Well, when I sat and thought about it, the answer is no, not really. Most of my friends are from blue collar to middle class backgrounds. A decent number come from enlisted-level military member backgrounds (makes sense as I live in a military city and grew up very near an Air Force base, with my father being in the AF as well) -- it's a bit skewed from a purely financial standpoint as I am a full time student (went to school later in life) and my friends are established in their careers. Overall though it's all pretty even.
My SIL (brother's wife) came from a 1% family and was distanced from the family (and the money) after she dropped out of college and married "wrong" (not my brother, that came later, lol), but it didn't matter as her family lost all their money before her father died anyway. I don't think she and my brother would have ended up together in a million years had she remained in her family's good graces.
My first "roommate" was a 1 per-center, trust fund guy, who owned a big house and was lonely in it so he rented me the upper floor for practically nothing. We didn't remain close though, we are still Facebook "friends" and that's it. He was a friend of a friend.
I did marry someone from a upper middle class background with an income in the top 5 to 10% (my first marriage) and although my father was in the military all his life and he himself had a middle class income and lifestyle, I was raised by a single mom who worked lower wage jobs and we were probably in the bottom 25%, income wise. My mother worked all the time, we used to get "government cheese" and money was always very tight, though she worked hard to see to it that we lived in a "good" neighborhood. This was all horrifying to my first MIL. My ex-MIL
certainly thought her son was marrying "poor white trash". In fact, I often think he married me, in part, to tick her off.
The woman doesn't know the difference between "poor" and "trash", obviously, but whatever.
Marrying someone from such a very different socioeconomic background was certainly not the primary problem with our marriage but I DO think that it was a contributing factor to some of our problems. Basically he had a sense of entitlement that allowed him to think it was ok to not work for
years if a job was "beneath" his idea of what he deserved, based on his education and experience. His mother backed him up on this so there were many many periods where we were existing on some minimum wage job of mine, in between his periods of employment (though when he worked, he made very good money). We also had tons of fights about spending money; I was raised by someone extremely frugal and he was used to having household help, buying whatever whenever.
I am married now to someone who grew up absolutely
dirt poor, not just "working class" poor. Raised by a single mom who favored getting high over anything else, so she neglected her kids, had her first five taken away, and only did the absolute bare minimum for her remaining child (my wife). My wife grew up eating whatever was in the cupboard, cold, usually a can of something, and having to wash her clothes out in the bathtub before walking to school in the snow with no coat (no it wasn't uphill both ways but almost!
.
It's interesting to me to see how all of this continues to effect behaviors and mentalities for a lifetime, from a sociological standpoint.
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