The American dream is the aspirations of working-class citizens, parents, and immigrant groups to attain their image of a middle-class STANDARD OF LIVING. Americans and people coming to the United States often desire home ownership, better jobs, education for their children, and perhaps their own business. Most working-class parents express the American dream by desiring that their children do better and have more than they did.
World War II, in which many poor and uneducated American soldiers traveled and interacted with people of different social classes and cultural backgrounds, strengthened their desire for a better standard of living for themselves and their children. Sometimes it was expressed as wanting a “bigger piece of the pie” as payment for their sacrifices during the war. Levittown, a major housing development created to meet the demands of veterans for their own homes, symbolized early images of the American dream. Subsequently, immigrant groups have pursued similar dreams, striving to educate their children and to succeed by standards known as the American dream.