By Jessi Streib a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of The
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THE POWER OF THE PAST: CLASS, MARRIAGE, AND INTIMATE EXPERIENCES WITH INEQUALITY by Jessi Streib A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in The University of Michigan 2013 Doctoral Committee: Professor Alford A. Young, Jr., Chair Associate Professor Elizabeth A. Armstrong Associate Professor Karyn R. Lacy Professor Karin A. Martin Professor Abigail J. Stewart © Jessi Streib ________________________________________________________________________ 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people to thank for helping me get to this stage. First and foremost, I would like to thank the couples who agreed to be in this study. It takes an admirable amount of courage to talk about your marriage, family, and childhood with a stranger. I was constantly in awe by how much they were willing to share with me, and how much they seemed to want to help the university. I hope that this book helps them understand their lives, and helps other couples understand their own. My committee – Alford Young, Jr., Elizabeth Armstrong, Karyn Lacy, Karin Martin, and Abigail Stewart – also assisted me tremendously. Each of them supported this project from its inception, answered many emails, wrote and rewrote many letters of recommendation, and walked me through methodological, substantive, and writing issues. I want to thank Al Young in particular for pushing me to not just apply others’ theory to my data but to come up with original analyses of my own. He also always had a big idea or two that I should think about, and I hope I have successfully incorporated a few of these big ideas into this work. Elizabeth Armstrong read the first full draft of this work on quite short notice, and worked endlessly as the graduate director to offer me opportunities I would not otherwise have. I owe Karyn Lacy a special thank you for always making her office a place where I felt good about my work. As a young female professor, she also always made becoming a professor seem more real. I am also especially thankful to Karin Martin, who always read my work with amazing speed and has been a friendly face in the department since my time as a recruited student. Lastly, years ago Abigail Stewart co- ii authored a piece that inspired me to study social class, and has been nice enough to continue to help me even though her work has since gone in other directions. Several other professors have also been instrumental in seeing me to the completion of my book. I completed my first sociological project under the guidance of Fred Wherry, and he has continued to provide me with support throughout my time at Michigan. I met Howard Kimmeldorf at meeting where we discovered our common interests in a book published almost fifty years earlier, and he has since provided amazingly detailed comments on my work. Fred and Howard also both told me when they believed in my work and when they did not, with the latter being as appreciated as the former. I also always enjoyed running into Dwight Lang in the halls, and spending hours talking about first-generation student issues and social class more generally. Dwight has served as great mentor for how to run a first-generation college students group, which I hope to be able to do at some point in the future. Nadine Hubbs also has offered much of her time despite absolutely no professional obligation to do so, and I have been extremely grateful for this. I made it to graduate school because of my stellar undergraduate professors. I have heard that liberal arts colleges like to hire faculty who will sing the praises of such a college and whether I end up at one or not I will always sing the praises of the Trinity College sociology faculty. Their classes taught me to develop my sociological imagination, helped me realize that nothing is ever as it seems to be, and offered a strong foundation in sociological knowledge. Many of the books I cite today are ones I read in their classes. In particular, Stephen Valocchi introduced me to studying social class and encouraged me to attend graduate school. Johnny Williams’ classes were always mesmerizing. Whenever I think of conflict theory I also think of Johnny, whose life seems dedicated to understanding the roots of power and fighting for justice. iii Theresa Morris continues to be a great mentor and has often advises me about what it is like to be a woman in the academy. My fellow graduate students and friends have also been tremendously helpful to me along the way. After each time I presented a paper in a workshop I left awed by the intelligence and good humor of the Michigan graduate student community. My writing group – Amy Cooter, Sasha Killewald, Anju Paul, Jane Rochmes, and Jess Wiederspan – have read more drafts of my work than anyone else. In addition to providing insightful feedback, they are also all great friends, and it has been a pleasure to travel through graduate school with each of them. The idea for this project came out of a casual conversation with another graduate student – Hiro Saito – and to him I’m grateful for his off-hand remark: “This would make an interesting dissertation!” Undergraduate students also coded and transcribed some of the interviews. Lucy Alexandra Nonas-Barnes, Abigail Barnard, Andrea Fossass, Christie Low, Gina Kim, Shadmani Kushi, Matthew Shutler, and Chelsey Vanden Esschert all deserve credit for their work on this task. Brandon Phillips also read a few of my chapters, and discussing class with him was always a pleasure. I am also grateful to Erin Peterson, a professional transcriptionist, who transcribed so many of my interviews. The Michigan Sociology staff – Jennifer Eshelmen, Elise Harper, Tim Moore, Diana Paterno, Pat Preston, Rick Smoke, Linda Williams, and Jeannie Worrall – also deserves a huge thank you for answering all of my questions so patiently and quickly and for making the department run so smoothly. Rackham, the Center for the Education of Women, the Institute for Research on Gender and Women, and the Sociology department also all provided funding which made this book possible. Finally, I’d like to thank my family. When I told my former neighbor that I was going to graduate school in sociology she responded that she was not surprised as I had been thinking iv about social justice issues since I was two years old. I’m sure this is due to my parents’ influence, especially my father’s who has spent his career fighting for a subset of underdogs. My dad also always told me that being a professor is the “best job in the world,” and so I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I aspire to follow in his footsteps. My mother is the epitome of the concerted cultivation parent. And while “intensive mothering” and endlessly employing concerted cultivation is known to be exhausting, she has done it tirelessly and with ease. I owe much of my academic success to her. My brother Noah has always been patient with me when I don’t pick up on math as quickly as he does, and now that he has a Ph.D. in math I continue to thank him for explaining his work to me even when he knows there’s no chance that I’ll actually understand it. My partner, Rob, also deserves my heartfelt thanks. He has taught me that studying social inequality is a lot easier when you can laugh about it and that economists are, in fact, very lovable. v PREFACE The idea for this project began in 2007, when, over coffee, another graduate student asked me about my parents’ class backgrounds. While this is probably a strange, if not taboo, question in many circles, his awareness that I was interested in studying class made the question seem normal. It turned out that both of us were raised by mothers and fathers who did not share their class roots. We talked a bit about how this likely shaped us, and noted that even though our parents grew up in different countries, mine in America and his in Japan, that our parents’ class positions seemed to be expressed in similar ways. After musing over the topic for a few minutes, he off-handedly remarked, “You should write your dissertation about that.” His comment resonated with me as I realized that the study of marriages between those with different class origins would allow me to answer questions I had developed a deep interest in due to my own life experiences. My interest in class and relationships that straddle class lines had begun ten years earlier when my family moved from Shaker Heights, Ohio to Ada, Ohio. Both communities were in northern Ohio, but at the time it seemed to me that their similarities ended there. Shaker Heights was suburban with a veneer of wealth; Ada was rural and working- class. I was aware of these differences before we moved, but not aware of what it would mean for my life. Leaving behind the canopied streets and colonial homes of Shaker Heights, we drove past Ada’s trailer parks and four stop lights before arriving at our new home. The physical differences between the two towns were stark; from hills to flatlands, from small businesses to farms, from vi neighborhoods lined with mansions to the town’s only mansion included as a stop on my first tour of the town. The two places did not seem as though they belonged in the same state. The social differences, however, turned out to be even starker than the physical differences.