What Does It Mean To Be Upper Middle Class?

Matriarchs for the Good Life: Part One

This series, Matriarchs for the Good Life, explores what “upper middle class” means in America today, as opposed to the 80s and 90s of my childhood, and reasons through the status and value maternal labor brings to the household aside from—or perhaps in addition to—income. How much of a difference does non-monetary capital make? If a woman consciously dedicates herself to things like social capital, establishing community, making healthy, well-sourced food, a thoughtfully run and efficient home, sticking to an astute financial plan and consumer philosophy, and a curated and carefully considered childhood for the kids . . . do these non-monetary efforts elevate the class or status of the family? How much of our concept of The Good Life is non-monetary? Finally: does the upper middle class lifestyle necessitate a matriarch, whether we like it or not?

I saw this post on X asking for advice as to how a promising 17-year-old might find himself “safely” delivered unto the upper middle class, posthaste.

I myself happen to have “a widely-talented 17yo” entering his senior year of high school this week. I will not, however, be advising him to choose any one particular major, as I do not think college or enrollment in any program “safely” delivers upper-middle-class living, if it ever did.

I’m not even sure I would respect any 17 year-old male who asked me how he might safely arrive into the upper middle class, to be honest. I guess I like to think of men as dangerously, or even unexpectedly, arriving into wealth and security.

Safely? Like planned-out-every-step-of-the-way? Nothing left to chance?

But yes—of course—everyone hopes to be prosperous. We get only one life, after all, and you’d need a really thoroughgoing and pesky philosophy to remit yourself from the pull of earthly goods altogether, particularly if you plan to be a family man.

To my ’80s childhood ears, however, there’s still something so effeminate or persnickety about a young man angling for the safest path to worldly comfort. Did 17-year old Steve McQueen ask his parents how he might easily gain upper middle class accoutrements? Can you imagine John Wayne doing that? Gross.

However, men do have to think about these things. Heroes don’t exactly go hunting for lower-class wives, do they? (Despite what ne’er do wells on the internet love to tell you.) It would be sort of odd to aspire to raise lower-middle-class children, wouldn’t it?

A few seconds of thought on the matter yields the inescapable conclusion that often middle class children, but especially upper-middle-class children, require an upper-middle-class woman to raise them. Whatever class the mother is, so the children shall be.

Ask any mother-in-law, ever.

So it makes sense that young, thoughtful men would want to know the shortest, safest path to attracting that sort of girl, because I really do think that sort of girl is essential to raising your kids in that sort of lifestyle.

Before you head to the comments section to tell me all about how you’re a promising young man with options and what you really want is a lower-class, traditional woman who cooks and not a middle-to-upper-class girlboss feminist . . . stop. Think. Be honest. Lower-middle class is associated with alcoholics and welfare in 2025. Lower-middle class has relatives in prison and fistfights breaking out at family weddings. Lower-middle class works at a diner and has tattoos all up and down all four limbs. You’re not wishing for lower-middle class with your tradwife aspirations, pal. You’re wishing for middle to upper-middle class nestled in scant expectations.

It’s not like it was in the 80s when lower middle class meant hardworking, flinty, and on the lookout for a break. It means public before-and-after- school programs and public services now; public housing and SNAP and Medicaid. Do you aspire for your children to be on food stamps and government-provided dental care? Probably not.

So, before launching into how all the high-value men want lower-class wives, please update your terms and realize you mean middle class. The traditional woman you think you’re looking for is solidly middle-class, if not upper middle class. She has beautiful, straight, white teeth, right? She’s capable of cooking? Let me guess: you want a traditional woman, cooking, in the recesses of your ingredient household? That’s approaching upper middle class. That’s aspiring, ascending middle class. Poor people eat pre-made and packaged food because poor women work, for the most part, and the collective memory our grandmothers benefitted from as young brides preparing nutritious, homemade food has mostly been lost.

Anyway, to resume: while my natural inclination is to hope my son is impervious to lifestyle creep and too cool to consider keeping up with the Joneses, I am honest enough to admit I’d like him to be able to attract an upper-middle-class wife, and rear upper-middle-class children. But what does that entail? As the X poster says above, what is the “safest” path to the upper middle class?

What Do We Mean By Upper Middle Class?

These class terms mean different things to different people, of course; but perhaps we can focus our experiences enough to come to a general consensus on what lower, middle, and upper class mean.

In the 80s and 90s of my childhood, upper-middle-class (UMC), middle-class (MC) and lower-middle-class (LMC) were easier to identify. Upper middle class was Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. It was Father of the Bride and that gorgeous house in San Marino. Upper middle class people go on multiple vacations a year where the whole family flies somewhere. Living room furniture didn’t just match, it coordinated. The parents have nice watches and the mom speaks French and there are more bedrooms than people. In California, an established upper middle class family has a second home either on the coast or in the mountains.

Middle class was just all of us. Everyone thought they were middle class when I was growing up. It was a surprise to both rich people and poor people that “the middle class” technically excluded them. Some parts of the country are still like this. It’s one reason Democrats are able to pass things like “tax hikes for the rich” and “universal health care.” Most Americans think they are middle or lower middle class, i.e., the deserving poor who will of course receive subsidy, not the undeserving rich who will pay for the subsidy with tax increases.

Middle class people drove to vacation, or family gatherings at relative’s houses in lieu of vacation, woke up to piles of gifts under the tree on Christmas morning, and rented more than one or two movies at a time on weekends. Mom got her nails done. Two pieces or more of the living room furniture and/or the valences matched. Etc.

Lower middle class in my childhood meant your family went camping if you went anywhere, but you didn’t go “on vacation”. You didn’t have a lot of food in the house, your house may or may not have had a permanent foundation, your pets weren’t altered before an unfortunate inbred litter or two, and one or more of the adults in the household smoked or drank during the day. No furniture matched, as it was collected haphazardly, and half the furniture wasn’t good to sit on.

Interestingly, in the ’90s divorced people could be from any class. I had rich friends and poor friends from broken homes. Today, divorced parents are more likely a lower-class indicator. College used to mean middle class or above, but now it doesn’t quite carry the same connotation. Consumer purchases like new cars, clothing, even household furnishings aren’t as reliable an indicator as they once were. Getting your nails done can be a middle- or even lower-middle-class indicator, at least in UMC parts of California. When I was growing up, people didn’t buy things on credit as readily as they do now. Bad spending decisions had an easier time catching up to you, if that makes sense.

So, back to the original question, what does it mean to be upper middle class now, and what is the safest, or most direct route to getting there?

The technical definition of UMC according to Pew Research is 67% to 200% of median income, which in California translates to around 150k-200k. So yes, you’re thinking, plenty of college majors can deliver that!

But here we stumble upon the biggest change: upper middle class lifestyle is no longer synonymous with upper middle class income. Or, more precisely, an upper middle class salary may or may not mean you are able to raise your kids upper middle class, send them to upper middle class schools, and live in an upper middle class home.

Increasingly, it does not.

This is part of the reason everyone is so upset: they figured their “safely into the upper middle class” career trajectory would enable them to raise a family with the kind of lifestyle they envisioned when they first set out on that career path; when they made sacrifices for that career path! But it didn’t work out that way.

What Is the Safest Path to an Upper Middle Class Lifestyle?

In 2025—and I suspect probably always—the quickest, safest path to upper middle class is to have parents and grandparents who are UMC, such that no student loan debt and minimal-to-no home mortgage debt must be accrued in order to set oneself up on the path to UMC living. UMC parents and grandparents have enough excess income to save money for their children to attend college without taking out loans, and have enough money and time or both to set their kids up in housing that doesn’t propel them downwards into lower-middle-class living for a decade or two while they are building equity, waiting to buy the type of house in the type of neighborhood they grew up in.

For those of us with no family money to aid us, an UMC salary means you’ll be taxed within an inch of your life while you’re still paying off student loan debt, sometimes consumer debt, and certainly housing debt because you spent your 20s, 30s, and even 40s borrowing a middle-to-upper middle class lifestyle before you had the income to support it. This is the trap that haunts the UMC-aspirant. You literally spend your 20s and 30s writing checks your eventual UMC salary can’t cash.

For UMC kids of UMC families, probably this X poster’s college major question makes sense. There will be help; the family will see to it that you don’t go years or decades into debt in order to put yourself on this path to the lifestyle you’re accustomed, so which career paths are likely to help you maintain that status? Even UMC kids from UMC families still need to make a decent income to maintain their lifestyle, after all.

From Poverty to Upper Middle Class

For middle class or lower middle class kids, this original question is far more complicated than it seems. There isn’t any one degree or major that can “safely” deliver the UMC.

What can be done, aside from having richer parents? I think a lot can be done, actually. And strangely, much of the jump from middle or lower class into prosperity involves traditional morality. When I was a kid I think America had the luxury of believing that morality and religion were private matters that had little to no bearing on prosperity or economic security. The Bill Clinton Morality Waiver. That philosophy has really proven itself to be misguided.

When prosperity, (particularly class-hopping from lower classes into higher) involves multiple generations of family effort, multiple generations of adults thinking ahead for the good of the children, multiple generations laying aside money and time to give the kids a leg up, you simply cannot have divorce and broken families. When prosperity takes several generations to build and secure, you cannot have a fractured family tree. The wealth and social capital dissipates faster than the family can build it back up again.

So the most important thing young people can do to propel themselves into the upper middle class from humble beginnings is to marry well. As in, marry with religion. Marry in a way that is binding.

The second most important aspect of building UMC wealth is to fortify community and local connections in order to hasten the establishment of things like housing and quality elementary school, high school, and college, that are harder to raise enough money to buy well in the span of one working lifetime. Some things like nice cars and high-class clothing you can forgo while you’re working your way up and it doesn’t really take away from your main goal to live the good life at some point.

But for other things like the education of your children, your children’s friends, and even in some respects your neighborhood and community connections, you can’t really slum it up until you financially arrive in your 40s and 50s and not experience profound consequences. This is why so many well-educated people who tell demographers they “want” children never end up having them. They want upper middle class children, not poor or lower-middle-class children, and they wait until their lifestyle is such that they can provide that vision.

The Upper Middle Class Mother

One reason the Right fights about lifestyle and economics, free markets vs. nationalism, and working vs. tradwives is because economists still point to income quintiles and salaries to describe class and prosperity, and those charts and numbers still show a healthy, even growing, chunk of people arriving into their UMC aspirations. But real life experiences and expectations do not match these economists’ charts. The giant debt hole that poor and middle class kids dig to put themselves onto that UMC career path is deep and wide, in large part because housing and education price inflation are astronomical.

The reality is that in 2025 America one might indeed be making an upper middle class income for years until that translates into an upper middle class lifestyle. Remember: you’re being taxed as if you’re a rich person while you’re still in the hole. Your kids are likely to be grown and out of the house before you have that UMC lifestyle. Many upper-middle-class-salaried parents are raising lower-middle-class kids, especially if they didn’t get into the housing market at the right time, and especially if they have significant debt to pay off.

And yet.

The modern disjunction of income realities and lifestyle expectations is where the matriarch does some of her best work. Have you ever asked yourself why all of the sudden people are so fascinated with traditional lifestyles and, in particular, traditional women? Some of the fascination is because people intuitively understand that a woman who chooses to prioritize things other than income might actually be able to deliver a lot in the lifestyle/income deficit for an aspiring upper middle class family.

A mother can, theoretically, deliver UMC food, UMC education, even an UMC house and yard, (albeit often in a cheaper state). Perhaps the most essential reality young families aspiring to be UMC intuitively understand is this: if there are going to be children before the parents are in their 40s, one spouse—most often, the non-childbearing one—is going to have to have an absolutely rocketship career trajectory.

Both spouses might be able to have good jobs and eventually get around to having kids, but the mother will likely lose some career advancement and will constantly have to weigh the relative benefits of her non-monetary labor in the home vs. her financially rewarded labor at her job. Which is better for the family: homemade food and one-on-one maternal attention for the toddlers, or a solid health care policy and sturdy retirement plan at mom’s job? How can anyone possibly say, from one day to the next?

But if one spouse, namely the spouse with the perfectly-unassaulted-by-reproduction body, were to attain an UMC salary as swiftly as possible, then the cost/benefit of mom staying home or at least mom not prioritizing making money above all else really starts to pencil out. If the man is making enough money for the UMC lifestyle to eventually pan out once debt and housing are cleared, then the woman—assuming an UMC lifestyle is the main lifestyle goal—might best be dedicated to household financial management and all the non-monetary facets of being upper middle class. She can tailor her career, if she wants to work, to non-monetary assets and building social capital, status, and security.

She might devote her efforts to things like ensuring that the family stays together, ensuring that the marriage remains strong, working to obtain, via social capital and non-monetary efforts, the kind of prosperity that is very difficult to achieve in one working lifetime: safe housing in a good neighborhood with strong community ties, elite education, and strong political and social ties that confer high social status to the family. She can work on all of these things while her husband single-mindedly devotes himself to making money.

This is actually how a lot of powerful, old school UMC families work. Not so much “new money” UMC, which often features two very hardworking career spouses with little time to dedicate to social capital, community, or children. This is why people often try to buy social status, safe neighborhoods, and strong community ties once they have children, because they will have had little opportunity to join in these efforts as they were building their careers.

The Haves and the Have-Mores

I think Rob Henderson is right about this. Most of our political dialogue and a lot of the writing on Substack is actually a battle between the haves and the have-mores. While this has always been the case, it is particularly acrimonious now because so many talented and ambitious people planned to “safely” arrive into upper middle class via career paths and college majors that simply didn’t deliver, or haven’t delivered in time to ensure the lifestyle they had in mind when they dreamed of setting up a household and having children.

Anger and jealousy are never far behind when people see others they deem “undeserving” enjoying a lifestyle they see themselves as most deserving of, but nevertheless, unable to attain. Like always, women are at the center of this debate, sometimes as inanimate trophies of desire and status, but increasingly as pivotal elements of a fiercely desired—and contested—battle for The Good Life.

Is the devoted matriarch simply another trophy by which to display wealth? Or is she essential to prosperity itself?