When do you become middle class?

I’d be more concerned about school shootings and the erosion of women’s rights than the class system, in that case.

When you value education, travel and culture over 50" televisions?
When you encourage children to adopt good manners and become aware that they are not the centre of the universe and that other people have needs and feelings.
When a walk in the countryside, woods or at the seaside out-trumps a massively over-priced and "aimed at children by guilt-tripping their parents" commercial activity.
Where fostering your values is more important than keeping up with the internet.

I wish this whole country would stop using "gross" to describe something they don't like.

It's childish and an Americanism.

When you realise that you can eat olive oil and it’s not just something you use to soften ear wax. My middle class friend 20 years ago showed 19 year old council estate me this, and introduced me to Brie, and stopped me peeling it, pesto, white sauce and many other middle class food delights, proper Eliza Doolittle territory “ar washed me face an ‘ands before I came I did”

Yes, Carole Middleton is the perfect example of someone who has worked her way up the social classes. She was born working class, married a middle class man and with luck, hard work, money and determination has risen up to the upper middles. Her choice of her children's education played a large part in this. Her brother Gary has been very financially successful too, but he is still working class. I would imagine that they have very different accents, behaviour, friendship groups, aspirations and interests.

I'm emigrating to the US in a few weeks and it's music to my ears that the obsession with class (or at least the toxic form this takes in the UK) is not a thing in America. 🥳

@SerafinasGoose can you explain how it works in the US?

Can you ride a horse….?

I've lived in the UK, Canada and Australia.
I miss a lot about the UK, but not the class division. Its just not a thing in many other countries.

Indeed.

I read a while back that the average trade salary is now £10k higher than the average graduate salary. I can well believe this but I'd still consider most of. the wealthy builders etc that I know to be working class.

DH friend who he met when they were at Cambridge was from a council estate, he has done exceptionally well, truly wealthy of all that graduating class. He has however a real chip on his shoulder. His background was easy to spot when he opened his mouth though he tries to hide it. I’m from a very poor and dysfunctional family. My Great grandparents however had been very wealthy factory owners with a house in London and a house in the country. My Grandmother disgraced herself by getting pregnant and marrying down as she used to say in her parents opinion a common soldier, a Sergeant Major and was disinherited.

If you heard myself and my sisters accents you would think we had been to a private school. The accent trickled down from people who I had never even met. When I met DH who is from a family of landowners he assumed I was like him. He calls me his diamond in the rough. The way people speak is still usually the biggest give away as to a background, with a few tricky outliers like myself. If you are looking at it from a sort of My Fair Lady type of slant. My mate is from a council estate she drives a top of the range Mercedes and by her own admission and to her amusement she will always be a council house kid unlike DH mate she makes zero attempt to hide it.

I know I'm working class. My dad was a labourer (and a widower), and we certainly didn't have lots money wise when I was a kid. The odd holiday which was usually camping, most of our clothes and household goods were second hand. He couldn't afford to have us in paid for extracurriculars, but we did get a family horse...but that was because he was friends with someone at the stables.

However, he was also very clever. No formal education of his own, but he was an avid reader of everything. Don't think there was a classic he hadn't read, and he loved music - everything from Beethoven to Bob Dylan. Education was very important to him. I went to university and recieved several degrees (postgrad), and got a very good job with a very high wage. I'm also a published writer.

Our houses are owned outright. Kids play instruments (DH is a classically trained violinist), we have horses, and they'd (the kids, not the horses!) be aghast if someone gave them chips and beans for tea. I think they're probably MC, but I know that in spite of my life I'll always be WC because that's what I grew up with. You can be WC and still have interesting hobbies and a love of books, literature, and art.

I don't see the obsession with it, really. Why does it matter? There's a woman I know from university, she married a surgeon and she's a SAHM. Very obsessed with appearing MC, to the point she won't do things she enjoys (she wants a tattoo, but won't get it. She won't shop second hand. She throws dinner parties and loathes them) to avoid "showing her roots". It's strange to me.

Middle class - well educated, enjoy culture, aspirations, detached house, read...

Mist people on benefits are in work, though, surely, unless they're pensioners.

Class is cultural, so middle classness is about education, especially art, music, literature and philosophy.

Carole Middleton was very working class look how her children turned out!

That would cover middle class too! Most.normal middle class professions would not take home as much as tradespeople these days! It's the upper class who can afford not to work!

My family seriously don't fit any of your tropes. DH and I are both military brats, his family moved a lot, and mine didn't. DH took a tradie/entrepeneur route and started a company, which has employed a handful of carefully chosen people at any time. There's never been so much work we have to take anyone, so we tend to be picky about who we employ. And we employ men and women with gumption.

Oh the WC definitely care about what people think of them, just tell them they are unambitious and you'll get a mouthful.

They just like to make a big show of "I don't care what anyone thinks!" Which is a solid marker of someone who is working class. Along with lots of complaining about people who are richer than them.

WTAF!!!!!

I am Archers to my core, due to my (certainly workong class) mother listening digilently.

The Archers is seriously important and not to be used frivolously like this!!! ;-)

The WC and UC are the most alike; generally comfortable in themselves, probably swear a lot, don’t care about appearances. Might like “high brow” stuff, might like trash TV. MC is the bit inbetween where they stress about how they’re perceived.

Yup! I was pulled into a diversity working grp at my employer ( big MC/UMC profession really hard to break into as a junior because pay is low at that level) and stayed what I thought was the obvious -
We are only going to get a load of the same MC/UMC interns and graduates year after year because they can afford to work for £20k because mum/dad/ granny/trust fund are paying a lot of the bills.
If you actually had to live of the entry level salaries we offer - which you still need a degree to even apply for - you’d struggle.
That caused a right fuss with lots of denial!

It took a while but our grad programme now only takes state educated candidates, we pay them a ‘welcome’ bonus after 3 months, guarantee them 24 month training and the salary just about live-able.
We also have an internship - state school only again- for candidates under 25 without degrees and a commitment to give these candidates financial aid towards degrees long term if they stay with us.

I don’t think it’s about income or job status- it’s more about how you present, hobbies, holidays , schools, how you speak - everything . It’s a vibe ✌️

You can have a working class background & go to uni but the point where you graduate & get a graduate job is the point where you become middle class.

You can have graduate parents but if you don't go to uni & work in an unskilled job then you become working class.

No really obvious economic social classes in India spain Italy Latin america, some may have more opportunities for social and economic mobility. Class is a social contract not a rule of physics but it explains parts of how societies function and how opportunities are not equally distributed.

I think money will increasingly trump class. It already is in a way. I grew up WC, went to Uni, and have a well paid job, same as DH. Most of our work peers come from very MC backgrounds.

We live in a nice home, occasionally go to museums and the theatre, have NT membership and we take the DCs skiing every couple of years but lots of wealthier WC also do these things. They are not the preserve of the MC.

I’d rather be wealthy WC at the pub with my mates than doing many of the things listed as MC, which sound boring as hell. I’d also rather have DC marry rich WC person than a poor MC person sitting in a cold house listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 and being an expert on knowing which fork to eat with which course.

I don’t see MC as aspirational and don’t see WC as being authentic and salt of the earth either.