What is your family's socio-economic background ?

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Both my parents are taxi drivers, dont have a scoobey what exactly that counts as

Does it not also depend on where you live? whether you are a suburban, inner-city, flat, council house dweller?

*This is my specialist subject, not that I'm proving that right now*

Resurrect this gem of a thread...to be fair we Brits would find it hard to comment on this - 'high schools' and all.

Grammar schools? I mean the schools systems are totally different, no?

I bet most Brits would say the words Lower Middle Class through gritted teeth, let alone Middle Class. The former can be perceived as quite a patronising term, the latter just plain derided.

I don't know for sure about genetics, but it definitely would seem to have something to do with parents (it could be learned traits). No one was DX'd AS in my era, or any other 'mild disorders.' I think that diagnosis may have a great deal to do with borderline cases (I suspect that there are people who get along fine but have AS, and just never really learn about it). But, there was always something seperating me decisively from most other people.

Incidentally, and in reply to the topic, my father is from a 'privledged' background, but most of the wealth was left in Italy after the war. So, his mother cleaned houses for extra money. He is a professor, and we always had decent (though not spectacular) resources. He shows a lot of the traits himself. My mother's family was lower class. She does not. I shall probably die a pauper.

My family was far gone for employment. So they were all small business, They made more than others, but got by rather than got ahead. I am 60 so this was another era. Education was rare. One grandfather spoke seven languages, another was a master machineist.

My father made a living in photography and electronics, he was probaly spectrum, and never did more than he had to. So now we are the poor folk in a rich neighborhood, but they have to pay for it, and ours is long paid for.

In Britain at least (sorry I keep saying this) it can actually be quite the opposite at times - the 'poorer' (relative rather than absolute; stereotype of single mother in council estate etc.) you are the more likely you are to have been diagnosed with such, whether the the diagnosis is correct is an altogether different story. AS, dyslexia and the like MUST therefore be classless, it's just a question of whether or not you're ever told you have it.

Upper middle class, but only because of all the academic degrees. In the US education dosn't necessarily translate to financial success. I've seen blue collar types who make more than my college educated relatives.

In the US, socio-economic status is highly correlated with IQ. There is probably more of a correlation between higher IQ parents and AS than social status and AS.

Middle class, Associate's degree, full-time job.

Tim

What a pretty bell-curve.

Monetarily, we're probably what you'd consider middle-to-lower middle class, but both my parents have a college education, they've agreed to sedn me to graduate school, and I go to private school. To outsiders, we look like upper or upper-middle class.

you didn't have an option for parents of two different classes. and for the change in society. my parents were born in the ninteen-teens.

my father was arguably lower class - first of his family to graduate high school (12 years of education, next step being university), but he went on to an advanced degree at university after the war. (he passed along the aspie chromosome, if there is one) but his social views were definitely of the blue-collar, manual labor variety. he had several brothers, some of whom also were most likely aspies and who were highly successful in the workforce.

my mother never went to high school, never worked out of the home, but she was the one who was around most. she also hardly ever read anything, including the newspaper, and culturally that would normally put her in the lower classes now days, since her parents never got past the 3rd grade (for children about age 8 to 9) and we were dirt poor (sometimes little to eat, but always had a roof). except that her parents were middle class in their era - or, rather, they were in a class that no longer exists, really, in america that was the equivalent. and women were not expected to go for higher education or to work out of the home (unless they were poor) back then. technically, she "married down."

it runs in my family. i can see traces in several generations on the family tree. whether it's purely genetically driven, or just some sort of inclination that gets activated by an outside agent, i dunno. but i can see five generations where it exists, in a direct blood descendancy.

I don't see the point of correlating SES with AS. SES is defined as:

An assessment of an individual or family's relative economic and social ranking.

It has less to do with money than the prestige society affords one, which is relative. If you are a Tiwi, your SES will depend on the number of wives you have and if you are an American your education and occupation. A poorly paid professor has more SES than a highly paid call girl. In Anthropology 101 you learn that status depends on money (or possessions), power and prestige. Prestige trumps money and sometimes power (depending on the prestige of the powerful).

In a society with fluid classes, the only thing that matters is potential. In America, the depression and poverty set many families back socially. But the descendants picked themsleves up and moved ahead to their potential. SES is not a constant and is dependent on luck to some degree.

Extreme upper class

Upper Middle Class...Father worked his way up in business. Mother from an upper middle class background.

Congratulations, can you loan me some money? About $500,000 would be nice.

Loan nothing, I've got a buisness proposition....