To not understand people who talk about being the first in their family to go to uni like it’s a badge of honour?

Exactly, or bragging about being the first to buy a house.
Times change and things become everyday occurrences.

Major cope. Again, this just sounds like you self soothing. It’s ’not a big deal’, but you still haven’t managed to do it.

Exactly.
I'm the first ( and only) member of my family to go to university. I wasn't raised by heroin addicts but we were a very poor working class family.

Not only am I the first in my family to go to university but I now have a PhD and work as an academic. Nobody else in my family has qualifications above GCSEs. So yeah, it is a big deal for me.

What exactly do you mean by "back in the day" and how rare do you think it was?!

OP, it really isn't the case that "almost everyone" is the first in their family to go to uni. My dd is currently at uni, and from what I know of her friends, pretty much all of them have uni educated parents.

and if you do go, hopefully no one will be trying to bring you down if you happen to feel proud of the fact that you achieved that with young children!

by the way, when i was at uni several people in my cohort had children already...

Yes agree maybe 30-40 years ago not nowadays!

In which case, I take it that you do not have - by your definition - ‘a decent job’? Do you have a job of any description?

Who made a personal attack that you were a teen parent?
I do also think owning a car in the 1920s was a massive achievement because it was a massive achievement.

It’s a rite of passage that you haven’t gone through, so this is just coming across as petty jealousy and/or making yourself feel better about your teenage pregnancy.

‘It’s not a big deal, I’m going to do it, I’ve got plenty of time’ all sounds like you reassuring yourself.

My parents went to uni- they were both lecturers at universities- their parents didn't. Their parents were very proud of them. My mother's father did his GCESs in his 80s and was very proud of that, too.

Well, I don't think it was particularly rare for people to go to university "back in the day" if we are talking about people whose kids are now in their twenties. But it was indeed somewhat less common than it is now.

But I think people are being unnecessarily harsh and sneery towards the OP. I don't think she is intending to sneer at those who are the first in their families to go to uni, I think it's pretty obvious that she is trying to reassure herself that it won't be a big deal for her kids to go if they want to. I guess nobody wants to feel that they have put their kids at a disadvantage!

It isn’t just a generational difference at all.

You sound quite naive and sheltered from the experiences of others, particularly when you say ‘now it’s expected’.

I’m really proud that one of my DC went to university. He was the first in my family to go. My upbringing was horrific and my early adulthood utterly traumatic. I am amazed every day that I nailed it with my kids. I have independent successful adult children one of whom went to university and the other never. I’m not more proud of the one who went, but I am happy that I managed to raise a child who went to university all the same.

It sounds as if you are sour because you had a child at 16 and haven’t been to university. Why do you care if people are happy their kids are the first in their family to go?

Did I say I was? I'm responding to a specific person. This is further to OP's comment that 'most of our parents' generation didn't go to uni'. Please read before commenting!

It very much depends on your background. There’s lots of intermediate levels between parents who were university graduates themselves and parents who are heroin addicts.

I teach at secondary level and I see lots of bright children who could do really well at uni but they won’t get the chance. Many have volatile home lives that make it hard for them to study. Many will have to start earning as soon as possible to help out financially at home. And many of them just won’t bother because their parents haven’t put any value in education at all so it’s not just not encouraged, it’s actively discouraged. For these kids it would be a huge deal if they went to university. But they won’t because there are too many barriers in their way.

You seem to be basing your opinion on a very narrow viewpoint. Just because it seems normal to you to go to uni, even though your parents didn’t go, doesn’t mean it’s normal for everyone. You need to look beyond your own neighbourhood. There are lots of non heroin addict parents whose children will not go to uni.

But we’ve all got different perceptions. I just find it really difficult to comprehend how you can put down the achievement of others with something you’ve not managed yourself yet.
I was also a teen parent and had been to uni by your age. Maybe give it a whirl and see if you think it’s so straightforward afterwards?

I'm with you op, people seem proud to be the first in a family to accrue massive debt to get a degree that may or may not get them a decent job. Tbh nowadays most unis accept all kinds of Alevel results. Not like has to bad AAA. Great if you want it but it is not a huge achievement.

I say that as a parent of dc who went to uni plus dc that didn't. All equally fabulous.

Then you are very much NOT the type of person the post is about.

My DS has a friend who was on FSM and is currently at Cambridge, he was the second to go as his older brother went to Oxford, it certainly wasn't easy for him or part of the course or expected.

Neither me or my husband ever thought about uni being something out of reach or hard to access. Our parents had gone, they took us to open days or at least paid our train fare, had money to support us when we were there and told us all about uni life and knew roughly which A-levels were needed for which course. We just fell into uni as the next logical step after school. That is not the same level of achievement as someone who did not have have all those advantages and family expectations and had to work hard to do something brand new for their family with less guidance and often less resources.

No it isn't. You deal with the generational expectations from your family that you WONT go to university because it feels so exceptional. My parents knew I was exceptionally gifted as it opened doors for me at school. My mother when I went to university was STILL astounded as her idea of what I'd achieve was 'i thought maybe you'd get a good job at the credit union or in the civil service, maybe a book keeper, I never for a second thought you'd go to university' the you open doors for others because after me each of my siblings followed and my older siblings went back to education later to get his degree.

There are a million small things against you from the expectations that you find work asap to contribute to your home, from affording everything you need for uni, reference books are so expensive and I was the only kid in my class using the library books without my own at home. And you work alongside university to afford the basics while you see friends whose parents are professionals already sending weekly funds and the idea they'd get a job when they could concentrate on their studies is ludicrous.

The fact you don't understand it's an achievement is one of the big reasons why it IS, you forever feel like you're acting the part as your life experience is so different from everyone else you're around you actually hide so much of yourself. My husband and iw ere both first in our families and it brought us together the shared experience of all we'd had to teach ourselves.