc — May 21, 2006 @ 11:07 am

  23. As always, Eve, a gorgeous read, and a good think, too. You’re so good at the pithy antithetical—”poverty is a failure of masculinity, a trailer-trash life is a failure of femininity”; “I have measured my progress, etc”—elegant, perfect. (I am left wondering, though, how maniacs breathe, and why your parents breathe that way!)

    As you suggest (but has been lost in the comments, I think), “trailer-trashiness” is not so much lack of capital (that is, money) as it is a lack of social capital, a set of relationships, attitudes, and information that, almost imperceptibly, allows people to make social systems and structures work for them—and often gets misidentified, I think, as “drive” or “intelligence”. Capital and social capital are often correlated, of course, but not always, and presently it’s only the latter that is transmitted generationally in any appreciable way. As you say, the reproduction of culture has long been a woman’s work, tied as it is to the apron strings of child rearing, and I think in women, especially, there is a powerful drive to reproduce the culture of one’s childhood, no matter how much we distance ourselves socially or intellectually from those origins (hence, perhaps, the defensiveness that so often appears in discussions of this sort). Thus you can have a ward like mine, populated by medical student families who virtually all live below the poverty line, with food stamps, gov’t housing, and all the rest (the ethics of that is another discussion), but who are, in every way that really counts, middle-class, possessed of the particular social capital that distinguishes the middle class.

    And as you also suggest, inter-class discussions of poverty and consumerism are tricky. Because poverty is often measured and always perceived relatively, and because children are acutely sensitive to the micro-regimes of social status that structure the school experience, most everyone will consider themselves to have suffered some sort of privation in childhood—even somebody like me, who enjoyed a large home in an affluent area, abundant music lessons, trips to Europe, but who nevertheless wore (designer) hand-me-downs from other ward members and drove old Volkswagens, and thus was materially disadvantaged relative to many of our neighbors. On the other hand, if everyone’s childhood was poor, nobody’s present lifestyle is “consumerist,” because over-consumers are simply those people who spend more money than we do, no matter how much we or they spend in absolute terms. I can critique consumerism like any good Lit grad student—and I often do—but the fact is that I’ll do what I can to advantage my children, regardless of consumption, as will nearly all parents.

    So that brings me to a question. The Book of Mormon makes it very clear that economic inequality is not compatible with Zion, and I think we often ignore the uncomfortable implications of that message. And outright contempt is never compatible with discipleship, particularly contempt for the poor. The Saints have many failings, but in my experience and intuition, outright contempt for other groups is simply not one of them. Empiricism suggests, however, that given the choice most people will choose the conditions of a middle-class life—from home ownership in the suburbs on down to cell phones and Target—precisely because those conditions are conducive to repropducing in their children the health, education and prosperity characteristic of the middle classes. I hear you complaining that so many folks cling to the trappings of the middle-class, but also complaining that those trappings are assumed to be the norm. Aren’t they the norm, though? And, really, shouldn’t they be?

    Comment by Rosalynde — May 21, 2006 @ 1:12 pm

  24. The comments on this thread are just fascinating to me. I’m almost as obsessed with thinking about class as I am with thinking about gender and there’s just so much to think about here.

    Janet, I totally understand where you’re coming from. Buying stuff often embarrasses me, it just feels like too much sometimes. Except for me, it’s so surprising to me how fast I’ve become used to it, how easily the consumerism slips in and starts to feel normal, even essencial.

    Rosalynde,
    “I hear you complaining that so many folks cling to the trappings of the middle-class, but also complaining that those trappings are assumed to be the norm.”

    That isn’t really the way I read it. Eve clearly said she thinks many of the middle class “trappings”, like good nutrition and cleanliness, are positive things (and it probably is a good thing if/that they are normative). But there are other not-so-positive “trappings” like contempt for the unlovely and the unconsious entitlement, that are the norm, but are also destructive.

    Errr. I think.

    Comment by fMhLisa — May 21, 2006 @ 4:23 pm

  25. Thanks, due to this thread I actually started posting on the subject, though I’ve got a long way to go.

    Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — May 21, 2006 @ 5:26 pm

  26. I think it’s interesting how much of this attitude varies from country to country. My Australian husband is most offended when he hears terms like “trailer trash” or “white trash” or “trashy” because he thinks (rightly) that it is unpardonable to refer to a person as garbage. For the most part, poverty is not seen as a reason to fault a person; it is seen as a reason to fault a society. People are poor because of an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity, and the solution to poverty isn’t to blame the victim but to work towards a more equitable society.

    Then, too, there is an understanding that some people are living below their means or below their capability by choice: My husband’s best friend from high school has a business degree, but chooses not to use it. Instead, he lives in a camper, works menial jobs to save enough money to travel for a while, and then goes until the money runs out, when he starts the whole process again. I work with a man who used to have a lucrative corporate job in the city, but then decided it was taking up too much of his time and energy - he’d rather be with his family. So he chucked in his career and moved to the country, where he works part-time at a job that really is beneath him, but he’s happier than he ever was before. Far from being scorned or pitied, these people and their choices are applauded. There is more of a freedom here to be who you want to be, to live life on your own terms. Honestly, it is one of the most attractive things about the Australian culture, and one of the main reasons I don’t think I could ever be happy living in the US again.

    Having said that, there are limits. If you live in a trailer home, fine. If you live in a trailer home surrounded by canabilised cars and feral cats, fine. If you live in a trailer home surrounded by canabilised cars and feral cats and walk around in your tighty-whiteys and a wife-beater, fine, but don’t expect me to let you babysit my children. If you live in a trailer home surrounded by canabilised cars and feral cats and walk around in your tighty-whiteys and a wife-beater and refuse to clean your home and let the feral cats run wild throughout it and have a malfunctioning refrigerator and invite me over for dinner, thank you ever so much for the invitation, but unfortunately I’m booked solid for the next five years and can’t possibly fit it in.

    Comment by Quimby — May 21, 2006 @ 6:14 pm

  27. Great post, Eve. I hope you don’t mind me linking it from my blog.

    I think my experience growing up was pretty similar to Lisa’s. We didn’t have much, but for the most part I didn’t realize it. We certainly never went hungry, or were embarassed to have friends over, and I give my mom enormous credit for how well we lived. I feel bad for every snotty complaint I or my sisters ever made about “having” to wear homemade dresses (always well-made) or share a room (always well-decorated with quilts and curtains she made) or eat deer meat (truthfully, it was yucky, but at least it was part of a nutritious meal). And I wonder if my kids and I are a bit too used to being able to run to Target without thinking twice about those (to us) small but not strictly necessary expenses.

    Unlike Lisa, I am the happy owner of an SUV. It gets great mileage, seats up to 8, and was cheaper than a minivan. I’m just sayin’. :)

    Comment by Allison — May 21, 2006 @ 6:27 pm

  28. My thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to read and comment. I really appreciate the different points of view everyone’s bringing to the discussion. You’re helping me to think more deeply and more carefully about this issue, and it’s one I’d like to see discussed more frequently in church contexts.

    Fmhlisa (#15), what you say about coming to see yourself as others see you and learning to pass those judgments on your own family and house and on what you had once loved resonates with me. There is such a lost innocence in acculturation. Maybe it’s inevitable, but it’s still a loss, just as learning to see race and the inevitable accompanying racist meanings of race is a loss. And there’s something especially hard about learning the “good taste” to pass judgments on your own origins, learning to be mortified at the clothes and decorations you had once been proud of—or worse, learning to be mortified at your own family, your own parents. For the poor, education is also education in self-betrayal. The very small tastes of it I’ve had have given me some glimpse of the complications incumbent on anyone who makes a serious passage from one class to another, particularly while trying to maintain an ethnic identity. A few years ago, I taught on a reservation for a while, and the kids who were struggling against immense odds to get a college education faced such challenges in that regard—the constant fear of and surrounding scorn for selling out by getting a degree, for “going white.”

    Janet (#16), Very good points about another side of this I didn’t consider. I’ve recently made the definitive passage to the middle class—my husband and I bought a nice, relatively new house in a nice neighborhood last summer, and we have more disposable income than we ever have. I’m realizing just how uncomfortable I feel in my middle-class life—I too feel really guilty for spending money on expensive new clothing (and I’m in a constant state of confusion about how much I should spend on myself). I also feel really disoriented and gawky, like a vulgar nouveau riche, but in my case I guess I’m an even more vulgar nouveau bourgeois. Your comment about “sinful specialties which might make things like vacations possible” so sums it up! (Vacations weren’t part of my upbringing. I don’t know if I could even relax on one.) I’d phrase it this way: I feel guilty for being middle class, for having disposable income at all, but at the same time I feel ashamed of my lower-class origins and especially my lower-class cultural markers. (In that respect, at least, I’m a good Mormon woman! Hot and cold guilt and shame, coming right up.)

    I also love your point about wealth and consumerism as a failure of femininity. I’d never thought of it that way, but I see what you mean. Feminine jobs (cleaning, cooking, baking, making the jam, caring for the children) are what the wealthy pay the poor to do, so in a very interesting sense wealthy women have failed a femininity. (I’m constantly amazed at how complicated this whole class and gender thing is!)

    Thanks as well to Darlene (18) and Stephen (Ethesis) (20). Darlene and sophia, your descriptions of your lives and your experiences moving out of poverty remind me of the life of one of my lifelong best friends, who was raised on welfare by an alcoholic mother and a series of stepfathers and boyfriends. My friend is one of the smartest, most capable people I have ever known, and she’s garnered all sorts of justly earned recognitions as an oncologist. Although my childhood was nowhere near as hard as hers was (nor have my professional achievements been nearly as great), one of the reasons I feel so comfortable with her is that she knows from her own experience the trials of class passage. Better than I do. I feel such a sense of relief at not having to “pass” when I’m with her.

    Allison and Stephen, I’m glad you’re carrying the conversation on on your own blogs!

    Comment by Eve — May 21, 2006 @ 8:25 pm

  29. “For the poor, education is also education in self-betrayal.”

    I love it, Eve, so good! And off-the-cuff in a comment, to boot.

    (No point to make, just indulging in a little style-envy along with my raspberry sorbet. What else is a girl to do once the kids are in bed?)

    Comment by Rosalynde — May 21, 2006 @ 9:03 pm

  30. Rosalynde and Quimby both make an important distinction between actual income and what Rosalynde calls “social capital.” I think the situation Quimby describes of people choosing to live on less than they could in order to pursue other goals is (in some ways) similar to the situation Rosalynde describes of medical students living below the poverty line. They are both conditions of material, but not cultural, poverty. There’s a fundamental difference between rejecting the middle class and having it reject you (and it’s really interesting, Quimby, that there’s greater acceptance in Australia for choosing something other than a middle-class life. I suppose the economists among us would immediately start speculating about different incentives in the two countries to account for that difference, but there certainly is and has been a robust counterculture in the U.S. as well. And I’m no economist, so I’ll stop that line of inquiry right now.)

    Rosalynde, I guess you breathe like a maniac if you’re hyperventilating…? Whoops (although a mental image that’s making me snort with laughter–people breathing in and out of paper bags in their Evelyn Wood courses:>) Thanks for the correction.

    I think Lisa sums up the point I was trying to make better than I made it–that some things about the middle class I value, and other things about it I question. You raise some good points about hard problems of what it means to overconsume or to be too wealthy. As with just about everything, I have many more questions about these issues than I do answers. (I should add that although I’m a lit major, I’m a pretty poor social scientist. I do think social and historical analysis of literature can be vital and powerful, but it’s not my particular interest, and I don’t have much instinct for social dynamics.) I am clearly making a social critique here, based on my own experiences, but I’m also trying to figure out about this issue is what to do with it for myself. Just how middle class do I want to be, and how middle-class am I willing to be? I don’t know. I notice in myself the disturbing creep Lisa describes, in which luxuries become necessities.

    As you note, people tend to want (understandably and rightly) to give their children every possible advantage. But I do wonder to what extent middle-class life should be the norm for us as Saints in a Church and a world where so many people live in such poverty. (For the record, I think it is possible to develop such an abstract love for the distant poor that you neglect your own children, like Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby.) As you say, economic inequality isn’t compatible with Zion. I’m particularly haunted by D&C 49:20: “But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin.”

    The real question, I guess, is what does the gospel mean on this point for me personally? If I’m honest with myself, I know I need to learn greater unselfishness and generosity, that I need to learn the self-discipline of willing dispossession for the good of the body of Christ and of my own soul. If I cling to luxuries that could keep another person alive, what does that say about whom and what I truly love? The Book of Mormon really scares me. Another one of those scriptures that’s lodged in me like a thorn in the flesh is Moroni’s denunciation in Mormon 8:37: “For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.” I know he is speaking of me.

    Quimby, I’m completely with you in your desire not to eat dinner with someone who’s living in a trailer inhabited by feral cats and a malfunctioning fridge. I’m definitely middle class enough not to want to either. But I’m ashamed of my own fear and disgust. What difference could someone willing to see past the feral cats and enter into a relationship of mutual respect have made in the lives of Stephanie, or stacer, or Darlene, or sophia?

    Comment by Eve — May 21, 2006 @ 9:27 pm

  31. Rosalynde, you’re too kind. I’m hyperventilating ;>

    (And how on earth do you and fmhlisa and all of the other mothers around here manage to think and write so much and so well about so many issues? It’s truly astonishing. Everyone kept saying how hard I must have worked this semester for taking four classes, but motherhood so, so dusts that. I’m glad you’re all here. It’s been my very outside observation that too often motherhood is so consuming and exhausting that the people whose voices we most need to hear are effectively silenced.)

    Anyway, I’m now done threadjacking myself…

    Comment by Eve — May 21, 2006 @ 9:40 pm

  32. Thanks for this post, Eve. I definitely agree that there is not enough awareness or discussions about class and its meaning/impact within the church.

    Comment by s — May 21, 2006 @ 10:00 pm

  33. It seems to me, as an outsider looking in, or as a one-time-insider looking in, that there is a powerful force in American society in particular to make everything homogenous: every town has the same box stores; every mall has the same stores; every housing development has the same cookie-cutter homes . . . I remember reading once that it was a deliberate choice on the part of McDonald’s to have the same menu and the same store lay-out everywhere in the world: that way, no matter where you were, you wouldn’t have to be challenged by the unfamiliar. The new American Dream seems to be just that: don’t be challenged by the unfamiliar; don’t think there might be another way (better or worse) of doing it; just be comfortable in same-ness. (It’s odd, when you think that one of the American justifications for fighting the Soviet system was that it tried to make everything the same!)

    This may seem like a thread-jack - but it’s really not. It’s just, how much of your “trashy” childhood really wasn’t “trashy” at all, just different? And isn’t it sad that society has reached a point where it wants you to define it as “trashy”? Never mind that your parents obviously did a fine job raising you - never mind that you are a functioning member of society - it wasn’t the cookie-cutter same-ness, and therefore it must have been garbage.

    So, here’s a salute to “trashy” childhoods. My husband’s was definitely not the norm. He grew up on a farm surrounded by animals. His sister had a pet pig who thought he was a dog. They finally sold him when he weighed in excess of 1000 pounds and chased her out of her own bed. He had a wild mountain goat that used to climb up on the dining room table to eat the cigarette butts. When his uncle objected he said, “Oh, did you want them?” There was also an alcoholic lamb, a duck that made the dogs cower, and a menagerie of your more normal animals - dogs and cats and cows and chickens and the like. He has fond memories of his childhood, and he wants the same for our daughter. While I draw the line at letting a goat climb on my table, I also appreciate his “trashy” childhood. I don’t think he would be half the man he is today without it.

    Comment by Quimby — May 21, 2006 @ 10:19 pm

  34. PS - Eve, it doesn’t have to be either/or. I have an uncle who lives very much like the way I describe, feral cats and everything. I am so fortunate in that my parents never tried to apologize for him; they never tried to explain away his lifestyle; they never acted like he was someone to be ashamed of. He was just my “cool hippy uncle”. That’s how they framed him; so that’s how I came to see him. I don’t remember ever eating a meal at his house. I’m sure, if he’d made the offer, my parents would’ve said, “Why don’t we all go out instead?” And I’m sure they would’ve said it in such a way that neither him nor us kids would’ve thought that it was anything more than them not wanting to put him out. I am so, so grateful that my parents are like that. They could’ve framed him as my drugged-out pot-addled uncle - that would’ve been true, too. But instead they chose to focus on the postives: he’s a good guy, he has a big heart, he doesn’t buy into society’s traps. I know, even now, if I was to say, “He’s a little trashy isn’t he?” my parents would probably try to wash my mouth out with soap! He’s my uncle; he’s done some immeasurable good in the world; he is just as deserving of my respect as anyone else.

    Comment by Quimby — May 22, 2006 @ 1:27 am

  35. Eve,

    “What difference could someone willing to see past the feral cats and enter into a relationship of mutual respect have made in the lives of Stephanie, or stacer, or Darlene, or sophia?”

    Hey, there are no feral cats here! :-) We had to let her go when my son took a liking to eating out of her litter box! ;-)

    I do want to clarify that there are people within our ward who welcome us whole-heartedly. My visiting teachers are great women and great friends, who don’t (seem) to mind the state of my house, whether it is surprisingly clean or trashed by the tornados of childhood. They have taken the time to teach me how to make home-made bread especially suited to my children’s dietary needs (sneaking in vegetables in bread would have never occurred to me, let alone adding extra eggs for protein…I didn’t know you could do that). And there are many others amongst our fellow ward members as well–those wind-fall gifts of food we’ve received, including pounds and pounds of venison :-), have often given my husband and I the opportunity to “go cheap” on ourselves to better afford the food our children will eat.

    And yet, despite all that, a single cutting remark or that fleeting derisive facial expression, can ruin a Sacrement meeting for my family and send us back into inactivity for another few months.

    Part of that is because taking our children to Church at all is extremely stressful. Just today, we went to Sacrement meeting and afterwards a good friend came up to us and told us how good our children behaved (for them), i.e. none of the boys played peek-a-boo between another woman’s legs, they didn’t run up to the front to speak into the microphone , and nobody had a melt-down. Then, I showed her the bite marks on my arm where my three year old chomped down repeatedly because I was too busy trying to keep him from jabbing me with his elbows and knees in rather uncomfortable places to watch his teeth. I didn’t mention the fact that I had to hush my oldest son after he said of a woman bearing her testimony, “She’s terrible!” While the woman’s husband and children sat right in front of us. And yet, this was a normal experience for us at Church. Even a good one, considering my son didn’t yell at the top of his lungs, “I don’t want to be reverent! I hate reverent!!!” during the passing of the Sacrement, or something equally distracting.

    But, considering how stressful it is for us to even go to Church: let alone trying to listen and learn something, or feel the Spirit or any of the myriad of things we’re told so often we’re supposed to get out of going and rarely get to experience… Dealing with the scorn of those among our fellow ward members who don’t care enough to bother to show us the least little bit of compassion is just too much. And, worse yet, to hear comments like, “Aren’t those the same outfits your sons wore last week?” What am I supposed to say to that? “Well, yes, they are; our only other options are sweat-pants or jeans.”

    I mean, really, should it matter that my children have only one set of “Church clothes?” Does it really make a difference if their clothes are brand-spanking-new or faded and worn around the seams? My point wasn’t that nobody extends the love to us that Heavenly Father would like them to… It’s that we’re all supposed to love each other, irregardless of financial circumstances, social standards, or (nodding now to Lisa) political affiliation. Ours is supposed to be Christ’s living Church and we’re all supposed to be able to find love and acceptance within that Church, from everyone not just a select few who stand out from the crowd.

    But…to go back to another point you had:

    “The real question, I guess, is what does the gospel mean on this point for me personally?”

    I, admittedly, cannot answer that. Nobody else but you and the Spirit can answer that. However, if it really bothers and you want to know from somebody who’s amongst those who possesses less than you…

    I really don’t think you need to feel guilty for having more. But, perhaps, sharing more is what you need…and I don’t mean just writing a check (though that certainly has value and I’m not demeaning the Church’s various charities by any means). Find out (if you don’t already know) who in your ward is struggling. Even in mostly prosperous wards there’s bound to be somebody and it might be somebody like me whom you rarely get to see. Get to know them. Determine for yourself what their strengths and weaknesses are. Then, help them.

    It doesn’t have to be big or expensive, a box of non-perishable foods on their doorstep or nice hand-me down clothes in their children’s approximate sizes works wonders. Hand delivering a note with home-made cookies or a freezeable dinner (just in case they already had dinner planned or started for the day). Or, for those amongst us who don’t necessarily lack in material things but instead lack the knowledge or time to clean…offer to help and be specific. If you visit them and notice they often have piles of dirty dishes, offer to do their dishes while they play with their kids or get something else done. Or, if they’re exhausted most of the time, offer to watch their kids while they take a nap. I can tell you that if somebody asks me if I need anything, my answer is almost always, “No, we’re doing okay.” I may think of something later or it might have been a straight out lie, but that’s the response I give…especially if it’s someone I know is busy and has “better things to do.”

    I’ll put it to you this way, as poor as we are by American standards, we’re only hovering on the American poverty line. Which means there are those who are even worse off than we are, here and abroad, and despite the pinch of our own nearness to poverty, we help them as much as we can and it really does make us feel less poor and less guilty (this we feel because we still have our house, when by “normal” economics it’s impossible–a miracle Heavenly Father has arranged for us several times when the money was otherwise just not there).

    Comment by Stephanie — May 22, 2006 @ 3:21 am

  36. Wow, that was long…sorry about that.

    Comment by Stephanie — May 22, 2006 @ 3:22 am

  37. As a current grad student I’m simultaneously hoping for and dreading a passage from lower/working class into middle classhood. I also have a hard time believing that it will happen for me, which actually motivates me to become super-qualified so that people can’t help but hire me.

    As I express in this post, while one reason I fear prosperity is that it might put my moral compass out of whack and I’ll end up using money imorally, the main reason I fear prosperity is that it will deprive my children of the experience of going without, of struggling through college, of learning to truly work (real work, not this namby-pamby intellectual work) and of reaping all the character benefits of these experiences. I fear that they’ll become snooty, entitled rich kids.

    But I’ve realized that my fear is rooted in pride and classism. I take pride in being the son of a janitor, as if that makes me special somehow. I find myself thinking that my experiences make me better than my priviledged peers, as if their priviledge has robbed them of the character-building experiences that someone from the lower classes working their way up has. I scoff at the young couples in my ward whose parents give them extravagant birthday or graduation gifts (I got a little stuffed owl) or have helped them buy a home while they’re still in school. Interacting with rich kids, though, at school, at church, and socially and finding that they’re often very good people is helping to change my perception. It’s a deeply rooted problem, though. It’s hard to overcome pride. And in some sense I wonder if they’ll always be “other” to me.

    Comment by Tom — May 22, 2006 @ 5:50 am

  38. Stephanie, your post really touches my heart. Thank you for sharing it. As you show by your story and your example “trashiness” and “poverty” are just as much a matter of decision and attitude as actual economic circumstances. Bravo to you by being Christ like and serving. You are an inspiration. BTW I am so sorry that it is so hard to go to church in your ward.

    Quimby, I find it interesting where you “draw the line” with the man and the bad refrigerator and feral cats. A few questions: As a missionary would that man and his circumstances have been a hindrance to sharing the message or sharing a D.A.? If the man had invited you into his trailer would you have said no or would you have been excited to get in a 1st discussion (because it would either help your numbers or you were truly excited to share the message and that is always easier with the down and out than the satisfied middle class)?

    Something to think about.

    And I wonder why we think we are ever released from the call to serve the Savior. Every soul, even those who are drunk, depressed, sad, poor, mentally ill, sick, etc. is precious in the sight of God. I wonder if He would ever “draw a line” or if He “has his limits.”

    Comment by Kris — May 22, 2006 @ 6:46 am

  39. I’ve been thinking about this since I first read your post, Eve, and recalling some of the attitudes in my ward, neighborhood, and home as I was growing up. We lived in a middle class neighborhood (just south of SLC) that was filled with mostly small, older, modest homes, a few crumbly duplexes, and a couple of apartment complexes. I think most families lived paycheck to paycheck, maybe squirreling away a bit here and there for savings, and doing their best to stay out of debt. Very few families in our ward had anything extravagant, but pretty much everyone (that I recall) was clean, had relatively new clothes, and had expectations of education and middle class-ness for their children.

    I don’t remember anyone showing outright contempt for the poor–perhaps because none of us were so very far from being “poor” ourselves– but I do remember a very clear sense of…distrust… and a sense that being poor was in some way wrong. Isn’t that odd? My childhood self noted that my mother didn’t want me playing around the apartments (and funny how in spite of having lived in NYC for quite a while now I still have this odd feeling that only poor people live in apartments), and she was always much more vigilant about checking out the parents of my friends who lived there. I thought it had something to do with the fact that the apartment buildings always smelled like cigarette smoke and that the men thereabouts often didn’t wear shirts. My nonmember friends (and to be clear, my parents were absolutely okay with my having nonmember friends) tended to live in the apartments and duplexes, and many of them were children of single parents. From all of this I suppose I had the childish impression that being a member of the Church automatically meant you got blessings like houses and dads and stuff.

    And I think that impression persists in many members. After all, if you’re righteous and pay your tithing, you’ll be financially taken care of, right? If you’re doing everything right, you’ll be blessed with a loving husband who is rich enough to buy you a home and cars and clothes and college and you’ll never have to work outside of that home, etc etc. Middle classhood seems in some way to be a marker of election for us, I think, and even though we intellectually know that the poor are loved and shall inherit the earth, I think there is an underlying current of distrust of those who are not so obviously blessed in material comforts.

    Comment by EmilyS — May 22, 2006 @ 7:55 am

  40. Allison,
    You just watch, I’ll end up getting knocked up again, it’ll be triplets and my dh will find a great deal on a Suburban (that only needs a new gizsmo or two) and I’ll be eating my words (again).

    Comment by fMhLisa — May 22, 2006 @ 8:24 am

  41. I think this has been discussed somewhat in the comments, but I’m at a loss as to why poverty = messy and dirty. Is it simply because rich people can hire cleaning help if they need it?

    The stereotype of the slovenly, obese trailer dweller and the feral cats and the rusty old refrigerators and the dilapidated cars parked on the lawn is pervasive of poverty. And this stereotype exacerbates the disgust many people feel towards the poor, because your not taking care of yourself and your home is an obvious example of your own laziness that prevents you from finding gainful employment.

    Comment by Elisabeth — May 22, 2006 @ 8:55 am

  42. i lived in a nice middle class community most of my childhood. All my friends came from the same middle class background and we were happy in our cookie cutter neibourhood. But in ways i was still a little snob to a few people in my school that didn’t have as much money, but my friends were even more snobby towards them. But I fit in so it didn’t really matter to me then. Then i moved to a really small town. And there were lots of really good people in that town, but the average income was really low. It was a good experiance for me to become friends with people who came from large familys but lived in really tiny houses, and people who didn’t have much money but still worked really hard for what they had. And at school there were some kids who had parents who did have upper middle class money but if they were snobby about they wouldn’t have any friends. This opened my eyes a bit so if I every move back into a cookie cutter neibourhood I will have more knowledge behind me to try to become a snob

    Comment by noone — May 22, 2006 @ 9:08 am

  43. Interesting, interesting, interesting. I’ve been hesitating re: whether to post this, ’cause I really don’t know if it’s appropriate [start appology here] but

    well . . .

    Both dh and I were raised in the solidly middle-class way discussed here. However, we now find ourselves on the cusp of that next class change: i.e. we’re now probaby ‘lower-upper class’ [we can have/do most anything we reasonably want if we sufficiently plan for it] and, well the parallels are weirdly striking.

    Materialism, class, feelings that I’ll never really fit in, doing it ‘wrong’ [e.g. everybody else in our situation has a house cleaner and a gardener] guilt for what we have [so many of my friends/aquaintances buy their clothes at yard sales and goodwill; we’ve opportunities to spend [working] time in Beijing and Paris and Sydney — what do you say about that to someone who can’t ever go anywhere???], yet since we’re ‘lower’ upper class, we’ve not quite the income to participate fully with our other friends. We only have one house. We can’t jet off to here and there on a lark or spend $1000 on lunch. And I’m appalled that they do.

    I guess it goes back to how ingrained class and upbringing are. And how difficult it is to deal with on either side of the divide.

    Also, we as LDS people do have a unique lens through which to view this — the lens of ‘calling’ or ‘mission.’ We’ve been able to do tiny drops of missionary work to people who probably NEVER would or could hear it from anyone else. For some reason that has nothing to do with our own righteousness or ’super-coolness’ or being some great favorite with God, we’ve been called to be friends, ambassadors and examples to a group of people who’d never let the missionaries in or would’ve ever imagined they’d like a ‘Mormon’. And I think our relative wealth is one tool that allows us to do this.

    Perhaps being poor, or having a handicapped child, or surviving a tough upbringing etc. are likewise opportunities/tools that let us be friends/ambassadors/examples to other groups? God loves the poor and the rich and the whole and the lame and the sick and the healthy and the gay and the straight. And I assume he’s called some of us to live near and befriend and serve all of his children.

    N.O.

    Comment by Not Ophelia — May 22, 2006 @ 9:46 am

  44. Elisabeth, # 41,

    You are right, to some extent people on this thread have been using poverty and trashiness interchangeably. You are also right that poverty and trashiness are often seen together, and that often trashness leads to poverty. But I’m not sure laziness itself is an adequate explanation. I think social capital, as described above, works better.

    Also, we need to remember that rich people can also exhibit trashy behavior. My boss makes a six figure income, and he is an complete swine. At the risk of getting banned, not only from this site but from the entire bloggernacle, permanently and with extreme prejudice, I’ll bring up another song from those great musical artistes, Confederate Railroad. It describes the process of getting a break on Music Row and becoming rich, but taking your poor ways with you - Harleys parked on the grass, cadillac up on blocks in the driveway, plastic pink flamingoes in the front yard - and the tag line of the chorus says “Now the doctors and lawyers don’t think it’s funny, to be living next door to white trash with money”.

    The Smith family struggled in this way, with most of the neighbors in Palmyra thinking of them as shiftless. Lucy was really determined that her family achieve some respectability.

    I’m wondering how much of this is driven by some need or desire we have to look down on somebody. Sec. 121 calls it “gratifying our pride”. Eve, you mentioned not only trashiness, but also obesity and smoking. All of those things seem like they should be within the ability of “the weakest of saints”, so we feel not hesitation at all in telling people to shape up. I have been trying to remember what elder Eyring said in conference a year or so ago, that more than half the people you encounter every day are facing a problem they don’t know how to handle. When somebody is struggling just to get out of bed in the morning, it doesn’t do much good to start talking about clean bathrooms.

    Comment by Mark IV — May 22, 2006 @ 10:01 am

  45. I come from a part of Utah that considers themselves the apex of culture (Can’t get enough Macaroni Grill darn it!)…trailer ways are definitely only tolerated.

    From what I saw it came down to cleanliness being next to godliness and that the idea that if you were living god’s laws god took care of you. Not just with a roof over your head and food, but with wealth, possessions and leisure activities. Exhibiting trailer ways equated a person who lived in sin…who didn’t care enough about the lord to change their “bad habits” and therefore wasn’t going to the Celestial Kingdom.

    Associating with trailer trash made your own image sinful, or at least look like you were condoning sin. You simply can’t have your relief society prez thinking you aren’t faithful! Whatever will they say!

    What’s funny is where the line was. You could have the most filthy house INSIDE but you had better have your grass mown, your car washed and a designer label on your jeans.

    I’m so glad I’ve moved away from that. Where I live is considered, at least in Utah, the apex of trashy. I’ve never lived anywhere with such polite people…in fact I rarely have to open my own door in public.

    Comment by Becky..Absent Minded Housewife — May 22, 2006 @ 10:21 am

  46. Eve said, “But I do wonder to what extent middle-class life should be the norm for us as Saints…”

    I think the organizational structure of the church almost demands that middle class life be the norm. The middle class has jobs that pay enough to fund the boy scout camps, youth activities and all of the other incidentals of modern LDS life. But that same job also ties down the middle class to a predictable schedule makes them available to serve in callings that demand regular and steady attendance. Many times people below and above the middle class have lives that make regular Sunday committment less predicatable.

    I see this dynamic play out in my stake. At one end it is predominantly poor uneducated immigrants. Most are transient and their ward is in constant flux as people come and go. Many of those that stay must work on Sundays in low paying service oriented jobs and so are unable to attend and unable to accept Sunday callings. At the other end of my stake there is real wealth. Some of these members are just as transient as the poor, constantly traveling to vacation homes and extended trips abroad. And the consequences for the ward are much the same as with the poor, they don’t accept callings that demand regular attendance because they can’t guarantee that they will be home to fulfill them.

    And in the middle is the middle class, the backbone of the stake and wards; not too poor, not too rich but just right, at least for the organizational demands of the modern church.

    Comment by KLC — May 22, 2006 @ 11:07 am

  47. What if all “classes” are like robes we choose to wear?

    My own family of origin went from a)strict, clean, middle-class Swedish immigrants to b)farming hippies (my mother fed us soy products in the seventies) to c)living in a creaking victorian mansion in the city to…d)death, despair, and poverty.

    When my father died, my mother fell apart. After a life of vibrancy and unusual pursuits, she “chose” a trashy existence. By that time, most of my siblings had left home, and I, being the youngest, experienced the fullness of this trashy phase of our families. Indeed, the man my mother remarried was chosen, I’m convinced, for his poor, “trashy” qualities.

    Even the substantial family wealthy was tidily disposed of during this period of despair.

    Now, I’m not saying poverty is a choice. I’m saying how odd it was that when my mother lost my father, she felt such a deep poverty of spirit, that her physical circumstances changed to match it. My grandmother, who was the respectable Swedish immigrant, was also “poor” in spirit; she was eternally homesick. She, however, refused to let her physical conditions match, and overcompensated with impeccable, accent-free English, and a house orderly, warm and always smelling of freshly bakced white-refined sugar and flour products….my grandfather died of diabetes and cancer, and my mother now suffers from diabetes…hmmm. What’s better? Crunchy carpets and soy? Crunchy carpets and cake? Clean carpets and cake??? Always making sure the lawn’s mowed, but your hair undone? Or the other way around??

    So, moving forward, in a jilting, but I think juxtapositional kind of way, I remember finishing school, and the years my husband was starting out in his career, and when I got pregnant…there was no time to mow the lawn at our rented house. The neighbors often feigned concern, because…the grass was so long.

    It occurred to me that my neighbors wouldn’t mind having a wealthy black, arab, or formerly white-trash family living in the neighborhood, as long as they could be middle-class enough to keep the lawn mowed.

    Anyway, to sum things up, I spent yesterday on a hike with my family. I still don’t know what my class origin is, but after hanging out by big waterfalls, and huge, old growth trees, it was easy to climb in bed last night and feel rich in spirit. Perhaps it was a dose of spirit out there in nature. Or the effect of a negative ion environment (waterfalls are supposed to be rich with negative ions). Nothing’s clear, but I feel good, and now I live in a place where the property manager gets the lawn mowed, so that’s no longer a concern…

    Comment by pele — May 22, 2006 @ 12:55 pm

  48. And, worse yet, to hear comments like, “Aren’t those the same outfits your sons wore last week?” What am I supposed to say to that? “Well, yes, they are; our only other options are sweat-pants or jeans.”

    I’d say go for it! What’s important about Church is that you go and you do your best, not that you don’t wear the same thing. What would Jesus do? He would smile and thank you for coming, not say “Gee, didn’t you wear that before?”

    Not to threadjack but there was a discussion on church clothes over on A Prayer of Faith awhile ago and I found it rather hard. On the one hand, I have grown up with certain expectations for Sunday School dress. Issues of skirts vs. slacks and such aside, it drives me CRAZY that my non-member husband feels he HAS to wear a suit if he’s going to come to church with me. No one should feel that they are unworthy to attend or lacking in reverence because they don’t have a white shirt and a suit. Reverence is something felt and expressed by your heart, not your clothes.

    Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve — May 22, 2006 @ 1:18 pm

  49. Eve, re: #30: Fair enough. I think it can only be a good thing to look our horses in the mouth, to examine the particular kinds of social capital we’ve accumulated. Certainly middle-classism comprises the good and the bad, and certainly its composition is susceptible to change: a certain ideal of thrift was once an important middle-class value, it seems to me, and is now nearly lost; and if the over-consumer is largely a chimera, consumption as an empirical matter certainly is not.

    My only real objection—to your question about the “extent [to which] middle-class life should be the norm for us as Saints”—may be largely semantic. Here I understand you to be talking about poverty more than trashiness, about money, not manners, and because poverty is measured and perceived relatively, the middle class will always be the “norm.” The entire concept of poverty depends for its coherence on a middle-class norm against which it appears.

    Comment by Rosalynde — May 22, 2006 @ 2:40 pm

  50. Complete tanget, (because my daughter is watching it) One of the things I really like about Post Cards with Buster is the fact that they make no judgments about class. They go to big suburban Mormon houses, tiny Inuit trailers, immigrant apartments in East LA, Cinderblock houses on Indian Reservations, and it is all shown with delightful accepting curiosity.

    Comment by fMhLisa — May 22, 2006 @ 3:21 pm

  51. Lisa,
    No!!! Not a Suburban!!! Anything but that.*

    *Joking — but seriously, I think they get about 12 mpg.

    Comment by Allison — May 22, 2006 @ 3:24 pm

  52. “What difference could someone willing to see past the feral cats and enter into a relationship of mutual respect have made in the lives of Stephanie, or stacer, or Darlene, or sophia?”

    And did. I had a YW president who was amazing, like I said, and was my friend and leader in a way no one else previously had been willing to. And I had a grandma (non-LDS) who helped make up the gaps, paid for my piano lessons, bought me a trumpet on a yard sale so I could be in band at school, that sort of thing. I had teachers who recognized my intelligence early on and made sure I was always in the programs that would help me excel–one teacher even bought me a book in 2nd grade, which back then was a huge deal to me.

    It’s people like them who made all the difference in my life, showing me that I could be something different than what my immediate family thought I could. I also had my sister, who had as much drive and intelligence as I did, and she paved the way, showing me that to be rebellious to our parents so that we could participate in school activities, to go out and get an after-school, summer, or weekend job so we could pay the nominal fees for those activities–that all these things were possible, even in our circumstances. She was willing to ride her bike in to her job, until she could afford to buy her own car (we lived out in the country), which showed me that I could do it, too. She graduated with a scholarship or two, which made me realize that there was money out there for someone like me, poor and smart.

    But of the LDS people I knew growing up (my sister doesn’t count–she was as inactive as I was in high school), only one stands out as someone who loved me and showed me what being a true Latter-day Saint really means, and that was that YW leader. She truly made a difference in my life, and I think that women like her should be praised to high heaven for their compassion and leadership–leadership that didn’t involve judging me for where I was at, but instead showing me what I could become. Not class-wise, but in the gospel. Class didn’t matter to her. That made a difference to me wanting to be active later, when I went to college, where I met more people like her and grew to know the gospel enough to choose it for myself.

    I think we need more people like her. I know a lot of them, but I also know a lot of people who are ignorant of the effect of pity and disdain regarding class upon those struggling to feel comfortable in the church.

    Comment by stacer — May 22, 2006 @ 3:39 pm

  53. This has been a thought-provoking thread!

    Some thoughts:
    As I express in this post, while one reason I fear prosperity is that it might put my moral compass out of whack and I’ll end up using money imorally, the main reason I fear prosperity is that it will deprive my children of the experience of going without, of struggling through college, of learning to truly work (real work, not this namby-pamby intellectual work) and of reaping all the character benefits of these experiences. I fear that they’ll become snooty, entitled rich kids.
    But I’ve realized that my fear is rooted in pride and classism. I take pride in being the son of a janitor, as if that makes me special somehow. I find myself thinking that my experiences make me better than my priviledged peers, as if their priviledge has robbed them of the character-building experiences that someone from the lower classes working their way up has.

    This is incredibly insightful. I also think about how middle-classness might be difficult to face because that means we have more responsibility on our shoulders. If I’m living hand-to-mouth, I can sleep at night knowing that I “have not,” so I don’t need to give (a la King Benjamin). I have often said that I fear money more than almost anything because I’m afraid I won’t exercise my agency appropriately to find balance between providing for my own (whatever that might mean) and helping those in need. But I think that, regardless of where we are, the Lord looks on the heart. And if we are striving to be more Christlike (which means none of us will ever be perfectly Christlike, which is actually part of the test as we interact with each other), then, regardless of where we fall on the class spectrum, we have opportunities to grow in patience, love, charity, service, humility, etc.

    I also think the following might be applicable to this discussion:

    The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.
    Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p.79

    I think if we focus too much on class, or material wealth, or even social capital (which is, of course, important to all of this), we might be missing the core of what the gospel is about, and how we can really help those who are poor –either materially or spiritually. In that sense, those who reach out have a serious responsibility, but those who are in the position to receive the Savior also do as well. In practice, this is very hard to get to, but I still think it’s good to keep in mind. The Lord isn’t just expecting those “with” to reach out and help. He also expects those “without” to do what they can to move more toward Him.

    I suppose some of what I’m thinking about is this – is a Zion-like society without poor because lots of people “go without” to help those in need, or because “those without” have been able to be changed in ways that help them get themselves “out of the slums” as it were. I suppose it’s a combination of both. We don’t turn away the beggar because we think they aren’t doing enough to help themselves (because we are all beggars), but even as we depend on the Lord, He expects us to do “all we can do” as well.

    And I wonder why we think we are ever released from the call to serve the Savior. Every soul, even those who are drunk, depressed, sad, poor, mentally ill, sick, etc. is precious in the sight of God. I wonder if He would ever “draw a line” or if He “has his limits.”

    Absolutely. But as mortals, we may legitimately have limits. We are counseled with regard to these issues to “not run faster than we have strength.” Again, the Lord knows our hearts. I think many times, we can do more, but I think the Lord also understands that we can’t each do all that needs to be done, and we aren’t perfect yet, so we will always handle these kinds of situations imperfectly. The question is if we are constantly looking for what we can do and trying to do our best – whether we are the ones who need the service or the ones who are in a position to give service.

    Comment by mullingandmusing (m&m) — May 22, 2006 @ 4:23 pm

  54. To clarify: I’m not saying you should belittle, scorn, or refuse to associate with someone with a fondness for feral cats. If that’s how they chose to live, fine - far be it from me to judge them for it. I’m just saying I, personally, would chose not to eat dinner in a house full of feral cats and a malfunctioning refrigerator, because I’d be too worried about food poisoning.

    To give a real-life example: There is a woman in the community where I work with a variety of social and health problems which she refuses to address. She once gave me some eggs. They were all rotten. I can be kind to this person, go into her home, talk with her, take her out shopping, etc., without putting myself under an obligation to eat her rotten eggs. Would Christ eat her rotten eggs? Perhaps. But I imagine Christ had a much stronger stomach than I do. I don’t think I am doing something wrong by graciously accepting her gift to me, and then, privately, without her ever knowing it, throwing away the rotten eggs.

    Comment by Quimby — May 22, 2006 @ 9:51 pm

  55. When I was younger, people who lived in trailers seemed rich to me. No lie. That’s all I ever thought I would have–a trailer was the first home I owned and we lived in a nice neighborhood. All of us were just starting out, now we all have homes and the trailer court has gone downhill, but it was a nice place to live.

    I was proud to have a trailer. It was the nicest place I’d lived in until then.

    My mom said they lived in a chicken coop when I was born. Our other homes weren’t much better than that.

    I have only recently started to think the “trash” is something we carry inside, some people can put it down and some people can’t. I feel a little trashy no matter what, no matter where I’m at, like when I stayed at the LA Marriott and had plenty of money. I felt like a total fraud. Classless and stupid, but I hid it anyway.

    I guess I’m saying I aspired to trailer trash when I was a kid.

    Comment by annegb — May 22, 2006 @ 10:08 pm

  56. It would be mildly interesting if someone decided to establish their intellectual status and spiritual purity in a way that did not involve denoucing the “middle class.” The same cannot be said, I’m afraid, for the converse.

    Comment by Adam Greenwood — May 23, 2006 @ 7:22 am

  57. I spent a lot of the night studying for a German exam, so my head is schwimmen. Please excuse my inevitable lapses in sense.

    Quimby (#33), good—and very complicated–question about “different” versus “trashy.” I guess that’s yet another issue I’m struggling with here: which class differences have moral significance, and which don’t? I do think cleanliness is preferable to dirtiness, but I also think that dirtiness is about as far down on the scale of sin as it gets.

    I also really like your parents’ take on your uncle. They sound like very sane, compassionate people.

    Stephanie (35), great suggestions. Thanks for your perspective. I confess that I’m not good about reaching out to those struggling with material or spiritual deprivation, but I want to learn.

    Tom (37) makes yet another great point that I didn’t even consider—the way pride, contempt, and classism runs up the social ladder as well as down. I too have taken pride in my (very moderately) humble origins and on occasion expressed contempt for those I think have everything given to them on a silver platter, particularly for some of the wealthy students I tutor and teach. Your perspective has reminded me that that’s just as unfair and unkind.

    EmilyS (39), Becky (45), thanks for bringing up the pervasive perception that righteousness = material blessings. I agree that we tend to subtly blame the poor for their poverty and to see it as a marker of unrighteousness.

    Elisabeth (41), I definitely agree that poverty doesn’t always equal filth. I’m guessing, as you note, that the clean poor tend to have more of what Rosalynde calls social capital than the dirty poor. I think social capital is the difference between poverty (a matter of income) and class (a matter of social markers like cleanliness or filth).

    N.O. (43), it’s fascinating to me that the same dynamics of not fitting into either class are replicated further up the social scale. I also like what you say about missionary work. As I understand m&m to be saying, maybe in the end that’s the most important aspect of class: our various classes allow us to reach out to and speak the language of, those others might not understand as well.

    KLC (46), very nice analysis of the ways church activity depends on certain middle-class traits. Those, I think, would fall into the category of middle-class traits I would see as valuable and worthwhile.

    I think pele’s (47) story really illustrates the complexity of class and class mobility. I feel that complexity in my family as well. We were such a bizarre mixture—middle-class emphasis on education, but lower-class lifestyle.

    PDof Eve (48), Yeah, it’s interesting to me as well how much energy what we wear to church generates. I’m torn on that one—I do like it that we, as a culture, dress up for church more than many other Christians do—but at the same time I think it’s vital to make people feel welcome and comfortable whatever they’re wearing.

    Rosalyne (49), fair enough. From a certain point of view, I suppose we’ll all—by definition!—be middle class in heaven.

    Thanks also to annegb, stacer, and Quimby for your experiences. One of the things I think is so engaging about this discussion is the range it takes in—from annegb who thought a trailer was the height of luxury to Not Ophelia who’s contemplating a transition to the “lower-upper class.”
    I must say, I think that’s the Church at its best.

    Adam, I haven’t seen anyone on this thread attempt to “establish their intellectual status and spiritual purity” by denouncing the middle class. Could you point more specifically to comment or issue that you disagree with—or are you making a general observation unrelated to the discussion here?

    (And fmhLisa, I guarantee I will love you even if you do get a suburban.)

    Comment by Eve — May 23, 2006 @ 10:07 am

  58. As we bemoan the classism of Mormon society, it is useful to remember that social class seems to be pretty much a universal of human society. The Gospel ideal of equality, of not being a ‘respector of persons’ and treating everyone with equal dignity, is profoundly radical and probably contrary to human nature. I suspect that this Gospel equality can only be achieved by consciously and deliberately recognizing and overcoming classist behavior among ourselves. That doesn’t happen much in the Church today, indeed we festishize such middle class trappings as the white shirt, blue suit and tie (this is from a guy’s class perspective). This wasn’t always ignored in the Church though. A favorite Lorenzo Snow quote:

    “Zion is the pure in heart. Zion cannot be built except on the principles of union required by the celestial law. It is high time for us to enter into these things. It is more pleasant and agreeable for the Latter-day Saints to enter into this work and build up Zion, than to build up ourselves and have this great
    competition which is destroying us. Now let things go on in our midst in our Gentile fashion, and you would see an aristocracy growing amongst us, whose language to the poor would be, “we do not require your company; we are going to have things very fine; we are quite busy now, please call some other
    time.” You would have classes established here, some very poor and some very rich. Now, the Lord is not going to have anything of that kind. There has to be an equality; and we have to observe these principles that are designed to give every one the privilege of gathering around him the comforts and
    conveniences of life.” (Journal of Discourses 19:349)

    Comment by zeezrom — May 23, 2006 @ 5:22 pm

  59. I don’t agree that social class is a universal. Many non-Western societies don’t have a class system - this is particularly true of tribal societies. I admit I’m a bit of a Marxist, but class seems to be linked with capitalism, or at least with a desire to accumulate wealth, and that desire is not universal. One could argue (probably successfully) that there are still classes in these societies; however, I think it is undoubtedly true that the vast differences between the classes in Western countries is very much a product of Western capitalism.

    It is also interesting to note that classism varies from country to country, even within the Western context. For instance, the UK has a more classist society than the US, which has a more classist society than Australia.

    Comment by Quimby — May 23, 2006 @ 5:54 pm


  60. N.O. (43), it’s fascinating to me that the same dynamics of not fitting into either class are replicated further up the social scale.

    Eve — it’s also facinating how some are worrying that the journey to the middle class will make them too materialistic, while I worry that by becoming properous we might lose our ‘middle-class values’ and become too materialistic. Different baselines, I suppose.

    Also, I’ve started to get a whiff of certain weird expectations that come with the upper end of the social spectrum. For example, I feel odd about having someone else clean my house. But I’ve met people who feel I have no right to clean my own house — that by doing so I’m depriving someone else of a job.

    This makes my middle-class brain reel.

    N.O.

    Comment by Not Ophelia — May 23, 2006 @ 8:10 pm

  61. N.O.,

    “But I’ve met people who feel I have no right to clean my own house — that by doing so I’m depriving someone else of a job.”

    Now that does seem like a strange concept to me! I guess I could understand that to a certain extent, though I disagree with the notion.

    I guess, if you make the concept general enough, I could understand it better. If you can afford to do so, then you have the responsibility to provide others with the opportunity to work for you. Am I understanding that right?

    Comment by Stephanie — May 23, 2006 @ 8:56 pm

  62. When we moved into our current ward so that my wife could finish qualifying and then enter the CRNA program, we were not making much money. I was trading sweat equity for a partnership in a downtown law firm (I was recruited to be the lead litigator and made shareholder/partner fairly quickly), she was getting in the rest of the time in that she needed in the units and then was in school. Everyone discounted the value of the program she was in.

    Then, when she graduated, and people realized that she was making more than some doctors, everyone expected us to move to a more expensive ward. Now they have given up trying to understand us, though I really get along well in our elder’s quorum and we both adore the current (and the recent past) relief society president.

    Even more fun, two of the nurses in the ward have followed my wife and will start the CRNA program this fall.

    Lots of issues of class, and education and money, all mixed together for some people, not for others.

    I’m still thinking, but I’m probably not moving any time soon.

    Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — May 23, 2006 @ 9:03 pm

  63. Ah, I finally got a link back to this post as well.

    to see my comments on this thread, and my link back to Eve

    Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — May 23, 2006 @ 9:07 pm

  64. ” I also know a lot of people who are ignorant of the effect of pity and disdain regarding class upon those struggling to feel comfortable in the church. ”
    To me that’s the crux of the whole thing. But feelings of resentment or anger from members of the lower class can’t be discounted either.
    Growing up our ward was really hard. Half was upper middle class and half was lower low class. The youth who had money really felt that they were more spiritual and faithful than those without. There were leaders who actually assumed that I was a “loose” girl because I came from a single parent welfare household. Heap that on top of being the ward service project, and high school was pretty rough. I have always felt that I’m not “good enough” in the eyes of the middle class because of those experiences. The chip on my shoulder is completely my fault, but we have to look at the predisposition to think of those who are needy as those who are unworthy.
    I think one of the major problems we face is that in America, and especially among the Church community, if you are poor it’s perceived as your own fault. In the Church it is commonly believed that if you are prepared, faithful, worthy, and do all the things you should, you will be blessed with a certain level of financial comfort. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last 6 months it is that this just isn’t true!! Part of my recent crisis of faith, if it could be called such, is that I don’t neccessarily believe that everything will fall into place simply because we’ve done everything we’re supposed to. You don’t get rich by going to church, decent clothes don’t present themselves on your doorstep because you study your scriptures, prayer doesn’t make food magically appear in your cupboards (well, sometimes, but not always). The dispairity lies in our perception of poverty as lacking righteousness, not in lacking funds.

    Comment by MarissaS — May 23, 2006 @ 11:17 pm

  65. If you can afford to do so, then you have the responsibility to provide others with the opportunity to work for you. Am I understanding that right?

    Yeah, that’s the general idea.

    I can’t decide if it’s a really snobby or really altruistic/responsible attitude. Probably both.

    N.O.

    Comment by Not Ophelia — May 24, 2006 @ 8:02 am

  66. It’s also interesting how people can resist, um, ‘reclassifiying’ themselves. Where is the ‘upper middle class’ vs. ‘lower upper class’ line? Or the ‘lower middle class’ vs. middle class’ line? The mediam income in this country is somewhere around . . . $42000? So then what exacly is upper class? If it’s by income, then alot of people I know who claim ‘upper middle class’ status are probably upper class in income. If it’s more of a social definition, then I fail miserably. Or if it really has more to do with how you get your money, then few of the wealthy people I know are truely upper class.

    Anyway, I’ve been trying [unsucessfully] to find something that gives a salary breakdown for class boundaries. Didn’t find that. Did find this:

    Six Figure Jobs ($100,000+)
    High Income Jobs ($80,000 - $100,000)
    Upper Middle Income Jobs ($50,000 - $80,000)
    Middle Income Jobs ($30,000 - $50,000)
    Entry Level Jobs ($10,000 - $30,000)

    N.O.

    Comment by Not Ophelia — May 24, 2006 @ 8:33 am

  67. NO,

    Its really hard to quantify your question. Almost everybody in my ward makes between 60K-125K. There are lots of different backgrounds and I cannot tell from their current lifestyles what “class” they would be in.
    Class almost seems to be a state of mind to me here in the US. My Dad grew up dirt poor in SE Idaho but his uncle was a DR and he became a PHD.

    I guess is what I am trying to say is that is just really hard to define class here in the US. Most really rich people I know earned their money. I personally do not know anybody that inherited large sums. This may change when the babeyboomers start to die though.

    Comment by bbell — May 24, 2006 @ 1:07 pm

  68. Church community, if you are poor it’s perceived as your own fault. In the Church it is commonly believed that if you are prepared, faithful, worthy, and do all the things you should, you will be blessed with a certain level of financial comfort. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last 6 months it is that this just isn’t true!! Part of my recent crisis of faith, if it could be called such, is that I don’t neccessarily believe that everything will fall into place simply because we’ve done everything we’re supposed to. You don’t get rich by going to church, decent clothes don’t present themselves on your doorstep because you study your scriptures, prayer doesn’t make food magically appear in your cupboards (well, sometimes, but not always).

    Marissa, I totally agree. You pinpoint my least favorite Mormon folk doctrine, the one i spend a lot of breath and energy trying to dispel. You are so right—and to believe that your life will conform to expectation if you are righteous leads not only to personal dissapointment when the formula fails but to a general smug self-containment antithetical to Christianity. I thought of this folk doctrine immediately after reading Eve’s post–because it’s the sort of odd belief that take economic disparity and enlarges it into social disparity within the church (and culture as a whole, but that’s another thing). I honestly think this idea has about the worst fallout in terms of lethargic endorsement of racism, classism, ethnocentrism, and just plain snootiness of anything I’ve ever encountered.

    Thanks for saying what we all need to be reminded of. God is not a cosmic vending machine who rewards us with a Porche if we insert our tithing money into the cash receptor of righteousness. Furthermore, we shouldn’t teach our kids to follow commandments because they’ll “get stuff.”–other than a relationship with God and comfort during the rough stuff.

    Comment by Janet — May 24, 2006 @ 4:27 pm

  69. N.O. asks a vital question in this whole discussion: what is the middle class? My guess is that most people consider themselves “middle class”–which is why politicians can’t lose by promoting middle-class tax cuts.

    Janet said,

    God is not a cosmic vending machine who rewards us with a Porche if we insert our tithing money into the cash receptor of righteousness.

    Brilliantly said. Far too often we use the word “blessings” to mean, as you say, “stuff.”

    Comment by Eve — May 24, 2006 @ 9:37 pm

  70. N.O,

    “I can’t decide if it’s a really snobby or really altruistic/responsible attitude. Probably both.”

    Both, I’d guess. I guess it depends on the attitude/arguments that are used.

    Also, I think breaking down class into actual numbers is difficult, because it’d be different in different parts of the country. Right now, my family lives above the poverty line for our area, but if we were living in New York City, we would be hard pressed to pay for an apartment, let alone anything else.

    Comment by Stephanie — May 24, 2006 @ 10:57 pm

  71. God is not a cosmic vending machine who rewards us with a Porche if we insert our tithing money into the cash receptor of righteousness.

    I used to think this was true, and thought myself terribly enlightened for my sophisticated understanding of blessings. Unfortunately, I found I got material stuff — usually unexpected checks or cash — quite consistently every time I paid tithing, as if He was trying to convince me that he IS in fact a cosmic vending machine.

    So I take the checks and don’t think I’m quite so smart.

    Comment by obi-wan — May 24, 2006 @ 11:16 pm

  72. obi-wan,

    “…as if He was trying to convince me that he IS in fact a cosmic vending machine.”

    While I do have a testimony of tithing, I don’t think Heavenly Father’s generousity with us is dependent on it.

    For the last two and half years…almost three now, both my husband and I have been severely under-employed, often to the point of being unemployed. There’s a variety of factors I’m not going to go into…again. But, the point is we’re still here and despite the impossibility of it, we’re still financially sound. We have our house. We’ve never missed any payments on anything and in all this time have been late perhaps 6 times on paying a bill.

    When the lady helped us with our taxes and looked at our finances, she said, “There’s something missing.” I told her it was all there. And she said, “No, this isn’t possible. The math…it just doesn’t work.” I shrugged and reminded her we get SSI for three children (disability payments for those who are both poor and have special needs). And she said, “I’ve factored that in and the math just doesn’t work.” I finally convinced her that I hadn’t left anything out, and she filed it and it went through, but it was kind of stunning to actually hear what I knew…that the only way we’ve been able to make it financially was with Heavenly Father’s help.

    Things are tight. The pinch of it hurts. But, we’re doing okay and while we tithe on earned income, sometimes we don’t earn anything and have nothing to tithe on. Yet, Heavenly Father still makes it work.

    No porsche. No house on the hill. But, we’ve got a cozy home that the bank continues to let us keep. We have a minivan and gas to make it go. We have food, clothing and heat. And, can even afford those little extras, like Internet connection, that make it all a little more bearable and the future a little brighter.

    Comment by Stephanie — May 24, 2006 @ 11:50 pm

  73. I used to think this was true, and thought myself terribly enlightened for my sophisticated understanding of blessings. Unfortunately, I found I got material stuff — usually unexpected checks or cash — quite consistently every time I paid tithing, as if He was trying to convince me that he IS in fact a cosmic vending machine.

    I can only wish that had been my experience.

    I pay tithing because it makes God happy with me.

    Comment by Stephen M (Ethesis) — May 25, 2006 @ 9:26 pm

  74. I pay tithing because it makes God happy with me.

    Yeah, me too.

    But the extra checks keep showing up anyway.

    Its really very disconcerting, since I am certain things aren’t supposed to work that way, and I don’t want to get in the habit of expecting them to.

    Comment by obi-wan — May 25, 2006 @ 10:31 pm

  75. Money won’t predict social class in America. There’s materialism at each level, it just looks more like materialism to you if it’s unfamiliar material.

    Here’s an update on Paul Fussell’s famous Living Room Scale.

    Mostly useful in marketing your house when you have to sell.

    Comment by motherofAll — May 26, 2006 @ 2:35 am

  76. obi wan (#s 71 & 74) - I think the issue is less one of whether God works that way in your life than whether you assume God works that way in everyone’s lives (and thus the materially poor must be poor in righteousness, as well).

    Comment by Katya — May 26, 2006 @ 4:42 am

  77. I think the issue is less one of whether God works that way in your life than whether you assume God works that way in everyone’s lives

    My point was that I no longer assume I understand how God works in anyone’s life.

    Comment by obi-wan — May 26, 2006 @ 6:49 am

  78. But the point is that we have a cultural assumption that the poor just aren’t righteous enough to merit blessings. Are you saying that you no longer subscribed (or have never subscribed) to that idea, or that you *do* subscribe to it because you’ve experienced it?

    Comment by stacer — May 26, 2006 @ 9:14 am

  79. obi-wan (#77)

    Fair enough. Probably I’ve heard too many “rich Mormon = righteous Mormon” comments in Sunday School over the years to let any sort of “cosmic vending machine” remark pass by without commenting, myself.

    Comment by Katya — May 26, 2006 @ 10:31 am

  80. Stephanie,

    Thanks for your comments. Do you mind if they are printed and shared?

    God Bless you and your kidlets. I really mean it.

    Comment by bbell — May 26, 2006 @ 11:20 am

  81. But the point is that we have a cultural assumption that the poor just aren’t righteous enough to merit blessings. Are you saying that you no longer subscribed (or have never subscribed) to that idea, or that you *do* subscribe to it because you’ve experienced it?

    I’m saying that when you reject the cultural assumption, as I have, it is extremely confusing to find that you are blessed as though the assumption were correct. Consequently, I’ve come to neither accept nor reject the cultural assumption.

    There is supposed to be a similar state of mind in Zen; the purpose of the nonsense riddles called koan is to startle or baffle you into a state where you stop thinking about matters in the usual binary way. Maybe that’s where I am on this.

    Comment by obi-wan — May 26, 2006 @ 6:31 pm

  82. There is supposed to be a similar state of mind in Zen; the purpose of the nonsense riddles called koan is to startle or baffle you into a state where you stop thinking about matters in the usual binary way.

    Yes, I\’d say this definitely calls for a koan:

    The Zen Master paid his tithing, and the next day received a bonus check from his employer. \”Master,\” asked the student, \”was this bonus the result of paying your tithing?\”
    \”I have paid no tithing,\” replied the Master. \”Neither have I received a bonus.\”

    Everyone meditate on that.

    Comment by diogenes — May 26, 2006 @ 7:19 pm

  83. I recommend reading Barbara Kingsolver’s essays on consumption for those attempting to determine what “standard of living” we need to be at, as opposed to what standard we can afford based on our paycheck. Sometimes it’s externally driven–when we moved to Tampa a few years ago, I had a tough time convincing the realtor that although we theoretically could afford a certain price range, we did not want or need a house that expensive. Since he got a commission on the sale, it was obviously in his best interests to make as a big a sale as possible. His stake in the process was overt–I wonder how many other stakeholders exist in the process of getting us to spend the most we can afford, who are not as easy to see or to resist…

    Comment by Space Chick — May 30, 2006 @ 3:35 pm

  84. Hey there. I just wanted to let you know your post has been included in the XVI Carnival of Feminists. Thanks for submitting!

    Comment by a nut — June 7, 2006 @ 8:59 am

  85. I am not female or Mormon but reading the life experiences depicted here have striped my soul bare and I have cried for you and for me and for our shared experience of being ashamed of ourselves and of our childhood situation. I too have spent my life running from anything that remindes me of my poor upbringing. I have doggedly elevated my public demenour to middle class and am constantly striving for more. I desperately want to be accepted as urbane and accomplished not as poor and clueless.

    Comment by Jim R — August 3, 2006 @ 9:26 pm

  86. As Jim R above, i am neither female, nor Mormon, although i am familiar with the Book of Mormon, and teachings within, but i can not agree at will with all the posts above from “poor” and “lower class” people, trying to excuse filth with “loving their special needs children” or “filling their life with the love of God” or any of the other ridiculous stories justifying their laziness, lack of motivation, and disregard for their own appearance, and that of their “loved ones”.

    to suggest that there is some line of separation between classes, allowing them to let themselves, their home, and the care of their children slide into disrepair is absolutely ridiculous. several peopl above have commented that “jesus spent most of his time with the homeless, the sick, and the needy” as if that implies that he would want you to live in filth… this also is ridiculous, because we arent talking about people with severe disabilities, absolutely no home or money, little food, etc… these are the people whom Jesus spent time with, and he did so because they had NO choice in their conditions, they were crippled, broken people, who didnt have the capacity to take care of themselves.

    Stephanie (way up top) claims that because she has three special needs children, and a husband with “mental problems” that that gives her the right to lower her standards from the lofty heights of “basic middle class standards” down to a less stressful level, wherein she can allow her children to go days without bathing (most likely wearing dirty clothes in between) not bother to learn how to cook for her family (thank goodness her husband can!), allow her floor to become “crunchy” (how long would she have to divert her attention from those “special needs” children to sweep the floor ? 10 minutes ?) and of course, the dishes dont need to be clean, you can get two or three meals off of one plate as long as you allow the grime to harden into a good solit eating surface, right ?

    this sort of “i’m allowed to be slovenly because i’m poor” attitude does nothing short of anger me, and not because i’m “middle class, looking down on you from my lofty perch of standards and cleanliness” its because i spent more than half my young life in filth like this, with a father who thought in the same way you do, and yet when i finally wised up, and moved in with my mother, who has in the past 10 years not been able to hold a steady job in a small town (she’s “over qualified” after working for merril lynch, whatever that means) has moved to 5 different homes in as many years, and has been through some of the toughest times i’ve ever seen anyone in, always manages to keep food on the table, a good, healthy meal, always finds some way to keep the water hot, so that her children could stay clean, always finds the time, despite loving and caring for three children, by herself, to make her house, whichever one it may be, warm and welcoming to anyone who enters it. i’ve spent my time in a trailer, and i’ve seen the mentality some of you have, feeling like you should be in some way privelidged to be poor, and everyone should accept your lowered standards.

    I highly doubt anyone reading this, anyone this is directed to, will suddenly decide to open their eyes, but all the same, it needs to be said. Perhaps your fellow church members look down upon you, because you come to church smelling like the filth you allow yourself to live in ? because your children look like they havent bathed in a week ? because you allow yourself to enter the house of god, thinking that because you are poor, you should be more loved ? more accepted ? more righteous ? as i said, open your eyes, pick up a broom sweep the floor, wash the dishes, open the windows and let in some fresh air, and stop feeling sorry for yourself. maybe its too late for you to rise above in your life, but its almost never too late for your children, start showing them the way they should strive to live, as my mother did for me, so that hopefully they can do as i did, go out and get a good job, their own home, start a family, and then TRULY love them, by taking care of them, physically, and emotionally.

    *rant-off

    Comment by Cory — May 1, 2007 @ 5:18 am

  87. Cory obviouly has no idea what it’s like to have special needs children and a mentally handicapped husband. I do, and I can tell you how hard such a wife and mother works and how very difficult it is for all to be done–special needs kids tend not to be very cooperative. Also I have known of cases of poor LDS who had no hot running water in their households, only a cold water pump. Sometimes these thing just happen to people, and they do not have the ability to control it.

    Comment by Sara — April 18, 2010 @ 1:11 am

  88. Cory, I went back and read Stephanie’s comments (I am not the same Stephanie), and your interpretation was about as uncharitable as possible.

    Comment by Stephanie — April 18, 2010 @ 8:35 am

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