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My father has five (no joke) MA's and a PhD, and yet was a complete failure as a provider. I grew up hungry, for food, as well as all of the social and cultural trappings of the middle class neighborhoods whose schools I was bussed into in the 1970's and 80's. I remember going hungry, or being ashamed of the cheap clothes my mother could afford to give me, or the beat up car she drove. Yet nothing enfuriates me more than to note these things in conversation with my peers/professors and to be told that because I was raised in a household of intellectuals, my own experience with poverty was somehow not as debilitating because I had the benefit of "cultural capital", which somehow should have made me less hungry or ashamed to be poor, or alleviated the ruined self image I have carried through a life of dead end, unsatisfying jobs.
Having educated parents only gave my siblings and I the vocabulary to voice our cynical disgust with our lot, a poison that continues to affect my outlook on life though I married into an upper middle class, professional family. Their sensation seems to be (as with most of my peers who have had comfortable upbringings) that I should be able to shake it off, yet I am still prone to the same shame and hostility in my unspoken reactions in many social situations. I will always be the "poor kid" thanks to the basic flavor of my early learning experiences.
It seems that regardless of the hyped expectations of the fruits of higher education, a graduate degree is hardly any barrier between cold reality and keeping one's children from becoming jaded at an early age. Being poor, but aware, only made accepting the truth more difficult for me.
