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.

Indeed Weights i drink a lot of (Aldi ) Wine in my council house

This sounds familiar. My Dad's family were educated and comparatively well off and my mother's family were very poor and workshy. (This is in another country by the way). They took pride in being uneducated, never reading etc. They treated my dad and by extension my sister and I appallingly all my life for being 'up yourselves'. Everything we did (read books,went to university, how we spoke) was ridiculed and mocked. In contrast I never heard a single disparaging word said against them by dad's side of the family They were 'everyone is different' in approach and let everyone live as they wish. Somehow inverted snobbery is seen as perfectly acceptable.

I would personally stamp really hard on any ridicule directed at your son by ANY side of the family. It is unacceptable. I hope you do stamp on it, because my mother never did (often would join in a bit as she stlll wanted to be seen as 'one of them' by her family). Trust me. I won't forget being thrown under the bus by her in favour of them.

Her DS isn't being a snob, ops family are making fun of him when he's being himself. That's rude and isn't going to make him want to spend time with them is it?

Oh and when I say workshy which I am sure is going to be jumped on, I mean it. They thought people who hat actual 9-5 type jobs were mugs. They preferred to engage in petty theft and drug dealing. My parents were a teacher and a nurse respectively and apparenly this made them total mugs. (Didn't stop them from hitting my mum up for money every chance they got though.).

Did not realise I am still angry about it!

Onemorefireball has basically said everything I meant. In far fewer words!

And yes, as a pp said, difficulty in adjusting and seeing family situations previously taken for granted with new and more critical eyes after a first term away at university is very common — I’m an academic and it’s not unusual for my personal tutees to have found the Christmas holidays of first year a struggle. It’s also quite possible that your DS is dealing with no longer being among the cleverest at school, and being pretty middling for his Cambridge cohort. Some — unfortunately not many — of whom will have come from WC homes like mine where people talk about Terry going to Torremolinos and the bingo.

Sounds like he thinks hes better than your family. Id be dissapointed that hed ended up stuck so far up his own arse.

If anything a visit to your family should make him realise how privileged he is!

He's 18, he's young and will think all sorts of odd things before he's fully grown up in himself and cringes at the odd things he's said and thought. Tell him that, laugh at him a little and don't over think any of it.

And he needs to learn to deal with the ‘posh’ gibes, as well as the people he may well encounter at Cambridge who find him subtly hilarious because he doesn’t get the shibboleths of the extremely old money crowd.

I come from a 'mixed' background, although not too dramatically - teachers/office jobs and state school education with some money on one side, and real poverty on the other. My own father called me a snob and his family sort of shook me off once I was 18. I liked all my family so I found that rather hurtful and it felt very much based on their view of me rather than actual me. I find the other side of my family, while they are basically my actual family and we get on very well intellectually and make each other laugh, to be unable to talk emotionally in the way that I have had vague glimpses of the other side being. My brother didn't go to university or leave home until he was 30 and is a firmly entrenched and accepted member of my dad's family but doesn't see much of my mum's side.

It's a hard thing really because I've been taught to feel bad about who I am as an adult. I went to Oxbridge and felt utterly out of my depth. I'm not posh enough to ever fit in with the upper middle classes but feel estranged from half my own heritage.

My husband comes from a pure working class background and, although he has a good relationship with his family on the surface, feels totally unable to actually talk to them. We live in London and have professional jobs and a thoroughly metropolitan elite lifestyle, and they make digs at us constantly. Class aside, they are people who dislike mixing with anyone outside their family, and their politics are very different, so conversation really is a struggle. There are lots of passive aggressive comments to the kids about how they don't really like living in London/eating food etc which they don't notice yet but will start hitting them in the not too distant future.

So different social backgrounds is and continues to be something I struggle with, and how my own identity is expressed. Neither fish nor good red fowl.

People with real class can fit into any situation, without judging those who might be considered to be of a lower social status than themselves

As starcrossedseahorse says: this.

It’s a shame OP’s family are so unkind to their grandson.

It’s utterly tiresome when people dress inverted snobbery up as “humour”.

My ex-FIL was similar in that I was made fun of for being “posh”, the fact that I read etc etc. Utterly childish.

Wow to some of these responses - people are really bringing out their own prejudices!

OP I totally understand your situation and your son as I also have this. I think at this age it's totally understandable that your DD is struggling with it - he's still finding his own identity.

I find my PIL's painfully dull and narrow minded in some areas, as equally so I find my parents snobbish and judgemental in others. Equally my PILs are amazing with their GCs and my parents well not so, but still amazing atbother things ! My point is that (a) no one is perfect and (b) this will be a good experience for DS in getting on with all types which he will soon enough experience in the world of work. I also don't think there is anything wrong with your DHs approach - it's entirely normal to flex our behaviour depending on who we're with.

What I have more recently found as both PILs and my parents get older is it's the generational differences which are more difficult....

HES 18. Is he not socially adept?

I think you should say to your DS that he is very privileged to be able to understand the opinions and views of people from different social classes in society. If he is doing a social science then it will be invaluable to him. The whole Brexit/Remainer divide in this country is being played out in his own family and if he’s clever enough get into Cambridge he should be able to see both sides of the argument and understand why each side voted as they did. Unfortunately in this country we are governed by people like OPs in laws who would never of their own violation interact meaningfully with working class Brexit voting Northerns we find ourselves in the sad state we are in.

HES 18. Is he not socially adept?

I presume his grandparents are substantially older and they don’t appear socially adept either!

Gitlflieshome, you are projecting here. I don't get from the OP's post that her family is anything like what you describe your mum's family to be.

The OP's son's concern is that his mum's family are boring. I also get the sense that he winds them up by deliberately using long words and possibly asking for wine.

I don't condone teasing people because of their background but I think both parties are doing the same. However, if this 18 year old sees himself as posh and superior then he certainly isn't acting it.

Although OP pointed out that her husband went to a top boarding school, it wasn't clear whether or not her son went to a private school. Most private schools worth the money they charge would from prep teach pupils to be confident but kind and to show respect to all. Of course, if parents do not reinforce this at home, kids will behave differently.

Reverse snobbery is not an excuse to be a snob. Usually reverse snobbery is a response to snobbery. There are many truly posh and upper class people who when you meet them, you would never know their "social status". That's because they seem it as gauche to flaunt one's "class".

X2Boys a wine drinking council estate dweller must be utterly confusing. You need to step back in you box and ditch that wine drinking. You should know your place!

How ghastly that he has to spend time with northern thick brexiters that don't drink wine

Is every other thread on mn a troll these days?

How long until this is an "article" in the Daily Fail?

I can see why your DS is only noticing this now - it's because he's becoming an adult and he's learning self-awareness and he's also at uni now, living away from home, starting to make a life for himself outside the family, so he's more aware now of the differences within his own family - things he probably just accepted as normal up until now - but suddenly he's seeing it with fresh eyes.

I can also see why he doesn't want to pretend that he's something he's not, just in order to fit in. Some people (your DH), are comfortable doing this and I suspect it puts your family at ease with someone they may otherwise label as 'snooty', as they do with your DH's family (so no wonder he feels the need to put on his working class act), but I don't blame your DS for feeling that it's false to do that. And, FWIW, the conversation sounds banal in the extreme - who wouldn't find gossip about a woman at the corner shop tedious? I know I would.

Great post argonauts.
I too was an insufferable little shit at 18. I thought I had entered a new stratosphere because I knew the names of the Muses. I hope he grows out of it for his own sake.

Look at the way arrian (named after an ancient Greek philosopher?) describes both sides of the family in caricature...

If this is real, presumably arrian has taught the DS how to view his extended family...

Obviously most people will be more comfortable with the side of the family who don't mock them for the way they talk though ...

I agree 100%I am projecting weights !

But the OP does not mention that she tried to stop her family teasing her son. I was just saying that she ought to, and here is why I think so.

What a shame the post a couple of days ago about the OPs posh son returning from oxford, and looking down on her family was a troll.

You'd have loads to talk about.

That tired old nonsense about people with ‘real class’ being able to fit in anywhere, with any social class, because they have ‘naturally good manners and are at ease with themselves and have nothing to prove etc etc’ is entirely ridiculous, like the equally tiresome old saw continually trotted out on Mn that the truly upper classes are twinkly and benign and rattle about the place in a banger full of black labradors, dressed in rags, being affable to everyone.