(Bootstraps Not Included)

May 22, 2017 9:45 AM

What's Your American Dream Score?

A new project from GALEWiLL and funded by the Ford Foundation, called the Your American Dream Score, deflates that idea that success–or lack thereof–is purely one’s own doing. The calculator is a part of a larger initiative, Moving Up: The Truth About Getting Ahead In America, which comprehensively examines the factors that contribute to mobility in America, and why changing one’s circumstances is far more difficult than the folklore leads up to believe[…]The reasons are myriad: wide disparities in educational quality, access to resources like healthy food, and social and familial support are just a slice. But too often, McKinnon says, when someone “makes it out”–like him–the only reason offered up is: “He worked hard.” When someone doesn’t make it out, the reason is: “He didn’t work hard enough.”

[h/t MeFi's Own Miss Cellania]
posted by Johnny Wallflower (56 comments total)

84/100, but I feel like some of that is lack of the right questions. There wasn't a lot to account for class based on anything but income and formal education.
posted by corb at 10:00 AM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

46/100. That clearly explains my liberalism and white guilt. Recommended soundtrack - Walking on Sunshine. I'm so embarassed.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 10:04 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

67/100. I don't disagree that I belong above 50% on this, but I don't think this test was anywhere near comprehensive enough to be useful for more than casual table talk.
posted by davelog at 10:07 AM on May 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

60/100, hmm. I thought I would score higher. From the "things I had to overcome" list:

* The economy wasn't as strong when you entered the job market;
* Needed to develop strong character traits to cope
* Grew up in a place that it was hard for people to move up
* Had to work harder than most

I guess I'll take 1 and 2, but not sure how it concluded that 3 or 4 apply to me.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:08 AM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

53, and I'm frankly shocked it's that high. "Middle class white guy" alone ought to be worth 40 points.
posted by Mayor West at 10:08 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

56/100. For many people, it might be the first glimmerings of how much they really owe society. Unfortunately, the folks who really need the clue stick won't bother with the project or the quiz. Still: baby steps are better than no steps.

Mayor West: 45 is the baseline. The higher your final score, the harder your life has been.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:13 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

63/100. The value of the test isn't necessarily accuracy, but illustrating context regarding your place on the continuum. Maybe it misses your target by say, 10% - I'd be surprised if it misses by a quarter, or a third.
posted by NoRelationToLea at 10:15 AM on May 22, 2017

At the question about whether or not my parents stayed together, I got a little mad because it didn't reflect that my parents should NOT have stayed together and, in fact, my father was/is a narcissistic asshole who made/makes my life generally not better....and then they actually asked that question! My final score was 63/100 and I really do understand and accept and appreciate (daily) the privileges I have had.

On the other hand, my ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score is 6/10 and sometimes I feel like my childhood experiences count a lot more for where I am (and where I'm not) today.
posted by cooker girl at 10:15 AM on May 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

Just retook the quiz with different demographics, and it looks like the difference between white man and black woman is 7 points.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:15 AM on May 22, 2017

49. Life on easy mode, indeed.
posted by biogeo at 10:17 AM on May 22, 2017

A lot of this is really vague and subjective self-reporting. Why aren't there more precise factors: ZIP codes where you grew up, the specific college you went to (if any), how many siblings you had.

I don't recall it specifically asking about arrest or incarceration for the survey taker or their family members. That's huge.
posted by jedicus at 10:17 AM on May 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

Hmm. Yeah, I also get 70/100. I wish this were more comprehensive. It's interesting to click through the results and see why each counts for or against me, though, on the basis of research data. It just doesn't go far enough.
posted by limeonaire at 10:23 AM on May 22, 2017

I found it odd that lower the resulting # = more privilege. They could have better framed it so it was very clear what the # was expressing.
posted by sutt at 10:28 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think this survey is more for those of us on the low side of the spectrum, as in privileged white dudes. No one needs a survey to tell them about their own difficulties. However, the breezy claim "I worked HARD for what I have!" frequently needs to be slapped down hard.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 10:30 AM on May 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

81/100. Well. Okay then.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 10:32 AM on May 22, 2017

I understand the best predictor of your American Dream score is how many cats in a dog suit you have.
posted by ESM1 at 10:34 AM on May 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

If you want to keep it to a 5 minute quiz, you can only go so far, but the point seems to be to capture the broad strokes that hit the most people. It would be nice to see an alternative granular test as well to satisfy those interested, but I think we're being a little too critical given the context.

All that said, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety after taking the test. It brought up a lot of unpleasant memories, and like a fool, I then read these comments, learned about the ACE test, took it, and then read what statistically the results meant for me. It put a lot of 2 and 2 together in the blink of an eye, and I'm caught between being upset that the risks I never knew I was prone to have are in fact realities I'm seeing playing out and the relief of knowing that maybe who and what I am isn't so unnatural and maybe I'm handling as best as can be expected.

I know that the test was probably meant to take you in the other direction and make you realize your privilege, but I'm pretty on edge. I'd almost rather I kept thinking of myself as privileged, which I still believe I very much am, than see my health and life reflected in the statistical averages of those that fall in the not-so-privileged categories.
posted by Muddler at 10:38 AM on May 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

67/100. I don't disagree that I belong above 50% on this, but I don't think this test was anywhere near comprehensive enough to be useful for more than casual table talk.

Agreed. We had enough money to buy anything we needed growing up, but one of my parents still had major anxiety about money nevertheless, and some of that has bled down onto me and has absolutely affected the way I relate to money; I am almost certainly not receiving as much pay as I should be because I've been less willing to assert myself, and that almost certainly is because I internalized a wacky sense of fidiciary self-worth based on my upbringing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:38 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

53; surprised it wasn't lower, although I did like getting Joe Walsh for a theme song. But short of having enough family weath or connections to get into an Ivy League school I was otherwise unqualified for I really can't think of any advantages I didn't have. Stable family, solidly middle class with parents who managed their finances very well and both graduated college (dental and graduate school for my father), not to mention white and male. I would have had to make a special effort to not have a comfortable life! Although, for a lot of my peers growing up, that extra effort wasn't too hard and generally involved substance abuse, lack of aversion to debt, and/or not completing the education they started on.
posted by TedW at 10:44 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

56, though not white or male. However, didn't grow up in the US, which the quiz has no way of accounting for.
posted by peacheater at 10:55 AM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

AH. It was not until this thread that I realized a HIGH score meant "how much you had to overcome" and NOW my 60/100 score makes more sense (the bad economy that hit when my cohort first entered the working world, the being a woman, the "bad luck" it gleaned I encountered).
posted by crush at 11:04 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

60. Grew up in a trailer park but never went hungry, parents stayed together, and both were invested in my success. I got lucky in a lot of ways that this quiz doesn't take into account.
posted by domo at 11:06 AM on May 22, 2017

63, with decade I was born, decade I entered the workforce & race/gender being the largest negatives. It should ask about debts. For example, the only people my age I am acquainted with who own real estate do so either because it was inherited or parents were able to give them a downpayment. We all have significant student loan debt.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:24 AM on May 22, 2017

my younger brother married a woman with an already very successful consulting firm, that he then joined. my big sister married a large-animal vet with a cattle ranch.

they don't understand why i don't work harder and make better career decisions.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:31 AM on May 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

81/100 and feeling very grateful for the breaks I received growing up in a more socialist country, as well as the lucky roll of the dice when it came to genetics.
posted by haruspicina at 11:36 AM on May 22, 2017

67/100, but it was hard to know how to answer most of those questions. Are the questions about "my parents" referring to my bio parents (split up before I was born) or my mom and stepdad? When I'm asked if my neighborhood was safe, is that the unsafe neighborhood where my mom and I lived when I was a baby, or the wealthy sheltered suburb we lived in by the time I was a teen, or one of the intermediate moves between? Are the "health" questions meant to include my very dodgy mental health, or only my fairly steady physical health? Was two hours a week of college newspaper copyediting a "steady college job", given that it was mostly an excuse to eat pizza with my friends, bitch about the Oxford comma, and watch my cat play with the red pens, because I was the jerk who brought her cat on a leash into the newspaper office?

My childhood/teen years were a rapid ascent up the financial comfort scale from quite poor to quite wealthy, and very hard to capture in this kind of quiz. Overall, wonky brain and absentee bio-dad notwithstanding, I think I benefited from white privilege and from the wealth my parents accumulated later in my childhood a lot more than that score captures.
posted by Stacey at 11:45 AM on May 22, 2017

70.

There are a bunch of questions that are pretty subjective. For example "enough money to buy anything we needed growing up" Well, I was clothed and didn't go hungry... But was still on food stamps and wore clothing from the thrift store. By many metrics we didn't have enough money to get anything we needed growing up. But I take a pretty conservative view of 'needed'. Got the food and clothing, even though social stigma (that impacted my school life) came with the quality of these goods.

In some ways I think the quiz didn't ask questions that would have revealed the depth of challenges I encountered growing up, but also I absolutely have to acknowledge the good luck and opportunities that I encountered (and took advantage of).

While I never felt privileged growing up, I am relatively certain that if I was a POC my outcomes would have been significantly worse (eg: teenage encounters with the police would have ended up worse, creating life-long challenges that would be impossible to overcome).
posted by el io at 12:05 PM on May 22, 2017

I did this quiz last night and one of the things I noticed was on the health checklist page, there's no option for "having a chronic and incurable but manageable with symptoms as long as I have health insurance." It's the hardship that affects my life in the most ways and there's really no way this quiz lets you answer that.

tl;dr nth that the quiz has issues
posted by phunniemee at 12:05 PM on May 22, 2017

I think the most confusing thing about the test scoring is that it essentially defines privilege as "having been helped". I think that's an ok definition in certain respects, but the problem is that it then construes the lack of privilege as "going it alone", which is a strange interpretation. I think that's a result of this test's goal of deconstructing the "bootstraps" narrative, but somewhere along the way it reifies that narrative as existing not only in the absence of privilege but explicitly in opposition to it. This is visible in the fact that a higher score is meant to represent less privilege, with the cap at 91 because "no one truly goes it alone". It isn't at all clear that having "every factor working against you" is synonymous with self-sufficiency, nor is it clear that the presence of social support is concomitant with lack of hardship.
posted by Errant at 12:32 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

63/100, which I expected to be higher because I grew up quite well off. And it looks like my score got dinged mostly because I have a parent who often treated me in ways that lined up pretty well with the description in the prompt (yelling, swearing, putting me down). I don't think about it much (and am using my anonymous account to post this since the parent and I have a good, "pretend-it-never-happened" type relationship now) because I've normalized it so much. I still can't bring myself to use the word "abuse" to describe it, even though I know the way they treated me really has colored everything about the way I interact with people now. I know the intention of this tool was to make me more aware of and thankful for my privileges, but instead it just made me feel weird and melancholy. Bleh.
posted by robot cat at 1:16 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

77/100

Funny, I feel like I've had it pretty good overall and wouldn't have felt surprised had I gotten a lower number. I tend to think some of of my success is due to being something of a loner, and maybe having the ability to recognize and avoid risky behavior early on. Which probably reinforced my loner status. Which also freed me to pursue creative and intellectual interests without interference from peers/family/neighborhood/etc.

And just plain old luck, too.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:19 PM on May 22, 2017

Bootstraps are a myth. I'd bet most who claim to have used them are either fooling themselves or outright lying. People don't want to admit it, but luck, both good and bad, plays a far, far bigger part in your life trajectory.

My score was 67/100. I led a relatively privileged life when I was younger. But all the advantages you grow accustomed to won't help when your life goes off the rails thanks to a catastrophic health crisis. Not a damn thing you can do other than watch your financial status shrink and adjust accordingly.
posted by bawanaal at 1:33 PM on May 22, 2017

56/100
"If your life had a soundtrack it might include Imagine by John Lennon, as a sign your feeling pretty grateful overall."

I had to leave the Tell us about your work section blank as it made no allowance for self-employment in a non-office job.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:37 PM on May 22, 2017

67/100. I grew up in a pretty shitty blue-collar situation in my immediate family but have managed to wind up in a fairly stable middle-class life style. I'd be lying if I haven't benefitted from a whole lot of white guy privilege and plenty of stupid luck.
posted by octothorpe at 1:50 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

74/100. Had to look up the scale to figure out what was going on. I agree that there were a lot of areas left unexplored by questions, though. I spend at least a little bit of most days, no joke, being grateful that I was in the right place at the right time, so that even though I have Issues, and even though I have been so broke I was putting the groceries on Discover Card (I was damned lucky to have the stupid Discover Card in the first place) and playing the balance transfer game to keep my head above water, I kind of lucked out like whoa. A lot of my friends and family did not luck out, and it grieves me.

That said: with specific regard to the American Dream, I find it extraordinarily ironic that it was only when I achieved my dream of moving out of country that I was able to have a financially stable situation, where every month I can put a little away in savings, and even buy my own house. I had literally zero hope of ever buying at home; I'd totally given it up. And I can just, like, go to the doctor if I want to, and it's fine, it's what people do. And maybe next year I'll buy a car, and it will be a car I want to have, that I buy because I love it, a car that meets the environmental standards that I prioritize, because I will have the choice and the ability (the actual freedom) to pick. And I have retirement savings! Like actual cash money that will be there for me when I am old and tired and don't want to work anymore! These are all kind of extraordinary. Like, I knew back home I was never going to be able to buy a house. But here, I was here six months -- six lousy months! -- and I got bank approval and bought a house. It's a small house and no one will ever put it in House Beautiful, but it's mine. And I even bought new windows for it, because it needed new windows, and I wanted them, and I could afford them, and now my tiny house is more environmentally friendly and I don't have a horrible cold draft at night all winter long. The greatest irony of the American Dream to me is that because I was not rich, my only chance to achieve it was outside America.
posted by sldownard at 2:07 PM on May 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

74/100. I kind of like that my soundtrack is "My Shot" by Lin-Manuel Miranda. It seems fitting.
posted by pangolin party at 2:11 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

84/100, but I feel like some of that is lack of the right questions. There wasn't a lot to account for class based on anything but income and formal education.

I got 77/100, and I agree. I know where that score comes from, and I agree that those things made my life much harder, but what the test didn't capture was that my mother came from an upper-middle class family.

There were times when we really struggled, but I my culture is middle class, and that gives me a huge advantage when it comes to navigating academic or professional spaces. I speak the "right" variety of English, I dress the "right" way, I value the "right" things. And I took a lot of advantage of my mother's institutional knowledge when I needed it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:35 PM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I should also add that I was given a lot of benefit of the doubt because of the way that I present culturally (and because I'm white). For example, I dropped out of high school and have a GED instead of a regular diploma. People generally assume that's because something happened, instead of because of some kind of character flaw - because a middle class white woman with a GED doesn't fit the popular narrative of delinquency.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:54 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

The test is online, which means you need a device that computes and an Internet connection to take it in the first place. I wonder if that was factored into the final score?

It also requires that you are able to read. That you have time to take the test. That you understand the questions...
posted by Chuffy at 4:12 PM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

56/100 -- middle-class white late-Boomer dude who wasn't exactly handed everything on a silver platter, but all those built-in advantages never hurt.
posted by briank at 6:18 PM on May 22, 2017

56/100 -- should probably be lower (more privileged), because it claims that "The economy wasn't as strong when you entered the job market", but I graduated with a CS degree during the first dot-com boom (late 90's), so that's certainly wrong....

Also "not much help from the government" was listed as an "overcome" factor --- huh? Of course I didn't, I came from an middle/upper-middle (depending on exactly when in my childhood) family. The only government service stuff I checked was public school and Internet, because I never needed loans/assistance. I guess in this format there's no way to distinguish between "I didn't get loans because I didn't understand the system / have help navigating college" and "I didn't get loans because my parents paid for my college education".

On the other hand, it says "pretty good bill of health" which is also pretty inaccurate, I guess because while I've had a lot of issues I've also been lucky enough to have a hard-to-find skill in a profitable industry, so companies have (a) provided good health insurance, and (b) been rather understanding about times when it interfered with work. If I'd had a less in-demand job, I'd probably have suffered a lot more work-related consequences in addition to just health stuff.

In many ways the health issues just highlight how much privilege I've had, in that they didn't end up derailing my life much at all due to all the other things I have/had working for me.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:48 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

The scoring put me at the more-privileged end of the spectrum, which is completely correct.

But who on earth thought this particular scoring system made sense? It took reading this thread to understand where the scoring starts and ends, and what it reflects.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:11 PM on May 22, 2017

60, which is . . . interesting. I feel I'm like the poster child for being white & lucky in a lot of ways. I've overcome some stuff, according to them--IMHO it'd be more accurate to say that I've been insulated from the effects of my idiocy.

I was intrigued that they cinsounted working 50+ hours a week as a privilege. I agree with that but if I expected it to go the other way.

Glaringly missing: A "how are you doing now" question. If I had some bad luck and was struggling to make ends meet as I approach middle age, I could have still answered the questions the same way, gotten the same score, and I would've felt it was like a big middle finger.

[Soundtrack: Joe Cocker With a Little Help From My Friends. I'd go with the Beatles personally but not bad.]
posted by mark k at 9:42 PM on May 22, 2017

63. Asking my much younger brother to do it... he's in the Fuck you, Got mine demographic. I wonder if it'll get him to reflect a bit.
posted by Spumante at 12:40 AM on May 23, 2017

84. But my score was actually lower than it would have been because I grew up partly on military bases, which adds factors that seem positive but really weren't. And I didn't get any extra points for dealing with/caring for two schizophrenic family members, in addition to currently caring for one newly physically disabled, and always very depressed, abusive, and narcissistic, family member.

So I guess I'm doing good to just still be breathing. :-P
But, damn the torpedoes, and all that.
posted by MexicanYenta at 6:03 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

74, which seems about right to me. I probably would score higher if other things were taken into account, such as the good old standard "Were either of your parents in prison for extended periods of time during your childhood"?
posted by blucevalo at 6:07 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

The article does a good job of engaging with the complexity of the topic, but the quiz seems almost counterproductive. Privilege is often invisible to those who have it, so it is helpful to lay out many of the areas in which people might not realize they have an advantage.

I'm not sure that assigning individual scores based on a small, subjective quiz does much to further the point, though.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:32 AM on May 23, 2017

67, which is probably a bit high. But then, I've been getting a lot of flack for being too negative lately, so maybe I'm just trying not to seem ungrateful and I secretly think it should be even higher. They didn't have a box for "Did you have a psycho dad who liked to torment people after getting brain damage that damaged his impulse control? Did he escape justice on a technicality after raping a hitchhiker? Do you still sometimes suspect he might have had a hand in your grandmother's death while you were on your honeymoon in Germany?" Etc.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:06 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

I was a little surprised I got 74. It seems that they must've weighed divorce and dysfunctional family situations pretty heavily, because I had access to excellent schooling during most of my childhood and teen years. And being white didn't hurt either. Also, I've had friends get me jobs which to me is a huge factor in luck your life.

I agree with others in that there should've been more factors such as an incarcerated relative (not that I had one). That factor seems pretty massive.

Also, it can't really account for changes in your youth; like when I was little, we were doing great. Then at age 11, divorce, eviction, bankruptcy etc. But there were times in my life when I enjoyed the American Dream, so hard to say. I think that having had that time period and certain advantages is pretty significantly different from someone who had consistent barriers and never had a taste of anything better and would feel very discouraged that it was all out of reach. For me, it was something that we once had but lost, which is pretty different from someone who never had it and had no relatives who had. The quiz seems to assume consistency of upbringing and economic background.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:12 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Jesus Saul, that's some fucked up stuff there. Sorry about that.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:12 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

I got 74, too, and had the exact same response, so I went back and took it again, changing my answers to some of the subjective or ambiguous questions, and I was sure I was going to get something at least in the 60s. I got 74 again. I really just don't think I was THAT hard done by. I mean, yeah, in some ways, but in other important ways, no, so I didn't think I should get a 74.

And I was just getting ready to take it yet again, when I thought, "What am I doing, trying to manipulate this goofy online quiz?" So I didn't.

Social statistics get less reliable the smaller the group you're applying them to, to the point that assigning an individual score is all but useless. This information might be predictive over large groups, but when you take into account all the individual factors and circumstances of an actual discrete human being, it gets pretty waffly.

I get why they posted it. It gets people to engage with the topic, but mostly on an individual level, talking about why they think their specific results are right or wrong, and recounting all the things that got left out or the questions that are ambiguous or something.

If you ever moved as a kid, which neighborhood and which school do you answer for?

Why do some questions cut off at childhood and others ask about adult life?

The question about whether you lived in a diverse neighborhood scores you the same regardless of the dominant demographics. So if you grew up surrounded by poor PoC, you score the same as someone who grew up in a wealthy, dominantly white community.

It just doesn't account for the nuance, the unpredictability, and the individual variation that go into real life human experience.

This sort of information is really, really useful if you're a statistician or a city planner or politician, but on an individual level, not so much.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:39 AM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Finally took this (70) and thought it was a good overview and maybe an introduction for people who haven't thought much about these ideas before. It took me far too long to learn the scope of all those things that factor into life circumstances (parents not graduating college, connections, etc.).

It was rewarding to get to the Friends page, check every single one of those boxes, and then feel overwhelmingly grateful for the people in my life who have helped me out in so many big and small ways.
posted by redsparkler at 10:28 AM on May 24, 2017

67 and it took me on the exact same journey as Muddler - I thought it was too high. I think of myself as absurdly, horridly privileged and assume that my lack of success is entirely my own fault. But then I just took an ACEs test and, huh. Quite high. Extremely high. I was afraid of that and I guess it explains a lot. Wealth and privilege can only camouflage so much. I always remember a friend of mine in art school saying at the bar: look around. You can always spot the rich kids from really bad families. It's something about the eyes.
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:24 AM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I agree with the person who said we should enter zip code. I had economic difficulties & divorce growing up but lived in relatively affluent neighborhoods ( my mom was living in student housing but by UCSD which is a very nice area). So I had access to jobs, schooling, no crime, etc. The quiz doesn't seem to account for larger environment much, especially opportunity which is a pretty big factor.

You can have a two-parent, loving home in Detroit or Flint and be pretty screwed.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 12:46 PM on May 24, 2017

Also I think they're not differentiating between emotional difficulties and economic ones; for example, what gothlaundry is saying about rich kids with emotional problems. I think of American Dream as a house with kids, a dog, high income. The American Dream concept doesn't really go into your personal life; it's just assumed that it comes automatically with the house and nice car. And your parents could be complete shits yet could still afford Ivy league schools and trust funds, which is most definitely privilege by anyone's measurement.

This scale is too vague in those terms and isn't acknowledging that economic privilege, which will tilt the odds greatly in your favor for economic success, isn't synonymous with emotional stability.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 12:51 PM on May 24, 2017

I got 74, but with Tubthumping by Chumbawumba, so it's nice to see they're personalizing songs beyond just the number.

Honestly, I'm glad they didn't ask how many siblings I had, I can never figure out which half and step ones to count, whether it matters how long/if we shared a house growing up, if we're still in contact now.

Also, as a SAHM, (partially because of health problems that make it difficult to work a regular job) I also found the work section difficult to answer. Honestly, my score probably should have gone down more for marrying into the middle class and being able to stay home. It feels more privileged than the rest of my life.
posted by Margalo Epps at 3:33 PM on May 24, 2017