“Today, it’s mostly government workers,” said Sherry, a contractor. “There are six, seven, maybe eight lawyers. Doctors. Some of their kids go to private school. They all seem to have professional house cleaners and professional landscapers.”

The Sherrys, who left college to start working and earn money, are among a handful of residents who didn’t graduate from college.

“You don’t live in this neighborhood doing what we do,” said Lisa Sherry, who works in the cafeteria at Haycock Elementary School, mainly because the job pays benefits. Even without a mortgage, she walks dogs to make ends meet. Her parents help, covering their granddaughter’s horseback-riding lessons. But the contractor’s family can’t afford the new porch Lisa Sherry would love to build. And she worries that the financial pressure will increase when their daughter enters high school and sees her classmates wearing nice clothes and playing sports that require expensive club memberships.

“It’s hard in this area if you try to keep up,” she said.

Then she paused and added, “Maybe things would be different if I had a college education.”

In some ways, Michelle and A.J. Valinote have the life the Sherrys yearn for.

The couple, who live with their three children down the street, are graduates of Marymount University. A.J. works as a government contractor designing software. Michelle is a human relations assistant manager for a consulting firm.

They moved to the neighborhood seven years ago, and soon put on a small addition that gave them a fourth bedroom and a third bathroom, including one on the ground floor.

Their three children, ages 5 to 11, attend parochial schools, where A.J. volunteers for playground duty. Fundraising auctions at the school reflect the status of the parents. A congressman whose son attends the school donated a tour of the Capitol. A store owner contributed items imported from Italy. Another father who owns an indoor bounce house arena donated blocks of playtime there.

Despite the advantages of living in a modern-day version of Lake Wobegon, where all the kids are above average, residents worry. Many of them, having grown up less economically comfortable, are keenly aware of what it took to get where they are in life. They know that the world has only grown more competitive since then. Will their kids believe big houses and luxury vacations come easy?

Even with good jobs, many residents find it difficult keeping up with the cost of living. And neighbor envy is not uncommon.

Michelle Valinote looks longingly at the large additions some neighbors have made to their homes, and she wishes they could afford the same. Living in the Washington area has simultaneously shielded them from the vagaries of economic downturns, and made it more difficult to keep up.

“We have decent salaries. If you’d have asked me when I was going to college if I’d ever make the amount of money I’m making now, I’d have laughed,” said A.J., who grew up in a semi-rural county outside Philadelphia where only half his high school classmates went to college. “But with the mortgage and tuition, despite having decent salaries, it’s not a cakewalk.”

Some people worry that their children may be too far removed from the way most people live — not just materially but in terms of social values.

“I do get a little concerned they don’t realize the spectrum of intellectual diversity,” said Heather Kimmel, a neuropharmacologist at the Environmental Protection Agency who lives just off Overbrook Street. “We talk to them a lot about it, that not everyone has a college degree and a big house.”

Kimmel, who has a doctorate from Emory University, grew up on the Eastern Shore. Her father, who met her mother in college, taught at a university. But most of their neighbors were blue-collar workers, including their mailman and a paralegal whose husband worked for the local power company.

Her husband, W. David Kulp III, is a noted nuclear physicist who works at the Pentagon. But he grew up in Allentown, Pa., watching the implosion of blue-collar manufacturing.

The couple do not live lavishly. Kimmel, for example, drives a 15-year-old Volkswagen. The divide they feel is intellectual, they said. When Kulp travels outside the region, he says he realizes that people he meets don’t talk much about things such as foreign policy and countering nuclear terrorism, as he does at home with other people with advanced degrees. Instead, he said, “people elsewhere talk more about what they see every day.”

“They mention ‘those people in Washington,’ ” he said, echoing a common feeling that the words are perjoratively pinned on everyone who lives in the region, not just its politicians and bureaucrats.

Anna Mangum lives with her two children behind Kimmel and Kulp, in a three-story house surrounded by a white picket fence.

An executive at a health-care association, she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, two master’s degrees from Berkeley, and went to Scandinavia as a Fulbright scholar.

Many of Mangum’s neighbors are also products of the best schools in the nation and the world, and now work at the kind of jobs that abound in Washington — associates at large legal firms, consultants, think tank scientists and nonprofit executives. Graduates of Harvard, MIT, Duke and the London School of Economics live a few doors away.

While she was growing up in nearby Falls Church during the 1970s and ’80s, Mangum said, the area did not seem as overtly affluent as it is today. Many of the neighboring houses like hers have been transformed, with spacious additions, or replaced by much larger houses.

But the biggest change she notices is how many women have well-paying jobs, sometimes earning more than their husbands do.

“Yes, nationally more women work outside the home than in the ’60s,” she said. “But locally, the additional change is that so many now work in these higher-level jobs.”

Mangum is glad the schools have a community service requirement, exposing children to people who have less. Her son works in a thrift shop and at the Humane Society.

Life in the bubble, she said, carries its own burdens, particularly for children growing up knowing that a four-year college degree is the minimum expected of them, and most will need go on to graduate school.

“It’s a paradox,” she said. “People have lush lives, with all the things they have. But the pressure is intense.”