Wealth runs through many extended families, but it never runs smoothly. Some branches are corporate-comfortable: high incomes, large homes, no visible worry about money. Others are set to inherit millions once their parents pass. And then there are the working-class branches, steady in modest jobs, living without complaint. Comfort and precarity exist side by side. You would think that kind of proximity might inspire consistent mutual aid. Instead, what flows through many families with these dynamics is judgment.

Imagine one cousin living in an affluent suburb with her husband, their salaries solidly in the top tier. Yet she has a sister who struggles to pay rent and a brother still finding his footing. From the outside, you might imagine resources would flow from abundance to need. But that is not the culture. The siblings remain divided: one family is comfortable, and the others are left scrambling.

Then maybe there is another cousin whose family lives mostly joyful, working-class lives. They don’t complain about not having money, and they don’t pretend to be anyone other than who they are. Yet even they become targets. One will hear the comment at a family gathering that goes something like: I can’t believe she would get another tattoo when she can’t even afford her mortgage. The same refrain has landed on me: I can’t believe she would spend money on that when she can’t even afford… fill in the blank. The spending itself isn’t the problem; it’s the person spending it.

This is where the classism becomes obvious. Any small indulgence by someone without wealth is treated as moral failure. A tattoo isn’t body art; it’s proof of irresponsibility. A trip isn’t joy; it’s evidence of recklessness. Quitting a job you hate before securing another shitty job is completely irrational. In this logic, struggling relatives aren’t people to support, but cautionary tales. Their choices are held up as evidence that they really don’t deserve help in the first place, because if you give it once, they’ll just come back for more.

And so even in families with wealth to spare, support rarely flows, but is more of a trickle. What flows instead is judgment.

I’ve seen how money inside families doesn’t just cover bills; it defines authority. Who earns it decides. Who doesn’t earn it defers. That logic, money as control, echoes through the wider family economies, too, where support is withheld not only for practical reasons but to reinforce hierarchy. To reinforce the line that runs through so many conversations and silences alike: this is mine, not yours.

People who have money aren’t just comfortable, they’re admired. It isn’t framed as luck. It’s framed as a virtuous accomplishment.

That message got driven into me hard. Wealth wasn’t just about security, it was about identity and proving yourself. And I can feel how deeply that logic seeped into me. I don’t like that I’m driven toward productivity as proof of value. I don’t like that I measure myself against people whose admiration is pegged to money. But that’s what was modeled. That’s what was reinforced. It’s written into me in ways I can’t fully escape.

Beneath the surface runs a Protestant ethic that turns money into morality. To have money is to have virtue. To struggle means you failed. The equation is simple: thrift equals discipline, indulgence equals sin. That ethic gets sharpened in family life, when comparison is constant and every noticeable purchase can be scrutinized.

The judgment isn’t only about numbers in a bank account. It’s about a worldview in which financial struggle is shameful. To accept help is to be weak. To need help is to be an embarrassment.

The irony is that the same relatives who scoff at supporting family members often give generously elsewhere. They write large checks to their churches, charities, and causes, and see that as being virtuous. But giving within the family feels different. It feels contaminating. Supporting institutions affirms moral strength. Supporting relatives suggests moral failure.

In my own family, this dynamic shows up every December. Instead of exchanging gifts, we pool money to “adopt” a needy family for Christmas. On paper, it looks generous. In practice, it reveals something more complicated. The chosen family is always someone outside our own circle, always deemed more deserving than the people sitting at our own table. Their need becomes a stage for our virtue, a way to perform generosity without addressing the quieter, messier needs among us.

The result is a culture of withholding. The refrain is not I don’t have enough. The refrain is, This is mine, not yours. Wealth is no longer a resource but a border wall, protecting one’s identity as much as one’s assets. Support is withheld not because it can’t be given but because giving would destabilize the story families tell about themselves: that what they have was earned, deserved, protected through discipline.

Within that story, generosity inside the family circle becomes dangerous. If you pay your sibling’s rent, if you erase your child’s debt, if you cover your cousin’s tuition, then you admit the difference wasn’t all about discipline after all. You admit the game is rigged by geography and luck. This means that even starting in the same household, or the same family, doesn’t guarantee the same trajectory. Families like to pretend equal upbringing = equal chance, but the world keeps dealing new cards after childhood. So better to keep the lines firm. Better to tell the struggling family members to work harder and be more frugal. 

Families like these are small mirrors of America itself. We judge the poor more harshly than the rich. A single mother who buys fast food is castigated for waste, while a multi-millionaire who buys a lil’ Cessna is admired for success. The double standard is the same: indulgence at the top is proof of power; indulgence at the bottom is evidence of failure.

Within families, as within nations, money doesn’t just divide. It shames, and shame is a cheap but powerful tool of control. Shame ensures that those with less hesitate to ask, while those with more can justify saying, “Nope.” It protects the story that wealth equals virtue, even when the evidence contradicts it.

But there is nothing inevitable about this economy of shame. Families could model a different reality. They could treat generosity as a legacy and view support as an act of strength, not indulgence. They could stop using tattoos, trips, or small pleasures as proof of irresponsibility and start seeing them as what they are: attempts to find joy in lives that are otherwise financially constrained.

In America, we are taught to guard our wealth like territory. But families don’t have to be battlegrounds. They can be networks of care and mutual aid. They can model a culture where mine not yours becomes ours.