What makes you middle class?

Going to West Wittering for a day out (no other beach will do)

Ski-ing

People say it's about behaviour but it's about how much money you have.

That said, you could say anyone who works for a living is working class.

Indeed she did but I'm never sure if she did it as a joke or whether she was deadly serious. She was a terrible snob though and complained that working class people's hair smelled (she was able to bathe daily herself of course!)

Even within classes there are several layers...

My maternal granny, living in a rented terrace with her plumber/gas fitter husband and six children was offered a council house about 1930 on an estate that had been built to clear some slums. She flatly refused to go saying, "I'm not going there with that rough lot! The women wear flat caps, drink in the pub and shout in the street."

Granny was working class but never swore, insisted on impeccable table manners and always went out wearing a hat and gloves.

Her sister, of course, codified U and non-U.

I don't know which "class" I am. It's a bit tedious to have to class yourself, or aspire to be a "higher class". It doesn't really matter.

You might like this response from the late Duchess of Devonshire (nee Deborah Mitford), when she was asked where she bought her clothes. She replied, "Agricultural Shows and Paris".

well I’ve gone up a class. I just thought I can’t stand doing more housework than needed😉

My Emma Bridgewater mug collection?

I agree with @Bjorkdidit that it's too subjective to be judged by some kind of scoring matrix. But most people just somehow know anyway. We don't need MN to arbitrate.

We also don't need a scoring matrix or set of measures to spot assholes.

I'm not sure if having the classics read to you at a young age makes you upper middle class, but I'm certain that telling people about it makes you an asshole.

I agree with this. That's how I'd define it too.

CaterhamReconstituted you say that you cant change your class..? What do you base this idea on ?

What people prioritise is individual, surely? You get ‘flashy’ old money and flashy new, as you also get understated old and new, as you get people that will be both depending on what they feel like. Like I said, I’m not disputing that there are those that will fit the ‘rich but with an impoverished aesthetic’ trope, but ime it’s not to the degree mumsnet would lead you to believe. I haven’t personally encountered any, and I’ve spent years in and around those circles 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m not suggesting that they care, or should care, about what other people think at all. My point is that old money and new money will buy what they like, and if what they like is a Louis Vuitton bag then yes, they’ll buy it.

I honestly do know people like this. They literally have nothing to prove to anybody so absolutely don't care about their perceived wealth. They are so well off they don't understand being poor at all, I grew up poor and they have absolutely no idea what it means. It's not just out of touch but they literally can't imagine or comprehend it so I don't even try to bring it up. The poorest people they have met are usually reasonably well off. The ones I know are cash and land rich and own multiple large residencies around the UK. When I first met one of them he was so posh I thought he was speaking German lol. I'm not saying they never spend money, they both spend enormous amounts of money on their pets, skiing and various other pass times that most people can't afford, but what they prioritise is just vastly different.

Well you’ve said it yourself right there - land rich rather than cash rich. I don’t know anyone that is old money and cash rich that fits that stereotype, and I’ve met a lot. I’m sure they do exist, but not to the degree that mumsnet seems to think they do.

@MorrisZapp so true. I also teach in a working class area. Although the parents want them to do well and seek support for them, a lot of parents are very disengaged from education and have a many more issues going on.

It may be a cliche but that doesn't mean that it isn't true. The richest people in DDs school are the ones driving 15 Yr old Subaru Foresters, the men wearing old cord trousers. Their money is in land rather than in their pockets.
They don't give a flying fig what anyone thinks of them. It is just a different mind set/attitude.

It’s a tired cliche that ‘old money types’ don’t spend money, preferring to drive bangers and wear moth eaten clothes. While some old money types may not buy things from ‘flashy designers’ (plenty do, incidentally. I know plenty ‘old money’ types that have quite the LV/Hermes/Dior/Chanel collections), that doesn’t mean they’re not keeping brands like Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli in business. Old or new, those with wealth spend what they want to, within their means.

The old money cliche also usually gets trotted out by those who are neither old nor new money, but who want to put the flashy little upstarts in their place as beneath them in the class spectrum. While some old money look down on new money, there’s quite the history of new money bailing old money out (see the Dollar Princesses).

My husband is solidly American upper middle class, whereas I would be new money I suppose, from parents who were white collar/‘the middle class’ in a socialist country.

I suppose within families you discuss aspects of class, without mentioning class per se - e.g. I'm unusual in my extended family in not having been to private school - but I grew up being quite capable of discussing them, knowing which ones locally and nationally were considered good, despite it being irrelevant to my own life. I also knew which newspapers one should read, all sorts of things like that.

Most people in most societies absorb all sorts of codes about how you live there, and while a lot of it may be specifically taught ("we don't do that, darling,") to children, it's not something you go to lessons for, in general. (Do finishing schools still exist? I imagine there are still places you can learn manners and deportment if you really want, but it seems rather '50s to me.) Things are just passed on and we don't think about it very overtly. And everywhere does that to some extent, but the English class system does seem a more extreme way of doing it than other places - however, I don't think it's as it once was, partly because TV and the Internet means we all have more access to people whose lives aren't like ours.

I’ve only ever seen it discussed here too but I think some people must be super aware of it and have lots of comments made grown up about class perceptions and fitting in etc. Discussed is maybe a poor choice of word but I don’t see how anyone can get to having such defined ideas about class without it being stressed as being important them growing up.

No, I imagine it might feel rather personal with family, especially if individuals or subgroups within families sit at different parts of a notional class structure.

Like in my family, my widowed grandfather took my father out of school at 13 because they needed his messenger boy wages, and he stayed at that company, earning very little and refusing promotions because he didn’t want ‘hassle’, till he retired. He and our mum had a lot of children and we grew up at the poorer end of working class — outdoor loo, food declining in quality/quantity towards payday etc.

His younger brother refused to leave school, got himself onto an apprenticeship and ended up being a marine engineer, earned far more, had a middle-class lifestyle (golf, holiday home in Spain, large house in the suburbs), and his children grew up more ‘prosperous lower-middle’.

The gap widened throughout our childhoods and we drifted out of contact with our cousins.

Similar thing happened with my mother and her siblings — she was the eldest, taken out of school and put to work by her widowed mother, while her younger siblings got more education and options.

It must be important enough to some families that it’s a common subject to be discussed.

I don't think I've ever discussed it as a family, only here.

You are right but I still think it would be interesting as individuals clearly think their classification system is a real thing that everyone follows. It must be important enough to some families that it’s a common subject to be discussed. I wonder if it only comes up a lot if you don’t feel like you quite fit in with your school/work/social group and otherwise you are rather oblivious to it most of the time.

The only thing that would prove is that class is subjective, there's no logic involved.

I feel like there should be a board or a thread where you can post your circumstances and be classified by mumsnet. It would be interesting to see people’s logic anyway.
Despite the insistence from
some that everyone knows their class and what class other people are I strongly suspect most of us are unsure.

The class calculator is actually a load of nonsense. It doesn't take educational status or mindset into account. I tried it several times changing the hobbies and it didn't change the result.