Two Must-Read Stories About Family, Economy, and Mobility

I wanted to share two recent essays with you, both for the ways in which they are similar and for the ways in which they are different. They’re both stories of family, and how parents and children affect and alter each other’s lives even after the children are grown. They’re also stories of work and our new economy.

BuzzFeed Fellow Niela Orr writes about what happens when upward mobility seems impossible; when you pursue education and a career but end up working as an Instacart picker:

Two College Degrees Later, I Was Still Picking Kale For Rich People

With “all my education,” as my family would say, two degrees and the student loans to show for it, I was nonetheless positioned only marginally better off than my grandparents, who ran errands and did other grunt work two generations removed from where I now stood.

Meanwhile, at the Texas Observer, Sarah Smarsh describes how the changing economy has affected her father’s ability to earn a living:

In the Harsh Post-2008 Economy, Builders Live on the Road

Since July, he had driven to 16 job sites in Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma and now Louisiana. In October, a particularly hard work month, he had finished four convenience stores and one bar and grill in five towns across two states; during that month, he had worked 18 overnight shifts and had just four days off. This was his new life in the post-2008 employer’s economy. The upcoming week without labor was a rare gift.

Because both of these essays are about work and family, both Orr and Smarsh take the time to describe their families’ work histories.

From Smarsh:

Born to Kansas wheat farmers in 1955, the youngest of six children, Nick Smarsh was a natural with personal finance. His work ethic and money-saving impressed even his salty parents, who came of age during the Great Depression. Before he was old enough to drive, he owned more head of cattle than his dad did. By his early 20s, he’d already owned a foundation-building business. But it folded when the record-setting winter of 1978 left him without work for too long. You can’t pour concrete when the temperature is below freezing.

And from Orr:

My dad was plucked off of the streets of South Philly by a neighborhood gang when he was young, grabbed by the scruff of his neck by the wrong big dogs. At 16, he was charged with murdering a man, and met his own father for the first time in prison. […] When he married my mom and had my younger brother and me, he cut his dreadlocks, his drug habit, and his dreams of a writing career to begin working for the pretzel chain Auntie Anne’s. After a short while, he was promoted to manager, and in 1994, he was selected to open a new franchise in Arlington, Texas.

Both Orr and Smarsh’s fathers took on caretaking burdens as they grew older; Smarsh’s father worked for a shady subcontracting company that regularly shorted his paychecks in order to provide for his sick wife and pay her health insurance premiums; Orr’s father left his Auntie Anne’s franchise to care for his ailing father, began selling drugs, and was murdered.

Smarsh dreams of buying a big farmhouse so she can take in all of the older members of her family whom the economy has let down. Orr worries that her own hard work will not be enough to help the next generation of her family move forward:

I’m concerned that my family’s long-term generational mobility will be compromised, not only by bad choices and capitalism and the prison industrial complex but by my own ambitions, too.

When you read these two essays side-by-side, you see so many parallels: the lack of good, well-paying jobs; the way that long-term caretaking alters a career path; the employers who demand everything from you and offer nothing in return. You also see, quickly, that Smarsh is white and Orr is black and that their families’ stories will never be the same even if they share similar economic touchstones.

I hope you take the time to read both of these pieces, and then I hope you take the time to read them again. I’m on my fourth pass through each and I only just now picked up the comparison between the employers who provide no caretaking at all—because in a gig and contractor economy, you get no benefits, no sick leave, and no room for error—and the workers who are tasked with providing care to the clients before voluntarily caring for their fellow employees and their families.

Read the stories. Discuss them in the comments, or tell us about your own family’s work history and how it affected your life—and how you think your own employment might affect the generations to come.

Hat tip to Manjula Martin’s three cents newsletter, which was where I first learned about Sarah Smarsh’s essay.

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