Social Mobility

Common wisdom tells us, “Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps”—that is, work hard, earn an education, and you will attain wealth and success. Use your sociological imagination and the theories from this chapter to challenge or support common wisdom.

Your Own Social Class

Reflect on your own social class. Discuss how your family’s social class has been reproduced over time or how your family has experienced either upward or downward mobility. Be sure to focus on structural or systematic reasons rather than individual reasons.

I definitely 100 percent believe and support in the common wisdom theory about working hard. "Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is something that more people should take into consideration. This is a powerful quote and saying in general. By "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" you will be able to achieve more. This quote is powerful because from just reading it, you are able to see that by making yourself get up and go get that education, degree, job, or whatever it is that you want to achieve, it all starts with your own actions first and what you are willing to do for that specific goal. If the effort is there, than the success should and will be there as well. Every successful person has worked hard for what they have, none of it is easy and with hard work and effort you will become successful. Every individual works at there own pace and has their own interests, and with this being said everyone has an open chance of striving for their goals. You can ask just anyone who is successful, whether it was quicker than others or not, everything requires patience and independence is a huge important factor to get to where you want to be. 

My family currently is an example and contribution to the middle social class. My family's social class has changed much over the years  but in a positive way that has benefited all of us. Over time, we have experienced upward mobility, which I am very grateful for and happy that happened to our family. When I was born, my parents already had my oldest sister who was a 3 year old at the time but we lived in an apartment. From what I remember, I believe we lived in an one bedroom apartment, which was 4 of us in one room! 2 parents, 1 toddler and a new born baby which was me. As years passed my father got a new job which he was making way more at and my mother did as well. With both combined incomes, we were able to get our own single family home which consisted of 5 bedrooms. Now that was a huge difference compared to where our living situation at first! To this day we still live at the same house, and it really has felt like my childhood was born into that home rather than the previous apartment we lived in.  This was an example of a structural reason in our family's social class, being that both my parents moved up from one social class to another.