One Family’s Fall From the Middle Class

When talent, education and hard work aren’t enough: Part 3 of Poverty and Privilege

Editor’s note: This is the story of Richard, a man with generational wealth, and Lauren, a single mom struggling to keep her household afloat. The twist is they both have Ivy League educations but life has turned out very different for each of them. The story is true but names and certain identifying details have been changed.

Look for it every Saturday here on Untrickled.

If you’re new to Poverty and Privilege, you’ll want to start with Part I here.

Lauren still remembers the night she came home shaking after sprinting through gravel to escape two charging Rottweilers. She wasn’t a jogger. She was an Instacart driver — and an Ivy League-educated former lawyer. Her son sat watching, helpless, in the car.

That night, she had her son Peter waiting in the car while she made a delivery, which was technically against the rules. She dropped off a few bags and turned to get the rest. The storm door appeared shut, but then she heard it unlatch and two Rottweilers lunged.

She ran. Gravel flew. Peter watched, frozen.

He later said when he saw the dogs push the storm door open, his stomach dropped because he knew what was about to happen, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He worried that if he got out to help her, the customer might report to Instacart that she had brought an unverified person along and that she’d lose her job. But he obviously didn’t want to see his mom get mauled by giant dogs, either.

That night, Lauren cried in the shower. “I had been given so many opportunities in life,” she said. “And here I was, running from dogs in the dark, delivering chips and salsa for $13 an hour.”

A random social media interaction

The next morning Lauren posted a question online about wardrobe suggestions for her son, who had just won a full scholarship to an elite private high school.

Richard, as fate would have it, saw the post. He offered to help. A few neckties and belts later, he and Lauren spoke by phone, and that conversation turned into a new job for Lauren, one that would make use of her English major skills and transform both of their lives. (For more details, see Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.)

But the big question is this:

How does an Ivy League lawyer end up on Medicaid and delivering for Instacart?

Many people still believe in the American dream: get educated, work hard, succeed.

Lauren did all three. It still wasn’t enough. But this is not a story about personal failure. It is a story about the system working as designed, favoring those with financial and familial backup.

“Attending an Ivy League school was supposed to be the reward for all my hard work throughout my childhood and high school,” Lauren said. “I thought it meant I’d be comfortable. I had no reason to think otherwise.”

Her family was doing OK at the time. But then things unraveled.

Lauren now believes two choices shaped her fate: going into private law practice and choosing the wrong life partner. In this story, we’ll focus on her marriage. In the next, we’ll focus on the difficulties of combining a legal practice with mothering young children.

Her husband, who had been caring for their children while she worked, developed a serious mental illness. He sold his business, stopped working and began spending his days doing minimal chores, playing video games, watching television and viewing a lot of conspiracy theory videos.

With three small children at home, she helped him with his health and therapy, but she didn’t want him influencing their children with his newly acquired fringe beliefs.

“Now that they are all in school, I am able to resume paid employment, and Richard’s offer came along at just the right time. But with one child with some special needs and two others, I don’t think I could work full time, even with the childcare support my mother contributes.”

She acknowledges her major misstep was likely in her choice of life partner.

“I don't like to live in that kind of negative mindset because if I hadn’t married this man, I wouldn’t have my three children, and they are incredible gifts! So if I had to pinpoint my biggest mistakes, it would have been choosing a partner who wasn’t really a partner. Of course, I have the benefit of hindsight now. But, I would say it’s one of, if not the, main cause of my downfall.”

An unexpected future

“I would have laughed if someone told me at college graduation that I would wind up delivering DoorDash and Instacart a decade or two later,” Lauren said.

Besides doing deliveries, Lauren has a small business she started as a side hustle while she was still practicing law, but it’s the type of thing that technology is slowly strangling so it doesn’t bring in as much as it used to.

Despite education not providing her with the life Lauren expected it to, she still very much wants to provide each of her children with a high-quality education.

“I was the product of Catholic school education, and I was pleased with the nurturing and rigorous environment. I like the focus on character, empathy and compassion, because as much as I’d like for my children to be successful, at the end of the day, I really want them to be good human beings. In our district, the public school kindergarten class size when Peter entered was 24. The Catholic school size was half of that. Peter, although very bright, was a child that needed a lot of redirection because of impulse control issues, and I knew he would thrive in a smaller classroom.”

Peter’s scholarship to an elite prep school and good schooling for her younger children, she hopes, will give them the tools and resources to be admitted to elite colleges and break the cycle of poverty, “or at least make better use of their opportunities than I did with mine.”

Lost status

Lauren used to hear her kids tell people, “My mom used to be a lawyer.”

They never told anyone about Instacart or DoorDash. But when she started working for Richard, they were excited. Now, they talk about her work as a professional writer and business consultant.

“So, I think there is an element of vanity to it all.”

They still live in a nice, if worn, house in a desirable neighborhood.

“We all look put together and dress nicely. And, I am able to converse with a certain level of sophistication so people would be shocked to find out I’m on Medicaid and SNAP.”

Lauren’s story isn’t unique. Her best friend since childhood is also a lawyer. She married her college sweetheart, who was on a highly impressive trajectory but then had a fall from grace. Like Lauren, her friend “should have” succeeded financially, but also like Lauren, had no family resources on either side to catch her.

“She fell behind on mortgage payments and everything else. Her credit card debt ballooned to $76,000. So, we've been able to commiserate for years about our shared difficulties, many of which mirror one another since they can be traced back to our choice of husbands! But beyond that close circle — my mom, my half sister, and now Richard — I don’t think anyone would know how poor I am.”

The unseen safety net

Lauren’s mother and father — now divorced — have helped where they can, but they have suffered their own financial setbacks and could not provide a safety net.

“I have a friend who was very deep in credit card debt at the time she got married. Her new husband’s family gave her $60,000 to pay off her debt and that was really life changing for her.

“In my case, my mom has scrounged together cash or worked part time or charged things on her own credit cards when I needed something for my kids and didn’t have the means, or my dad would sell something of his to pay to take my kids on vacation. So my parents have done what they could to help us live normal lives. We just don’t have any kind of generational wealth or investments that could have done enough to fix my situation.”

Richard lived a different story

Richard, meanwhile, never had to worry about the cost of his or his children’s education. In fact, he recalls his parents simply gave him a credit card to take with him to college, one that they paid for.

Because he was the product of generational wealth, he had the freedom to choose his career without worrying about how much it would pay.

“I knew deep down that whether I became a school teacher, a social worker or a corporate attorney, I was not going to have to worry about having a roof over my head or where my next meal came from.”

He worked briefly at a law firm, but spent the bulk of his career in academia and nonprofit organizations, supported by family money.

Now, with Lauren assisting him, he’s able to grow his consulting business.

He insists this isn’t charity.

“Lauren is a profit center for me. I pay her by the hour and I keep the margin.”

Still, knowing her challenges, like $15,000 in credit card debt and an additional $11,000 of her mother’s credit card debt with which she tries to help, he offered her a flat and predictable rate of $700 per week.

“That’s about $36,000 a year. While this is technically still a poverty wage for a family of five, it seems to be a good start toward breaking the cycle of poverty.”*

He’s also paid a few additional expenses — a new computer and a new washing machine — so she can focus on her work.

“As a young associate in a large law firm, I remember that the firm would pay for our dinners if we worked late. This was a way to keep us at our desks, and to show some appreciation for our hard work. There are lots of examples of this. In our case, Lauren knows that her regular bills will be paid, and that she is on track to pay down her credit card debt. Our arrangement is intended not only to improve her life, but to make our business as profitable as it can be.”

Lauren provides real value to his business, he said, so “it just makes economic sense for me to pay her a decent fraction of what we are billing the client.”

Lauren’s story is not just about poor choices. It’s about a system that punishes even the “right” ones.

*The hourly rate of pay comes to $120.

Next week: Why the Law Wasn’t Made for Mothers

Even elite credentials can’t overcome a system built around the lives of men with wives at home. In Part 4, we look at why the private legal world punishes caregiving, and what that meant for Lauren.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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