Leaving Behind the American Dream

My husband and I have spent our twenty-plus years together striving to rise the economic ranks from working class poor to middle class. Both of us experienced meager living during our childhood years, but believed that hard work and perseverance assured us a more comfortable lifestyle than we, or our parents, had known in the past. A middle class lifestyle. You know, the American Dream. So in our early years together, as our parents cheered us on, we took on well-paying jobs, became homeowners in our 20's, housed two cars in the garage, and attempted to educate our children while providing them some of the material possessions we lacked while growing up.

Now middle-aged, we can proclaim that we are, by some definitions, indeed middle class. We live in a nice home in a safe neighborhood. We provide our school-aged son with access to a good school district. We dress decent enough, drive cars that are paid for, take a small vacation every year, and our annual income falls well above the national median. Isn't this middle class America? Are we not living the American Dream?

Yes, we are. But it is ironic that in the daily struggle to remain middle class and keep the Dream alive for ourselves, we are merely repeating the lifestyle our parents knew so well as the working class poor. As they struggled to put food on the table, so do we. As they struggled to educate their children, so do we. Yes, we have bigger homes, more possessions. But still, we struggle. Take a closer look at our family. We live in a home we can no longer afford, we can't meet our financial obligations on a timely basis, we live from paycheck to paycheck. We have nothing in savings, no education fund for our son, our oldest child has no health insurance, and our kitchen cupboards are all but bare. We live on the brink of financial disaster, and the next unexpected crisis will be the proverbial straw to break the camel's back.

We have become the middle class poor.