SOC 1010 Unit V Journal Reflection

Journal Reflection

Unit V

SOC 1010, Introduction to Sociology

Columbia Southern University

Journal Reflection SOC 1010 Unit V

For this journal entry, I was asked to answer several questions. What is the story of social mobility in my family? To what extent have there been shifts both across and within generations? What factors, such as family connections or historical events, contributed to the occurrence of my social mobility?

The social mobility in my family would be an open system of stratification. After reading about the types of social mobility I have to say that over my current life so far, I have had a vertical mobility. I started working at a very young age and made minimum wage and barely made enough money to pay rent and buy food for myself. After I joined the military I have continuously progressed and with that I elevated myself to a higher social class. I started at the lower class as an emancipated teenager barely getting by to where I think I am currently at the middle-class level. There have definitely been generational shifts in my family. On both sides of my family they were immigrants that came to America as children and worked very hard and difficult lives never really moving out of the lower to lower-middle social classes. My parents were both hard workers but my father was what was called a rolling stone and died as a young man from complications with diabetes and heart failure, this left my mother as a single parent and unfortunately trapped her and us as kids in the lower-class status. We were very poor and I think that is partially what has driven my brother and I to elevate ourselves to a higher social class. I think that seeing the hardworking back ground and determination of both my grandparents and parents instilled those traits into myself and seeing how hard they had to work for the little that they had made me want more for my family. I hope to be able to continue rising higher in the social classes and if I can only get so far I hope that my children continue to rise and reach a level that I could not.