What is my class/cultural background, anyway?

Some of you know that I've occasionally described my parents as "living several social classes below their income".  This isn't entirely accurate, but it definitely feel like they don't fit into any of the "standard" American social classes that the media likes to talk about and portray.  Figuring out what my class background growing up was has been tricky for me, because it seems like my family didn't have much in common with those of people I knew in high school, or in college, or in grad school.

That said, while I was at MIT, I started to recognize that my childhood environment wasn't sui generis: there were certainly other people in Cambridge who seemed to be rather similar.  I think I first came to this realization the one time I attended Christmas Revels' "Riversing" event: a vaguely "civic pagan" folksinging Fall Equinox gathering on the Charles in Cambridge.  I am coming to believe that my mother's social class---and to a large degree, the background I was raised in---is a small but broadly distributed subculture/subclass that exists among roughly-middle-class (and some poorer), largely white Americans.

I don't have a name for this class, and don't know if it has one, but I'd very much appreciate suggestions, and comments from anyone who thinks they recognize it among people they know, particularly themselves and their families.  For now, I'm attempting to extrapolate it from my mother and a few other people of her generation I know or know of: Jane, the mother of my best friend growing up; Barbara, the mother of my friend The Bird; possibly the mothers of my friends Jan and Niphada, and Betsy, who I know through the Medieval Grad Student.  

Traits that seem to be correlated with this class, at least in my mind:

• A very strong focus on education and being well-read for their own sake, rather than seeing education as primarily a means to social status or a higher income.
  • Tendency to have lots of books around, and perhaps limiting both their kids' and their own use of TV and video games because they "rot the brain".
  • Not playing the "college admissions game" of the upper-middle class.  I never took any sort of SAT prep classes or went through the other rituals of trying to impress colleges that most of my classmates at Caltech and MIT went through if their families could afford them.
  • Being more fine with academic outside interests / tending to want to read about everything, rather than focusing on knowledge that's useful or professionally relevant.
  • All but one of my mom and her five siblings ended up being teachers or librarians.
• If religious, they're religious in non-traditional, generally more eclectic/liberal/ecumenical ways.  A certain sort of what I call "civic paganism" is at least tolerated by them.
  • The "civic paganism" I have in mind includes the town May Day festivals my mom took me to in towns we otherwise never visited, the Greenbelt "Green Man" festival, and Riversing and Revels in general in Boston.  It's often tied to environmentalism.
  • This group does seem to have an over-representative number of people from Jewish or Catholic backgrounds.  Jan suggests there may be an immigrant connection.
  • If not religious, tend to still care about some of the ritual/festival trappings of their childhood religious background.
• Identify as politically liberal, though usually not far-left-radical: more likely to identify as liberal democrats or socialists, but unlikely to be communists or anarchists.
  • Likely to go to protests / participate in boycotts / etc.
  • Particularly anti-big-corporation stance, and likely to be pro-union even if they aren't in a union or at a job level that is usually unionized.
  • Think the world has serious problems that need to be fixed, but also comfortable with a number of things they don't want to change, unlike the more "burn it all down" positions of some of my more left-wing friends.
• Relatively gender-non-conforming, but not ostentatiously so.
  • Ignore gender norms they don't care for, but not enough so to be read as visibly queer.
  • Women tend to not wear makeup much, and wear little jewelry, usually things with symbolic significance, either personal or political/religious.
  • Men don't seem to care that strongly about sports / don't fit into standard American masculinity in other ways.
• Despite the above, a noticeable tendency toward stay-at-home mothers.
  • I think this is related to the strong focus on education.  "Education is so important I want to be sure I have the time to make sure my kids' are educated properly."  Examples of this include my mom's spending a huge amount of time focusing on my schoolwork when I was in grade school, and her insistently teaching me phonics (well after I learned to read) because she thought it was the "right way to learn" and the school wasn't using it.  Also, Jane homeschooling bother her kids, after having sent them to a Montessori school for a couple of years.
  • A tendency to return to the workforce, in ways that don't necessarily make economic sense / seem economically necessary after kids grow up.  My mom substitute-teaches (see, teaching!) even though it leaves her exhausted and my parents don't need the money.  Barbara went back to college for a BS in civil engineering (her first was in physics) and became an environmental engineer.
• Very community-involved, though not necessarily that interested in leadership roles, other than "well, if absolutely no one else is willing to do things."
  • My mom and Jane are involved in a bunch of community organizations that otherwise consist of women a generation older than them, and have ended up helping run them (Garden Club, Friends of the Library).
  • Go to civic events, and attend debates in municipal elections that almost no one attends.
• I think there's also a bit of a tendency towards selective old-fashionedness, whether about cooking (not owning a microwave, doing things from scratch no one else does), communications (not owning a TV or cell phone, not having cable), or something else.