How do you define class?

We live in a huge house, have two new cars, dh has two degrees and is in a highly skilled profession and I am two years into a degree but I work in a shop and he comes from a council estate. We are quite happily proud to be hard working class. I really could not give a badgers arse whether someone views me as any less because of this. Scareyteacher is right though. You should judge people on who they are, not what they are.

See that's the thing - I don't spend my life striving and comparing... but I couldn't describe myself as working class or upper class...

It seems that as long as you aren't middle class you are fine
All that endless bloody striving and comparing

I don't think the usual set of definitions of class is all that useful - there's such a variety of people in any of them, that you just can't generalise.

I know I'd be counted as middle class - we own our house in a "nice" neighbourhood, university educated, professional level job etc. But when people talk about what middle class people are like, it really doesn't seem that much like me - and I certainly don't aspire to be upper middle class! We don't privately educate, or have dinner parties, have a cleaner, or go skiing - and wouldn't do any of those things even if we had enough left after paying the mortgage.

Equally "working class" can cover anything from someone who's happy to have a trade, a rented home, a few pints in their local on a Friday night, to someone determined to "make something of themself".

So in all, I don't think those categories tells you much - you would have to list a much more detailed set of shadings to be meaningful.

Do you ignore sell by dates on food? If yes you aren't middle but you could be either working or upper. If you put jam in the fridge you are almost certainly middle - prob lower middle.

I'd say it's got a little more to do with attitude and education than with income: a supermarket shelf stacker doesn't become an aristocrat just by winning the lottery.

I come from the very bottom layer of the aspirational middle classes so i'm a peasant with pretensions.

Aristos - do what they like and don't care what anyone else thinks.
Upper Middle - want to marry up to aristos see Kate Middleton (if she is upper middle?).
Middle - always aspiring to be upper middle.
Lower middle - think they're upper middle.
Working class - traditionally also don't care what others think.

Soooo, Aristos and Working Classes have more in common than the others.

I'm half joking, obviously!

Read "class" by Jilly Cooper - bit dated but highly educational if, like me, you were born working class with pretentions!

Strictly speaking, I take a Marxist view- i.e. how much control of your working environment you have, if you manage/employ others etc.

But cultural definitions predominate in here, and basically mean "Are you a bit common or not". That is not about class, to my mind.

Does class matter? I'm not proud and will talk to anyone...I'm a teacher.

I have met some very unpleasant people who regarded people they judged as not PLU as way beneath them, and other totally charming people who had little education and didn't earn a great deal.

It's the person that matters, not the label.

you are WC apsiring MC

i hate aspiring - its like this ladder and you get the wc at the botom and then somehow everyone wants to be MC.

i have a degree, i own a house, we have 2 cars, we are in well paid jobs. I have a range cooker, don't have a telly. I am firmly working class. I am proud to be working class.

No idea. I'm American, but check out the degree thread...