People who grew up in households without much money, predictability, or power learn strategies to deal with the unexpected events that crop up in their lives. Often, these strategies are variations of going with the flow and taking things as they come. Sometimes there’s no other option.
Isabelle, for example, is the daughter of a farmer and a bartender. (All the survey participants have been given pseudonyms.) Her family did not know how much money each year’s crops or tips would bring in. They did not know when a debt collector would call. Thinking about money could not change the fact that it came in unpredictably and that sometimes there wasn’t enough. With little she could do to change the situation, Isabelle learned to go with the flow. She would not think too much about money, but spend as she needed to get by.
People who grew up with parents who had more money, job security, and power grow up with more stable lives. In these conditions, they learn that managing their resources makes sense — both because their lives are predictable enough that they can plan and because their resources are plentiful enough that they can make meaningful choices. Spouses with middle-class backgrounds wanted to manage their resources by planning.
Leslie, another woman who participated in the study, grew up the daughter of a manager. Her family had enough money and power that they had options. They could decide whether to spend money to go on a vacation or to invest in private school. Either way, their plan could be carried through.
This difference — taking a hands-off approach or a hands-on one — followed individuals from their pasts and into their marriages.
It shaped nearly every aspect of their adult lives. In regards to money, work, housework, leisure, time, parenting, and emotions, people with working-class roots wanted to go with the flow and see what happened, while their spouses with middle-class backgrounds wanted to manage their resources by planning, monitoring, and organizing.
There’s an obvious question of causality there.
Not really much of a question. Yes, farmer and bartender incomes are harder to deal with, but far from impossible. Save in times of plenty so in lean times, there is enough. Or, best, treat every time as lean and budget accordingly, treating times of plenty as unexpected windfalls.
The sad thing is wealth does affect personality, so it’s not like they were barking up the wrong tree. As one example dynamic, someone who grows up in plenty often learns the world has enough, so they’re not materialistic. Someone who grows up in poverty learns to be desperately grasping, eternally trying to fill their child-self’s unfilled needs.
Yes, there really is an obvious question of causality. One could just as easily have written a book about how certain personality traits lead to wealth or poverty. People who “go with the flow and take things as they come” aren’t simply coping with poverty’s uncertainty, the are engaging in behavior that perpetuates poverty. Similarly, people who “manage their resources by planning” have a better chance at building wealth.
I would add that my grandmother, who grew up dirt-poor in a farming household, has repeatedly insisted to me that farmers have been necessarily bred for foresight and thrift and planning, as compared to mining or industrial communities where the paycheck comes every 2 weeks regardless.
She and her husband put enough by to pay for housing (apartments, houses, whatever) for all their children.
Compare this with Joseph Chamberlain on the urban poor, talking about a stevedore with irregular work:
The Radical Programme, 1885. p.67