“The class consciousness of the 1950s reflected the strength of the industrial economy,” says Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin, “with its manufacturing jobs that required discipline and hard physical labor. That was the heart of the blue-collar image. It was distinctive. It was highly visible. It produced high wages. Consequently, it was celebrated.”

Now jobs at the Ford plant have been replaced by jobs at the burger joint. A Ph.D. no longer means lifetime employment. Home ownership has reached a 20-year low. Married parenthood that defined the middle and working class is increasingly uncommon.

But some scholars believe that Americans, still enthralled with the post-war idea of “The American Dream,” have yet to update how we think about class in the face of this disruption.

“People are caught in the wave of changes without the tools to think about it, to talk about it,” said Michele Lamont, a Harvard sociologist who has written on class identity in the U.S.