Super-Trope to Rich Sibling, Poor Sibling and Humble Parent, Spoiled Kids, since class conflict is a game the whole family can enjoy. Any number of familial relationships can be strained or even irretrievably destroyed when it comes to issues of money or social status. Families can also work well as a way for writers to create a microcosm of broader class trends within society coming into direct conflict with one another.
This is common between Big Screwed Up and Dysfunctional Families. It may lead to fights and tension over dinner when they're all gathered, where the rich family member would throw snide remarks about the less fortunate members.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- IDW Publishing's Transformers original continuity: It's eventually shown that the Autobot Tracks and Decepticon Needlenose are brothers and had previously been in business together, becoming reasonably wealthy and successful. However, Needlenose sympathized with the Decepticon goal of equality (the original Decepticon goal was to do away with the Fantastic Caste System where a Cybertronian's alt-mode affected their social status) and gave up his own wealth and status in the process. Post-war, Tracks still looks down his nose at Needlenose and especially despises his lover Horri-bull, feeling that Horri-bull led Needlenose into a dead-end future.
Films — Live-Action
- In The Descendants, on top of everything else protagonist Matt is forced to deal with (like his wife's impending death, his estrangement from his kids, and the revelation that his wife was cheating on him), Matt has to decide what to do with land that he inherited from his family, as it's been held in a trust for years, but the trust is about to expire. Matt, who has been a successful lawyer and has lived within his means, wants to keep the land undeveloped, as it's some of the last pristine wilderness on Kauai. His cousins, on the other hand, who are mostly working class and have not been living so frugally, want him to sell the land and split the money with them.
- La Bamba: as Ritchie Valens' career begins to take off, it generates a degree of resentment with his older brother Bob. During a Christmas party, Ritchie asks Bob if he bought a gift for their mother, to which Bob explodes at him saying that he should have bought it since he had money.
- Vera Drake: Vera's sister-in-law Joyce is much more aspirational than the rest of her husband's very modest working-class family, which creates a strained undercurrent in their relationship.
- T*Witches: The Disney Channel Original Movie adaptation has Separated at Birth twins Cameron and Alex, reunited at 21, clash over their very different upbringings. Cameron grew up wealthy with a stable family, while Alex was raised by a single mom who she lost a year before the film, currently crashing with her friend's family and trying to find work. Cameron is Innocently Insensitive to Alex's struggles until seeing her home, while Alex initially sees Cameron as shallow and her neighborhood as snooty. However, they eventually bond and bring their respective families, plus their birth family, together.
Literature
- In variants of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index tale types ATU 314, "Goldener" or "The Youth Transformed to a Horse", and AaTh 532, "I Don't Know", the princess (or the youngest princess of three or seven) chooses to marry her father's lowly gardener (who is a prince is disguise, though only the princess suspects that), to her father's consternation and sisters' disgust. In retaliation, the king agrees to his daughter's marriage but banishes her from the palace and has her move out to the gardener's shabby hut, though she couldn't be happier.
- In Every Breath You Take, Virginia's late husband Bob Wakeling had a falling-out with his brother Kenneth "Ken" Wakeling over the family real estate business, Wakeling Development; Bob and Ken both founded the business, but within five years Ken left to pursue his own career in architecture because the business wasn't making money, with Bob buying his brother out. However, eventually Wakeling Development began thriving, with Bob becoming a multi-millionaire and entering New York's high society. Ken tried to get a slice of the pie but Bob refused to let him back in, saying that Ken had given up on their dream and left him to do all the work himself; Ken saw his brother as greedy and selfish for refusing to share. The brothers' estrangement extended to the next generation, with Ken's son Tom resenting his cousins for excluding and looking down on him when all they'd done was be born into wealth, while Virginia and her children saw Tom as a lazy freeloader who felt entitled to his uncle's fortune despite not putting in the work to earn it. Tom and his cousins have since reconciled and work for Wakeling Development together, though it's implied there's still some tension beneath the surface.
- Mansfield Park:
- The three Ward sisters each marry into a different class as adults: one becomes Lady Bertram, a wealthy but sluggish mother of four; one becomes Mrs. Norris, a lower-middle-class parson's widow who helps out the Bertrams; and one becomes Mrs. Price, a poor sailor's wife with many children to care for. Mrs. Price is shunned by the rest of the family for many years for her unsanctioned marriage until she asks her sisters for help after her husband becomes unable to provide for 10 children.
- The class conflict is passed onto Fanny, the protagonist. While she grows up with her wealthy cousins from age 10 on, Mrs. Norris and the Bertrams other than Edmund regard Fanny as lesser and never let her forget it until near the end of the novel.
- From the Marcus Didius Falco series, Fatal Legacy (2023) has the Roman public informer Flavia Albia taking on what she thinks is a straightforward case where she has to locate the documented proof a former slave was granted his freedom. As the slave went on to inherit property and found a lucrative business, with his granddaughter about to enter a good marriage, a lot depends on this. Albia discovers exactly how much money and property is in doubt and who would stand to benefit if its current owner never stopped being a slave and has no title to any of it. And the case, suddenly, becomes a lot less straightforward.
- This is part of Mary's backstory in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!. After Marquis Hart's first wife died, he married his second wife—a woman noted to be of significantly lower status than him—in a controversial marriage. This causes Mary, his only daughter with the second wife, to be looked down upon by her half-sisters, all borne out of the first wife. The latter even call Mary a Red-Headed Stepchild mainly out of this.
Live-Action TV
- CSI: NY: In "The Lady in the Lake," a wealthy young man falls in love with a poor young woman who also happens to be a recovering drug addict. His mother is so against their relationship that she tries to buy the girlfriend off by forging her son's name on a $50,000 check to her. When that doesn't work, she kills the girl and dumps her body in a lake in Central Park.
- Downton Abbey: This proves to be a recurring theme throughout the show, with Mary, Edith, and Sybil's romantic partners all being sized up in terms of where they might fit in relative to the Crawleys' own wealth and social status.
- Gilmore Girls: This is basically the B plot, with middle-class Lorelai having to deal with her Old Money parents after Crossing the Burnt Bridge to give her daughter the shot at the Ivy League school she wants to go to. Her parents agree to pay Rory's prep school tuition, if Lorelai and Rory come weekly for dinner and keep Emily and Richard involved in Rory's life. The next seven seasons are a long tug-of-war between Lorelai and Emily about class values, with Emily determined to give Rory the upper-class advantage she wanted to give Lorelai, and Lorelai resistant to bringing Rory into that world.
- Madam Secretary: Main character Elizabeth McCord came from a wealthy background, but her husband Henry is the son of a steelworker and went to college on the GI Bill. After his father dies, his less-than-affluent relatives get a little grumpy when she's able to cover the bill for the funeral on her credit card.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus: Played for Laughs with the playwright sketch, where a young coal-miner returns home to visit his father, who doesn't approve of him working as a miner rather than an artist:
Father: There's nowt wrong wi' gala luncheons, lad! AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!.Son: There's more to life than culture! There's smoke and dirt and good honest work!Father: Get out! Get out, you labourer!
- Peaky Blinders: Much of the first season revolves around Tommy trying to convince his sister Ada to rejoin the rest of the family in their family enterprise, while Ada wants nothing to do with the Shelbys' illegal operations and would much rather live a working-class life with her union organizer husband.
- The Scotts: Class tensions ripple throughout the family and are largely Played for Laughs, from Henry and Vincent's Rich Sibling, Poor Sibling dynamic to Colette roasting Laura's prim and proper manner of speaking.
Theatre
- Blood Brothers: Twin brothers Micky and Eddie are Separated at Birth but later become best friends without realising that they are related, with the contrast between their respective working-class and middle-class upbringings being the main source of conflict in the narrative.
- A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder: Played for Black Comedy. Monty Navarro spent his life in poverty until he learns after his mother's death that she was an heiress of the incredibly wealthy D'Ysquith family, disinherited for marrying his working-class father. Monty, as eighth in line for the Earl of Highhurst position, decides to improve his station and take revenge for his mother's disgrace by killing off everyone ahead of him in succession. Downplayed since he never tells his victims he is related to them, so it's more of a one-sided conflict.
Western Animation
- DuckTales (2017):
- While Scrooge McDuck is the richest duck in the world, his nephew Donald ended up raising his sister's triplets on his own on a houseboat, drifting in and out of jobs due to his bad temper. While the money wasn't the reason they drifted apart (making this a downplayed example), Scrooge often calls Donald a "deadbeat". In addition, as a preteen first meeting Scrooge, Donald would write emo songs with lyrics like "Gotta Eat the Rich Uncle".
- Also between Donald and his cousin Gladstone, who has never had to work a day in his life due to his insanely good luck. Gladstone often finds $20 bills out of nowhere and gets things like cars and boats for free, while Donald, insanely unlucky, struggles to keep a job and keep his houseboat in order. Donald sees Gladstone as "the worst" and never visits him, while Gladstone is horrified when a spell turns him into Donald.
- Comes up in "Last Crash of the Sunchaser" when Scrooge's great-nephew Louie, who grew up with Donald, is most angry at Scrooge for having so much money and not spending enough to find his mother when she went missing. Meanwhile, a flashback shows Scrooge nearly drained his entire fortune trying to find her — he had to be stopped by his Board of Directors. When Louie later learns this in "The Shadow War: Part 1", he forgives Scrooge.
- The Griffin family from Family Guy is a suburban middle-class family. The father, Peter Griffin, works a blue-collar job, and his wife Lois comes from the wealthy Pewterschmidt family. Some of the show's episodes focus on the antagonism between Peter and Carter Pewterschmidt, Lois' father and Peter's father-in-law.
