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My reaction:
Strickland is roughly the same age as my parents. Remember this was before birth control was so prevelant, and farm families had a natural incentive to be big for the additional labor. With 10 or so kids in the family, your goal is to support those in the household. Except for the oldest boy (who would get the farm), the older and middle kids were on their own after high school. They’d usually ‘not fall far from the tree’, finding jobs less than a day’s drive away, unless marriage or the military sent them farther.

Family size became smaller mid-century, but the paradigm was still similar. The parents were still just getting by or saving for their own financial future. In my non-statistical observation, it’s a relatively recent phenomena (or has it always been a common suburban thing?) that even the oldest should get help to go to college. In my parents family, the youngest couple kids got to go to college, since by then the grandparents were financially solid enough to help; also, cash flow was freed up, with no kid expenses in the household.

{FWIW, myself and all my siblings all paid our own way (me full-time on scholarships and paying my own room-and-board, the siblings went part-time over a decade)}

Strickland was just relating the factual background, and how the family circumstances influenced where he ended up in life. Rural families may likely connect with this background (and perhaps also other lower income families, especially ones with a ‘first one to go to college’ child in it)

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Summary: Strickland is from a rural district. Everyone knows everybody, so slick talk won’t get you anything. This was simply Strickland describing his family background: plain talk about his early influences, not a slick savvy scripted description designed to appeal to all the right voting blocks. It makes him ‘one of us’ even though he’s moved away. Criticism by the fancy talkers will backfire.

[Now, I vote on issues and policies, not emotional ‘I like him’ stuff. However, some of my sometimes naive, ‘too honest for their own good’ family members could have connected with this background if they were OH voters.]

Refs:
http://www.nixguy.com/?p=1802
http://rightangleblog.com/?q=node/818