Son finds it difficult having posh and not posh sides to the family?

[arrian]

Hello, hope you are all having a good christmas. Just had an interesting conversation with 18 yo ds in the car home from relatives.

He was saying he finds it really difficult having two very different sides to the family
. I think it’s exaggerated, or more obvious by the fact that he saw both my family and dh family today.

I was brought up on a council estate, went off to university, got myself a fairly good professional job. I am much better off now than when I was growing up. My sisters didn’t move from the town.
My parents are both very through and through normal caring working class.

My DS adores his grandparents, but complains they’re a bit boring sometimes. They’re your stereotypical northern, ex-miner brexit voter. Even in my view, quite close minded, but still lovely as family.

DH on the other hand has had a very different upbringing. He went to a top boarding school, and comes from a family that has always had a fair amount of money. His family are very educated, professionals and spread all over the world.

My DS is more like my husband, as he was brought up in a stable home in a nice area and we both had decent jobs. He is currently at Cambridge, following the foot steps of many of his paternal family members and so has a good topic to chat about.

In my eyes, I’d deffo say that DH was a posh git.

My son has told me that he finds it difficult moving from one social setting to the next.

He gets funny looks from my side if he uses a long word, drinks wine, or offers an opinion on something in the news etc. They’ll make half joking comments about him being posh. My dh plays it down completely, and imitates their behavior.
Yet my son said it’s not fair that he should put a false face on.

Don’t get me wrong, he has a great laugh with my family, yet says they’re “boring” and finds conversation to be quite uninteresting; “sandra from the shop is going to Salou, she said it’s lovely”.

It doesn’t help that my parents hate my in laws with a passion, as they think they’re snooty, and will always have more money to spend on gifts, meals out.

The true mark of class is being able to mix in any circle

Which class is it it that has to do this?

Or is it all classes that should be able to do this?

Surely if everyone did this there wouldn’t be an issue

There are some arseholes on this thread.

I had a similar upbringing. One half of my family thought I was posh and the other thought I was a bit common.

Solution? I rarely bother with either side now.

Contrary, isn't Kate Middleton's family from working class backgrounds? Her mother was an air hostess who then made some money through her party hosting business.

As I said before, the vast majority of British people are from so-called working class backgrounds with some experiencing improvements in the social status each generation. That's a good thing and something to celebrate rather than a tool to look down on the family that may have sacrificed to give the generations after them the opportunities they now enjoy.

Weightsandmeasures* surely Kate’s in laws are middle class?

IvyKaty what is middle class vs working class?

I guess you could describe Charles and Camilla and the late Princess Diana as middle class.

The upper class would be someone with old money? Not like the Royal Family perhaps, whose money largely come from the State (although they had a bob or two to start off with)?

Well now you mention it they are getting state benefit, so what class is it when there money comes largely from the state?

Do feel sorry for the OP's son.

One side of his family are (allegedly) nobs, the other side are knobs (with chips on their shoulders about nobs).

@RedForShort. Brilliant post.

Great post @RedForShort

I was your son 25 years ago. My Dad was a 47 year old Commanding Officer in the RAF who married his 20 year old secretary. My mum was as working class as you come, one of 5 who grew up in complete poverty and left school early. My brother and I spent our childhood living between the two worlds. As an adult, I ended up living a lifestyle similar to my Dad and my Brother my Mum. You do learn to adapt and as I got older I learnt to appreciate the joy in both families.

I think your son needs to accept the differences and be thankful for a family that loves and cares for him no matter what their backgrounds are!!

But I think that's the whole point - it's not clear that he feels as if his family do love and care for him. The OP's son isn't saying 'I don't like them because they say 'toilet' instead of 'lavatory'' or whatever the 21st c. equivalent is. He's saying 'I feel uncomfortable because they take the piss out of my accent and think I'm pretentious for liking the things I like so I can't talk about my hobbies or interests'. I don't think it's snobby to be sad about your own family acting like they don't like you very much.

Well, I’m not sure it’s worth chipping in as the OP has gone ‘poof’ but...

I think the bit I would think about as ‘an issue’ is him thinking that meeting people halfway is being fake. A lot of ppl I meet in the late teen age range at work have been given a lot of messaging about being yourself and how people have to be inclusive of them but haven’t got the flip side of understanding that inclusivity/tolerance is a 2-way street. They also haven’t understood about, what I would term, flexing your style to suit a situation. Nor have they learnt about picking the important thing - DH recently said he was worryingly old before he realised that if someone asks you for something which is low effort/no skin off your nose then you do it because it’s nice to be nice and no one likes Mr #1.

If you can teach him about flexing his style he’ll go far. I have realised in life that you can decide to be friends with someone. They might not be 100% your type but if you go in with a ‘we’ll get along’ attitude (rather than a ‘wish I was hanging out with X’ attitude) then things go well.

I have a fairly ‘posh’ Home Counties accent and I get a huge amount of grief I get when I visit family in Lancashire and Yorkshire where cousins on my mums side hail from. It is all well meaning piss taking but after quite literally decades the joke has worn a bit thin.

It is from my experience northerners are way more likely to make an issue of your accent then the other way round. I can’t order a pint in some places ‘op north’ without some ‘posh’ reference. If I take the piss back I am by default ‘a snob’. Ah well

As long as he doesn’t show he looks at them differently I don’t see the problem. It can be hard mixing with people you don’t normally mix with, it would be horrible if he showed it but mentioning it to his mum doesn’t = snob

It is from my experience northerners are way more likely to make an issue of your accent then the other way round. I can’t order a pint in some places ‘op north’

I have it the other way around. I get the “golly a “posh” northerner” 🙄 type comments. Coupled with a few verses of “private schools are full of toffs”

I’m not surprised your DS finds it difficult to reconcile his very different cultural contexts and there is nothing at all wrong with him expressing his discomfort to you, his mother. It isn’t snobbery to dislike the behaviours of some cultures and to prefer the behaviours of others: not all cultures are reconcilable.

Try being a middle class northerner who was born down south and moved when they were 3.

It doesn't bother me now. I don't 'fit in' anywhere. I think thats the problem really; a social obsession about fitting in and conformity.

That's something you learn as you get older. People aren't all that different when it comes to what matters.

I am what would be considered a middle class southerner who moved north when I was 21. In my first job in South Leeds some of my colleagues were a bit bemused that someone would leave working in the West End of London to work in Leeds.

However, after then going to college and working in a few other jobs I never came across this and didn't feel like an outsider. I now work in Sheffield in an office with people who come from all over the place.

A lot of people in our village are also incomers, and I have had no trouble fitting in and making friends.

weights - when did I say anything about Kate Middleton's family background? I said that her grandmother-in-law (think about it...) was related to my paternal grandmother. I actually quite admire Kate's parents (who oddly supplied the party pieces for my daughter's 2nd birthday, but there we go! Said daughter is 22 now and "meh" about the connection!).

I think we're all from working-class backgrounds now. Even the Queen has to work for her living. And this why the class system needs/ought to be abolished. Because at one end you have Queenie who is working (so to speak), and on the other you have a single mother on benefits (Marina, anyone over 30...?). It doesn't equate. My family call me a communist because I think it ought to be the same for all, as it is for one.

I, personally, will just be grateful if my children can raise offspring who grasp the fact that we're all human beings when it comes down to it, irregardless of whether it's breakfast or brunch.

I think it can be a bit difficult socially for a young person who ends up going to university at Oxford or Cambridge.

There is somebody in my family in this situation who has just graduated. They're a lovely person - very conscious about issues of social inequality, and keen to be friendly in every situation.

But I see when I'm out with her at gatherings. Somebody will ask, 'Where did you go to University?' My relative tell them. And then there will be this pause. It's as if the facial expression of whoever has asked the question just freezes - as if they can't take it in and/or they are putting my relative in some special weird category. The conversation always picks up again. But my relative does find it hard when people ask the question. They wouldn't answer with a lie, but telling the truth results in feeling as if they are suddenly being put in some different pigeonhole. (An assumption that they must be ultra-privileged or mind-blowingly brilliant? I'm not quite sure.)

In my first job in South Leeds some of my colleagues were a bit bemused that someone would leave working in the West End of London to work in Leeds

I would be bemused by anyone who wouldn’t

That’s his half side of the family part of HIM you shouldn’t entertain this at all...

Your DS sounds like he’s has grown into
snobby git who wants to distance himself from your family as he sees himself as being a cut above.
I would have a good talk to him. My DS is 15 and doing well at Grammar School he is very articulate and I could see him going down the same path if not reined in with my parents. We regularly have chats and I say they are my parents and I love them and they love you they may have different views, experiences or standards of living but they are still good people who care about you etc etc.

Quite a lot of us on Mumsnet talk about how boring and repetitive we find our aging parents. For young people connecting with their grandparents can be even harder - especially if they're just beginning to explore a new world as adults.

I think the issues of class and education/culture are in danger of getting muddled.

I think university can sometimes (not always) be are very much about helping people to broaden their range of experience and also to think more deeply.

When I came home from university, I very much became aware that my middle-class parents had quite a narrow range of conversation. It was very factual. 'I went to X'. 'I saw Y'. 'Item Z is worn out and we have to replace it'. At university, I'd got used to conversation that was much more speculative and playful - and I found this kind of conversation had all sorts of interesting possibilities.

It's fascinating that these threads always feature a clash of North/South cultures with no conception that middle class people live in Harrogate and working class people exist in Gravesend.

Plus the sprinkling of Oxbridge, which are two special places, but I've neard that Newcastle is quite a posh university too.

You could almost think it was made up, couldn't you?