The Reproduction of Wealth Inequality: How Middle- and Upper-Class Parents Instil Financial Orientations in Their Children

Abstract

The mechanisms propelling wealth inequality remain insufficiently understood. This paper aims to explore the transmission of parents’ financial orientation to their children, shedding light on the processes of cultivation that contribute to the reproduction of privileges. Drawing on interviews with parents and their children in two contrasting communities in Norway, one middle-class and one upper-class community, we investigate how money is embedded in a larger class-based pattern of values and willingness to invest in a broader sense. We find that although income is comparable and allows room for wealth accumulation, the meanings associated with wealth differ. The middle-class parents’ orientation can be associated with ‘looking down’, leading to a struggle to maintain their positions, while the upper-class parents transmit an orientation of ‘looking up’, emphasising the importance of play and potential growth. These two orientations may contribute to systematic differences in their children’s economic practices.

Introduction

Why do middle-class parents not prioritise teaching their children to invest and grow their material wealth in the same way that upper-class parents often do? This question addresses a fundamental theme in sociology: how inequality is reproduced and how privileges are preserved. In the context of wealth distribution, Norway is a noteworthy case. Partly due to efforts to reduce inequalities through political measures, such as universal welfare services, income is relatively equal. Norway is frequently acknowledged as a relatively egalitarian society, a characteristic evident in its compressed wage structure (Barth et al., 2021). This dedication to equality is further underscored by a widespread ‘passion for equality’ (Jarness, 2017), a sentiment that is also acknowledged in the upper classes. However, the wealth distribution imbalance is more pronounced in Norway than in many other European countries (Fochesato and Bowles, 2015), and this paradoxical situation has come further to the fore in recent years. While income inequalities have been relatively stable, inequality in wealth accumulation has increased (Hansen and Wiborg, 2019).

Financial inequality reproduction arises through the unequal transmission of material wealth (Adkins et al., 2020; Doepke and Zilibotti, 2019), as the children of upper-class parents are more likely to receive financial transfers from their parents and accumulate wealth (Hansen and Wiborg, 2019). However, the transfer of economic resources from parents to children alone cannot explain this increase and, as Hansen and Toft (2021) found, nor can formal education levels. They argued that wealth inequality must also be explained by the privileged classes’ financial strategies and knowledgeable use of financial opportunities.

How such financial strategies are transmitted to the next generation, however, remains largely unexplained, as most research relies on survey data or register data that cannot fully capture the dynamics within families. The most likely mechanism to explain what happens in the family that promotes wealth inequality may be related to the socialisation that happens in the family, which is shaped by class positions and gender (Cook, 2022). This has been understood as ‘financial socialisation’ (Danes, 1994: 128) of a specific financial literacy – financial values, skills and knowledge – that parents transmit to their children (Shim et al., 2010; Van Campenhout, 2015; Webley and Nyhus, 2006; but see Luhr, 2018). This process is crucial for understanding the reproduction of social inequality, but the existing literature on financial socialisation rarely considers the role of social class (Gudmunson and Danes, 2011; LeBaron and Kelley, 2021).

This paper aims to contribute to filling these two gaps – the wealth paradox in the financial class literature and the class lacuna in the financial socialisation literature – by exploring the financial socialisation of young people growing up in Norway’s middle and upper classes. It is in these two segments of the upper echelons of the class structure that the paradox of the increasing differences in wealth is most acute. Although there are higher incomes in the upper class, both class segments allow room for wealth accumulation as incomes are high in both segments (Lierse et al., 2022). Consequently, they have comparable opportunities for investing – yet they prioritise differently. We ask: How does financial socialisation differ between middle- and upper-class families, and in what ways are financial orientations passed from one generation to the next, shaping children’s financial orientations through parental influence? Rather than focusing only on the transmission of financial knowledge, we aim to explore financial socialisation in terms of the dialectic between the objective structures and the subjective orientation – desires, excitement, fears and worry – with attention to what is at stake in people’s everyday lives.

We draw on a framework of classed family practices that explores the transmission of social class from parents to children, inspired by Bourdieu and building on and extending his work (Irwin and Elley, 2011; Lareau, 2003; Vincent and Ball, 2007). The study is based on interviews with parents and their children from middle- and upper-class backgrounds in two Norwegian communities, followed longitudinally from 12 to 16 years of age. Our analysis suggests that the middle-class parents’ orientation can be associated with ‘looking down’, emphasising potential risks and instilling in their children lessons to maintain their socioe-economic position. The parents in the upper class transmit to their children an orientation of ‘looking up’, emphasising the importance of play and potential growth. Thus, financial socialisation aligns with the logic of expansion and growth, serving to legitimise and increase existing privileges.

Financial Socialisation

The transfer of financial knowledge from parents to children is commonly described as financial socialisation, a process in which ‘individuals acquire and develop knowledge, beliefs, behaviours and norms that influence their subsequent financial practices’ (Kim et al., 2011: 668). This socialisation can occur directly, through ‘purposive’ efforts within families to impart financial values and behaviours (Gudmunson and Danes, 2011: 649), or indirectly (Danes, 1994) through parental modelling (Rosa et al., 2018) where children observe their parents’ financial behaviours. Throughout childhood, financial socialisation can also be learned in various arenas, such as within the family, at school or through media (Serido et al., 2020). Although school-based financial education has gained importance (Sherraden et al., 2011), parents exert a greater influence on children’s financial socialisation (Shim et al., 2010). The financial socialisation young people receive in the family growing up influences the development of their financial behaviour (Allsop et al., 2021) and is particularly crucial for establishing a foundation for future financial outcomes (Gudmunson and Danes, 2011; Serido and Deenanath, 2016).

Social class plays a monumental role in the socialisation that occurs in the family. For example, Lareau’s (2003) influential analysis of childcare logics in American middle- and working-class families shows class-specific approaches leading to the transmission of distinct advantages or disadvantages from parents to children. In middle-class families, Lareau identified a childcare logic termed ‘concerted cultivation’, emphasising hands-on involvement in schooling and activities. Lareau’s (2003) findings suggest that middle-class children are groomed to stand out and navigate life with entitlement. They are taught the logic of long-term investment in many fields (Stefansen and Aarseth, 2011), most particularly in education (Irwin and Elley, 2011), but also in other fields, such as sport (Stefansen et al., 2018) and health (Eriksen et al., 2024). Insight from the Lareau school may be employed to better understand the transmission of a particular orientation, a way of being in the world socialised from and into different habitus – that is, a shared system of internalised structures, perceptions, skills, ways of thinking and tastes in common to all members of a group or class (Bourdieu, 2007). While capital in Bourdieu’s framework denotes the resources available, whether economic, social, cultural or symbolic, habitus shapes how individuals interpret, act upon and mobilise these resources. However, within this school of thought, the role of financial investment seems to be underexplored as it often fails to examine the transmission of financial values and practices, thus limiting our understanding of how financial knowledge and orientation act as cultural capital passed down across social classes.

Conversely, there is limited knowledge in the financial socialisation field that has been preoccupied with examining the influence of parents’ social background. The research that does exist shows a clear and long-lasting impact. Children raised in lower-income households are more likely to make poorer financial decisions as they mature (Draut and Silva, 2004), and middle-class parents are more willing than working-class parents to support educational loans and directly educate their children in financial matters (Luhr, 2018). Little attention has been devoted to the higher strata of the class hierarchy in terms of financial socialisation. One exception is Sherman’s (2017) investigation of parental strategies within the economic upper class in New York. She argued that these parents endeavour to cultivate their children through the complexities of navigating privileges and interacting with people from varied social backgrounds. Her term ‘conflicted cultivation’ encapsulates this dual purpose – equipping children with ease regarding material and cultural advantages while shaping appropriate behaviour. These dynamics are pivotal in justifying class inequality and instilling a ‘habitus of legitimate privilege’ in children (Sherman, 2017: 3). The same ideal of downplaying elite status is also present in Norway (Vassenden, 2024). We suggest that one aspect of this privilege is the notion of a distinct ‘ease’ (Kahn, 2011) among the elite. Khan argued that young people from privileged backgrounds navigate the world with a sense of ease, unlike their peers, who lack similar socio-economic backgrounds. Their privilege does not stem merely from the credentials from the school they attend but also from the ease they adopt when navigating the complexities of the school’s social and academic interactions. ‘Ease’ encapsulates the elite’s feelings of invincibility, confidence and receptiveness to new opportunities.

If ease is what may characterise part of the elite habitus, it is a fear of falling – an ‘unease’ – that has commonly been used to describe aspects of the middle-class habitus. The fear-of-falling thesis (Ehrenreich, 2020) captures ‘an anxiety-driven urge to optimise life chances’ in the middle classes (Aarseth, 2018: 1088). Vincent and Ball (2007: 1062) argue that this fear leads middle-class parents to attempt to enrich their children and to ‘make up’ a middle-class child ‘in a social context where reproduction appears uncertain’. This is similar to Lareau’s (2003) suggestion of the effect of middle-class parents’ ‘concerted cultivation’. The idea that the ‘enriching’ of the middle-class child is merely fear-based has been nuanced (Aarseth, 2018; Irwin and Elley, 2011). However, the enriching in these accounts is symbolic; the children are enriched in terms of skills and values that will enhance their (educational) life chances. In terms of concrete enriching – that is, enhancing the children’s material and financial life chances – we argue that the fear of falling is concrete for a specific middle-class situation of tenuous material conditions and perceived risk.

Method

The paper is a part of LifeChances, ¹ a project aiming to examine how divergences among young people evolve over time and may lead to unequal life patterns. It draws on interviews conducted within the qualitative longitudinal research programme Inequality in Youth, a study of young people and their parents across four diverging sites in Norway. This paper focuses on two of these sites, which we have called ‘Middletown’ and ‘Greenville’. Middletown is primarily middle-class and a multicultural suburban area featuring various housing types with a diversity among its predominantly well-educated residents, including professionals in education, engineering and economics and one PhD holder. Greenville is primarily upper-class and among Norway’s wealthiest; it comprises highly educated individuals working in cultural, professional or financial upper-class segments. The data consist of interviews with both young people and their parents – in total, 29 children and 17 parents (11 mothers and six fathers). Inequality in Youth is an ongoing research programme, and at the time of this study, the young people had been interviewed three times: at ages 12–13 (2018), 14–15 (2020) and 15–16 (2021). The interviews with the parents were conducted when their children were 15–16.

The ascribed class position is determined based on information about both parents’ occupations, using the Oslo Register Data Class Scheme (ORDC), which aligns a Norwegian class context with Bourdieu’s model of social space (Hansen et al., 2009). In Middletown, all participating parents had middle-class occupations. In Greenville, most parents had upper-class occupations, while some held upper-middle-class jobs. Nevertheless, all had chosen to live in Greenville and often inherited large homes, reflecting ‘old money’ and a habitus consistent with upper-class lifestyle. All interviewed parents were White, primarily in heterosexual marriages, with some having experienced divorce.

Qualitative longitudinal research implies a need for ethical considerations. As our data consist of interviews with both young people and their parents, there was special consideration regarding the participants’ anonymity. Over time, risks and vulnerabilities accumulate because of the amassed information the researchers gain about the participants (Neale, 2013). To ensure confidentiality, we explicitly communicated to the participants during the interview sessions that no information would be shared between the children and their parents and vice versa. All identifiable details were anonymised.

We used two different semi-structured interview guides for the children and parents respectively. The interviews with the young people covered topics such as childhood and everyday life, where we, for example, asked them to describe a normal day in their lives to grasp their activities and practices. The parent interviews covered everyday life in the family, children’s future careers, educational ambitions and more general orientations, as well as more specific questions about finances, including questions about personal economy for themselves and their children. The interviews were conducted by the authors and the Inequality in Youth research group. After interviewing, we wrote reflective notes from each interview. Using these notes and through close reading of the interview transcripts, we coded the material and identified recurring themes in line with Braun and Clarke’s (2022) suggestion for thematic analysis. The themes identified facilitated further analysis across generations and between locations.

Analysis

In the following, we first analyse the data in the middle-class community and then in the upper-class community. For each site, we address the class culture and the orientation related to their specific material context for the families, the main lesson taught by the parents and their children’s evolving financial sensibilities.

Looking Down: The Balancing Act of the Middle Class

Most middle-class parents were deeply invested in their children’s opportunities to grow and expand their outlooks and minds. They typically wanted their children to study, travel, play and find their own path in life. They were generally hands-on, scaffolding their children’s after-school activities and, particularly, their educational achievement. As such, their orientation was to look up – to aspire, expand and work for growth, enrich their children in enhancing their self-realisation and education. However, this general ambitious orientation did not extend to their children’s financial socialisation. The middle-class parents’ orientation in terms of their own and their children’s material situations was, as we will demonstrate in the following, one of maintaining their position. This effort was marked by a balancing act of drawing distinctions both upwards and downwards in the social hierarchy. Most acutely, the parents drew a distinction downwards, looking down.

This became visible in several ways. First, their ‘looking down’ was apparent in how they looked at Middletown, the place where they lived. A suburb that used to have predominantly detached houses and gardens, it was swiftly developing into a crowded space with tall apartment buildings, increasing traffic and crime. Many of the parents were unhappy and worried about the development of the place, and both parents and young people felt that it had become too crowded, busy and crime-ridden. Almost all the young people talked about Middletown in similar terms as Henriette: ‘I feel that there are very many people that live here now, and a lot of apartment buildings. Very many different people. There are a lot of different cultures. Maybe people also are concerned about crime.’ Several of the young people had experienced being robbed by boys whom they referred to as ‘gangsters’ from nearby areas known for gangs and crime. ‘Gangsters’ – likely a euphemism for young people with immigrant background – serves as an allusion to Middletown’s proximity to places tainted with the type of racialised territorial stigma (Rosten, 2025) that Wacquant (2008) argued creates feelings of shame and are degrading for those who live there. Most of the young people talked about the increase in gang-related crime as an important reason why they would not consider living there in the future, not only because of the direct risk of being a victim of crime, but because the middle-class lifestyle was at risk. When asked about what she thought she would do in the future, Agnes said: ‘I know at least that I will not live in Middletown!’. The long-term solution to avoid classed degradation was to plan to move to places that had a safer middle- or upper-class association, like the centre or west-side of Oslo, as the majority of these young people aspired to.

In the meantime, the short-term solution was to keep up with the material and symbolic lifestyles of the middle class. When we first met them at the age of 12–13, the young people in Middletown were keenly interested in spending. Having recently started lower secondary school, all of them had smartphones and appreciated receiving expensive sports gear and nice holidays. Most of them said they wanted to have nice clothes, often specific brands, though some thought buying expensive brands was unnecessary. Many, particularly the girls, professed their love of shopping and most chose their own clothes, either buying them themselves or asking their mother – sometimes father – to buy certain things. Rolf said, at 12 years old, ‘When Dad was in the US, I got a lot of clothes from nice brands and stuff . . . I’m not that into it, but I do like it to look good’, while Eric said, ‘I buy quite expensive clothes. This one, I bought myself for 900 NOK [approximately €90]. A jumper for 1000 [approximately €100], shoes for . . . yeah [. . .]. I usually split the cost with my mom.’ As with the young people Pugh (2009) studied, keeping up a certain level of consumption seemed necessary for keeping up with the Middletown culture in order to belong and fit in with peers.

The middle-class parents’ main lesson for their children was that money was a serious matter and not to be treated lightly, but that spending was necessary to sustain a level of consumption essential to fitting in with peers. It was necessary to spend some money on luxury items, to go on holiday and have a summer house and some expensive things, shoes and clothes. The young people of Middletown were given specific objects, especially expensive clothing, by their parents under certain conditions. It was acceptable to buy something very expensive if ‘everyone’ else had it, if it was something they really wanted and if they paid for (some of) it themselves. It was a strategy for balancing accountability and luxury. The parents typically conveyed this strategy as this father did:

If it’s a jacket of a certain brand, we might feel that the brand costs more than we think is necessary – that you can get a cheaper jacket – well, still a very good jacket. Um, so we say that it’s okay. Like the youngest one, she was going to buy these winter shoes [of an expensive brand]. And then I say, ‘I’ll cover 2000 NOK [approximately €200]. If you want something more expensive, you have to contribute yourself.’

In line with findings from (Pugh, 2009), this father was trying to instil financial responsibility in his children while also allowing for status symbols that could help keep the young people afloat in their peer environment. While emphasising the young people’s own agency in and responsibility for wielding their money, the lesson conveyed by middle-class parents is that spending is the most important thing money can do. This may be understood as a conscious or unconscious way to maintain status and avoid falling behind the material and symbolic lifestyles of the middle class.

Because they acknowledged that having the right things is important for their children’s dignity, the parents must also help them understand how this spending may be possible – through prioritising. A forceful example of how they taught their children prioritising appeared when their children received money gifts when they were confirmed at around the age of 15. ² In most cases, this was the most money they had received over which they also had some degree of control. The parents guided their children in managing this money but let the children choose to a certain extent. While the young people typically spent some of their gift money, they commonly also saved some of it, placing it either in a savings account or leaving it in a debit account. Many saved for a concrete purchase they had planned in the near or not-too-distant future, such as an expensive phone or, commonly, a driver’s licence. For example, Trine kept her confirmation gift money in a savings account for half a year, until recently, when she wanted a new mobile phone. Her mother, Tone, explained how she had guided her:

We said that you can get it as a Christmas present, but you must pay something yourself. Because you do not simply get such an expensive Christmas present (laughs). So . . . then she used, eh . . . yes, I think it cost 13,000 NOK [approximately €1300]; it was an iPhone 13. She paid about 3000 NOK [approximately €300] using her confirmation money. She also got some money from me and some from her father.

This was typical of the responses made when guiding the children in managing their gift money, letting them understand that it was a lot of money, that money is not infinite and is not to be toyed with. Their guidance has a shimmer of gravity, as how to spend it is thought through, discussed and debated. What is conveyed is that money is a serious business.

Closely related to conveying the serious business of managing money through prioritising was a third message: to spend money on luxury items that are important to fit in is acceptable, but gluttony or conspicuous wealth is not. A disdain towards those who have too much and who do not need to prioritise is clear from Eli’s mother:

[The children] have friends who have received a lot, like holidays from their parents and advancement on inheritance [. . .], people who have a different financial situation than us. Well, we go on many vacations and [. . .] have actually been able to do things that we’ve wanted to. But we’ve had to prioritise, and these are things we’ve talked to the kids about all along. Because [. . .] if we’re going to buy a jacket for you for 5000 NOK [approximately €500], that means that the other two [siblings] have to get exactly 5000, and then maybe we can’t go on that vacation, or we’ll have to shorten the vacation, and then we can’t rent a cabin for Easter as well.

The choice stands between two different important markers of middle-class status in Norwegian culture: renting a cabin at Easter or buying luxury clothing. While choosing between buying coats for €1500 for three children and doing what they want in terms of travel hardly seems like a dire economic predicament, her perspective is not only that they must prioritise what luxury items to prioritise. She also makes the pedagogical point to her children that their family is not as rich as some of the people they know. Through explanations to her children, a clear distinction towards families where the children have ‘received a lot’ becomes apparent. Spending on the right luxury items must be balanced carefully against overspending and gluttony.

Only two of the Middletown parents said they had saved money for their children. One had saved in a savings account and funds and the other had saved money in ‘Young people’s housing savings’ (BSU), a savings plan with tax deductions for young people under 34. Some had not saved money because of financial constraints. For example, Mia, a divorced mother, explained that she had not saved money for her children: ‘I can’t afford that. I work about 150% to keep the wheels turning, so I haven’t had the opportunity for it.’ Although all the other Middletown parents had far more financial security than Mia, saving for their children was something most could have done but had not considered. Several answered laughingly that they had not saved money for their children but that it sounded like a good idea. Tone, when asked whether she had thought about saving, for example, for their children’s mortgage (BSU), answered, like some others: ‘I realise that would have been a smart idea!’. Rolf’s divorced mother laughingly responded: ‘No, I mean, there I think my dad maybe (laughs) has been a bit more clever’. The lightness with which these parents responded to the question of savings might signify that investing was rarely on the radar at all or not seen as particularly important compared to everyday costs and the prioritisation of certain luxury purchases.

Whereas the economic sensibilities of the young people when they were 12–13 displayed a willingness to pay for nice clothes, their attention had shifted by the time they were 15–16 years old. At this time, many, particularly the girls, were keenly interested in their own future economic situation. In contrast to their parents’ ostensible lack of thought about their children’s economic futures, most of the young people hoped to be rich. A few talked about their future economy with a level of sobriety, wanting a stable and secure income without debt. Most had more optimistic plans, however, like Heidi, who said, ‘I really want to become rich (laughs) and live in a nice flat somewhere’, or Ines, who also wanted to be rich ‘and have a very, very, very big flat, like a penthouse right in the city centre. I don’t want a big family, no children or anything. I’d rather just have a lot of money, be able to travel, have things to do, and be able to shop and stuff.’ The young people who wanted to become rich did not have any clear ideas about how that wealth would come to fruition, although some had ideas about living cheaply with their parents while they saved money and worked, like Eli, and a few had hopes of getting well-paid jobs, like Roy, who wanted to become an estate agent or an electrician because ‘the money is good’. Neither they nor their parents mentioned investing. The main lesson that the young people from Middletown had been taught was that money is rather serious and that one needs to prioritise. But they had also grasped the second part of the lesson: that surplus money can be used for spending in order to keep up the middle-class living standard. In their later teens, this understanding developed into a desire for a high level of wealth that may not be a likely outcome for most of them.

Looking Up: The Entitlement of the Upper Class

All parents in Greenville, the upper-class community, consistently show a high level of investment in their children, particularly in their early years, participating with them in leisure activities, such as skiing and tennis. This involvement often includes bringing the children to these activities and, at times, actively participating as coaches. As the children grow older, the parents continue their strong commitment to their children’s education and future careers. They place great emphasis on their children figuring out for themselves what they consider is a meaningful job to have in the future – a consideration that, ostensibly, is not influenced by economic concerns. Instead, parents take it for granted that their children will have a high degree of financial freedom in the future. Furthermore, the material context – their wealth and where they live – constitute a basis for economic entitlement among the parents. By emphasising opportunities and growth over risk and potential loss, they embrace an embodied way of being that aligns with looking up – an orientation that resonates with Khan’s (2011) concept of ‘ease’. This underscores how cultural codes themselves constitute privileges within the economic sphere.

The parents in Greenville generally framed the area as an excellent and secure place to raise their children. Those who had grown up in the area themselves wanted to let their children grow up in the same environment. They liked its proximity to attractive hiking and recreational areas in both summer and winter, while also being close to the city centre. Greenville is dominated by expensive detached houses with gardens. All the families live in villa-style homes, and many employ au pairs. Although they rarely discussed status symbols, some of the parents were explicit about the expensive lifestyle that living there demanded. As one mother, Christin, said: ‘It is a very homogeneous place. It’s like it is in lower secondary school, you don’t want to stand out. [. . .] We’re in snob-land, you know.’ Maintaining a Greenville lifestyle demands certain conspicuous activities, such as flying abroad on holiday many times a year, owning a nice house and one or two holiday homes.

Most of the parents, however, were reluctant to be identified as part of the upper class simply because they lived in a wealthy area. Pernille’s mother said: ‘We live in a place where many people have quite a bit of money. Not that we are struggling, but we are not like that. We are just regular people.’ Talking about themselves as ordinary people in an extraordinary area is a self-presentation we saw among several parents. They enjoyed living there, yet simultaneously, they distanced themselves from an often-ascribed collective identity as part of a wealthy and affluent elite. By establishing types of symbolic boundaries (Bourdieu, 1984), it is possible to find a balance for themselves and, moreover, impart to their children the skills of belonging to the elite while seamlessly blending in with those ‘below’.

Blending in with lower classes could be rehearsed; the parents commonly felt that there were important lessons for their children to learn from temporarily living in other places while being students. In this way, children can be exposed to and learn to interact with people who are different and live under conditions different from their own, which might come in handy at a later stage in life. This perspective aligns with Sherman’s (2017) observations of the upper class in New York, where parents were concerned with preventing their children from developing an entitled mentality, instead aiming to instil virtues in their children, such as strong work ethics, prudent desires and an appreciation for privilege, while deliberately avoiding explicit discussions about it. Sherman highlighted how this mindset enabled them to perceive their wealth as legitimately earned through entitlement.

The relationship between effort and being able to enjoy life based on what one has earned is a lesson that several of these upper-class parents seek to pass on to their children. Although they may not currently have any financial worries, children should not take their privileged upbringing for granted. The orientation conveyed is that one must make an effort and that achieving things is about earning them through hard work. When Thomas’s father told us his story, he emphasised that wealth is not good for the young in the cultivation that parents seek to achieve: ‘You have to make an effort to deserve some things. I think, in the area we live in, there are many resourceful people and children who get everything they want. We know that it’s not good for them. It doesn’t make them better or stronger persons later in life, rather the opposite.’ Another example is Pernille’s mother, who talks about why her 17-year-old daughter worked in a kindergarten as an assistant without getting paid during her first year there. Instead, her parents paid her. In this way, the parents cultivated their daughter to pursue her passions and learn that a job represents a means to achieve something else. She explained: ‘I encouraged her to contact the kindergarten herself [. . .] and offer her services for free. And then we said that if they need it, we can pay you a little bit like a summer salary. That way, she got her first work experience.’ The lesson from this is that a job is about the significance of attitudes. One should be trained by daring to make first contact, applying oneself and being exposed to different types of people. The lessons that families in the area seek to transmit to their children echo the ideas of Khan (2011: 14), who argued that ‘privilege can be cultivated and manifested as a sense of self and mode of interaction that advantage them [the children]’.

Simultaneously, prioritisation emerged as a recurring theme in Greenville, akin to what we observed in the middle-class families of Middletown. However, whereas the middle-class parents’ need to prioritise came out of necessity, the need was rather a matter of cultivation for the upper class. For example, Pernille’s mother, when talking about where they and others in the area went on holiday, did not talk about this as a choice guided by financial need, but rather by fancy or taste: ‘[Our children] experience and have friends who go to the Maldives, and so on. And then they have friends who don’t go to the Maldives. So, it’s the whole spectrum.’ Although she later acknowledged the existence of a financial reality that may limit what is possible, the question of going to the Maldives or not is a matter of taste rather than economic possibilities. It is not what money cannot do but what it should be used for. Similarly, Frode’s father said they had given in to their children’s desire for brands: ‘Yes, I would say that we have given in to that. And I think it’s [. . .] a bit the environment he’s in, and as he is also a very much a part of [. . .] After all, there are other things that are important, but for him, it’s a great joy and fun [in having the right brands].’

Decisions on purchases are based on whether they bring joy to the children rather than on affordability. This sentiment is further emphasised by Julie’s father when discussing his daughter’s pocket money: ‘Often Julie uses [her pocket money] on nails. It doesn’t matter much, because then she gets money from us for something else instead.’ Money is most importantly a tool for self-development, ‘If she can, she works and earns money, so it’s easier to give her money when she needs it, because she works a bit herself’, he continued.

What they teach their children is an embodied way of being, much in line with ‘ease’: to look for opportunities and try new things in a way that resembles play, in terms of personal development, exposure to challenges and economic rewards. The upper-class parents first and foremost instil in their children a security that, together with their favourable economic situation, grants them the luxury of not worrying about financial matters. This kind of freedom provides the opportunity to invest more time and energy in self-reflection, pondering one’s identity and aspirations. Instilling this orientation in them may lead them to focus on potential development and gain, akin to a recipe for further growth – taking greater investment risks for potentially greater gains. This has initiated the practice of the majority among these parents to explicitly encourage their children to invest in funds or shares.

When we first met the children of upper-class families at ages 12–13, their desires were somewhat similar to those of middle-class children. However, the financial surplus in upper-class families afforded these children the opportunity to pursue what they found most attractive. During their teenage years, the differences that had likely been present throughout their lives became more evident in their life projects. When we met them again at ages 15 and 16, both upper-class and middle-class children had changed, and to some extent, these changes led them in different directions.

Take Anders, a Greenville boy. When he was 12, money for him was primarily something that made buying things possible. Two years later, he had delved into stock investments with his father’s guidance. The nascent playfulness in his financial orientation was also visible in his future aspirations, which at 14 included pursuing professional skiing in the United States. Another example is Emma, a dreamer with aspirations of becoming a comedian who nevertheless desired a stable job and financial situation. However, recent uncertainties in her life had made her less confident in achieving these goals, and she acknowledged the possibility of finding financial stability through a wealthy partner. Despite differences in individual ambitions, the common thread is the aspiration to realise one’s potential and to be in a financial situation with enough money to be able to take risks and play.

At age 12, Julie seemed to us a cheerful girl who said she enjoyed buying what she wanted and had few worries. When asked what she spent her own money on, she answered: ‘It varies a bit. If I see something I want, I might buy it. But I also try to save because I really want to travel around the world after school.’ She said that she found earning money to be fun, and her idea at the time was to earn money by coaching at the sports club where she was active: ‘I want to earn money, it’s fun. Maybe be a coach at the club. I don’t know (laughs shyly).’ Confirmation money became an opportunity for hands-on learning and playing without risk. When asked about his daughter’s confirmation money, Julie’s father said: ‘She invests in stocks. Everything.’ Julie received advice from her parents, both of whom had extensive financial experience. According to her father, it was Julie’s own curiosity that prompted them to teach her and enrol her in a stock investment course:

She was eager to try it out. She shouldn’t do it all on her own, so we monitor what she does with the money. We have also considered stopping something if we have to. We have given her a guarantee. If all goes wrong, she will get this confirmation money back. But she does not know. So, she gets affected when a stock goes down. [. . .] Before she is allowed to buy something, she has to understand a little what she is actually buying. We do not say no, unless it is a complete disaster, but she must explain why.

As they guarantee her investments themselves, investing their daughter’s confirmation money is not necessarily or at all about returns; rather, it instils in her a security that she is allowed to play while simultaneously experiencing the potential seriousness of the stock market’s repercussions for herself – while never really risking much.

A final example of how play constitutes part of the orientation of ‘looking up’ is Thomas. In the first interview, he was focused on saving money to buy a PC: ‘It arrived during the autumn holiday and it was great’. When we met him at age 15, he said he envisioned himself having ‘a nice little house where I live now, because I think it’s very cosy there and there’s a nice pizzeria. And if it is closed on a permanent basis, I’ll just have to buy it and make my own pizzeria there.’ Thomas’s belief that he probably will be able to buy his neighbourhood pizzeria himself one day is a testament to his ‘ease’, his sureness of becoming able to adapt the surroundings to his personal desires.

Discussion

This inquiry into financial socialisation and how different financial orientations are classed and transmitted from one generation to the next is crucial for comprehending the underlying factors of social inequality. Based on interviews with parents and their children during their teenage years, we see how the classed background of the parents and the communities in which they live significantly shape their children’s financial perceptions of money, spending patterns and investment strategies. In this paper, we have investigated how this classed cultivation is enacted through the instillation of distinct financial orientations within the habitus of middle- and upper-class children. The interplay between cultural and economic capital becomes particularly pronounced when exploring the transmission of financial orientation from parents to their children. Parents’ understanding of money and the possibilities it affords represents a dimension of their cultural capital, which subsequently shapes their children’s dispositions. These dispositions influence not only how children conceptualise economic resources, but also how they engage with and mobilise them in practice.

Despite middle-class families’ inclinations to invest in, for example, their children’s education, leisure activities and health (Eriksen and Stefansen, 2022; Irwin and Elley, 2011; Vincent and Maxwell, 2016), it is striking that we see relatively little financial investment in middle-class parenting. However, we suggest that the lack of financial investment among middle-class parents may stem from their focus on maintaining the status quo and preserving their class position. Their efforts appear to be driven by a ‘fear of falling’ (Vincent and Ball, 2007), an anxiety particularly felt by these middle-class families in an increasingly multicultural suburb with much perceived risk, increased development and a threat to their memory of a peaceful middle-class neighbourhood. This fear did not necessarily lead to financial choices in terms of investment but was rather directed towards obtaining status objects. This maintenance-oriented mindset is reinforced by a serious approach to financial matters: there is little play with money among Middletown parents, though there is much spending.

In contrast, the upper-class children we interviewed develop a financial orientation distinct from that of the children in the middle class. The difference between the two class cultures becomes evident in that while the young people from Middletown desired to be rich, the Greenville youths learned how to become rich. The upper-class children view money as a means for growth, fostering a sense of ‘ease’ and confidence in economic arenas, and they are trained in investment logic. They are taught to play with money – underpinned by the belief that there is no real risk. This idea of play is crucial. Within the upper-class economic community, parents cultivate a growth-oriented logic, encouraging investments and nurturing a mindset focused on future benefits. It is through this explicit transfer of knowledge, as well as the instilling of an ontological and material security, that they transmit to their children that private finances are a source of dreams, possibilities and a venue for play. The privilege of broader entitlement, particularly the absence of economic concerns, enables experimentation. The relationship between effort and being able to enjoy is a lesson that several parents seek to pass on to their children. However, although the Greenville youths may not currently have any financial worries, they were also taught that they should not take their privileged upbringing for granted. The message conveyed to their children is that success requires effort and that achievements are earned through hard work (Sherman, 2017). This argument reflects the concept of meritocracy prevalent in most societies with egalitarian values, where one’s social and economic position is seen as a result of effort rather than luck, social class or place of birth (Ljunggren, 2017). Upper-class parents legitimise their advantages by distancing themselves from an ascribed identity of being wealthy and by exposing their children to experiences that justify their privileged status.

The findings presented here show that economic inequality is reproduced through more than the simple transfer of financial capital from parents to children. We argue for a more explicit focus on habitus-driven practices and how families navigate financial environments. Financial literacy extends beyond mere knowledge acquisition: it is embodied and emotional, which explains why parents play a more significant role than schools in financial socialisation. While middle-class parents often emphasise prioritisation and instil caution against making mistakes, upper-class parents impart an adaptable orientation – a way of engaging with the world that is transferable across arenas. This approach is made possible by their financial security, which provides the privilege of being able to play, experiment, fail – and ultimately grow.