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.

Most private schools worth the money they charge would from prep teach pupils to be confident but kind and to show respect to all.

This bears zero relation to my experience, many utter knobs produced by private schools.

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.

^^ I was going to say this, but Argonauts beat me to it. It's tosh but much loved on here. I also agreed with her comment warning him to be aware that some of his Cambridge contemporaries find people like him subtly hilarious.

Not all upper-class people are twinkly and benign, that's very true. But if they are unpleasant and unkind, do they have "real class" or does this use of the word "class" have a slightly different meaning?

I sort of identify with your son, but from the other side. My mum's family were extremely posh (think titled) and my dad's family were northern and working class. I was raised northern, and middle class (parents both professional), but not super posh - state school, northern accent, lots of working class friends, followed football and used various colloquial words - and every Christmas we'd visit and there would be jokes at my expense about the words I used, the interests I had. They used to sometimes mimic my accent and it was awful.

I dreaded it. Over time, I got a lot better at code switching and it sort of stopped but I never stopped feeling tense every time I visited because I knew that I wasn't the person they wanted to see. I wasn't good enough. I had to pretend to be someone else to be accepted, and from family, that hurt a lot. I think all the howls of 'snob' aren't fair - it is painful, I think, when your family send you the message that you aren't right for the family unit, and seem to be saying that their love isn't unconditional - it's based on you 'code switching' and pretending to be the kind of person they actually want in their family. He's 18, so maybe not expressing it well, but I do wonder if that's how he feels.

Mayne they find the Op,s sons conversation boring Xenia? If an 18 yr old with very litttle experience of life asked me to justify how i voted in Brexit or about my religious beleifs i would think they well an 18 yr with little life experience but thinks they know better....

What gets me, is the idea it's only the middle/upper classes who are expected to fit in when visiting working class families - the assumption is the problem is the OPs DS is a snob, not that the problem is her family take the piss out of him and basically bully him for being different. It is him that needs to change to fit in, not them to accept him as he is.

Of course he's more relaxed around family who just accept him as he is, rather than him having to change his behaviour to avoid being laughed at.

Op, you've just accepted your DH having to hide what he's really like to fit in with your family , your ds is just expressing that doing that is stressful and means he can't relax around your family. You can teach him how to do it better, but that won't change the fact your side of the family don't accept him how he is.

Changing your behaviour to fit in with any group of people is a good life skill. Doesn't make it any less shit that family make you feel like you can't just be yourself.

It's probably 6 of one and half dozen of the other.

He's probably being a bit of a jumped up pretentious 18yr old and your family are hardened old cynics!

Both sides need to learn tolerance.

Growing up i had two very different sides of the family but not in terms of class....one was typically English and the other was continental and more cosmopolitan. It was never an issue. I like different types of people.

I am a odd blend of social class....Very middle class upbringing involving private schools, learning instruments and tennis lessons yet also brought up in south London...most people who meet me assume I'm working class and are surprised to discover I am privately educated and have a degree. However, I definitely have the ability to adapt to different social situations.

I find your ds's attitude to be pretty obnoxious to be honest.

do they have "real class" or does this use of the word "class" have a slightly different meaning?

It might WrapAndRoll, but seeing as the poster who trotted out the 'real class' cliche defined it as graciously not 'judging people of lower social status', I'd guess not.

Your DH imitates your family?
Does he come down to their level OP?

It's probably 6 of one and half dozen of the other.
He's probably being a bit of a jumped up pretentious 18yr old and your family are hardened old cynics!
Both sides need to learn tolerance.

This ^ from Horsemad

@Hezz
Strange coincidence that 😏

Kids get their attitudes from their parents. You sound horribly judgemental.

You do realise that some people who went to university and have money also voted for Brexit. Some even drink wine and everything!

Not that you'd know it from MN, but 52% of the population, who CBA to vote, chose to leave the EU.

What gets me, is the idea it's only the middle/upper classes who are expected to fit in when visiting working class families - the assumption is the problem is the OPs DS is a snob, not that the problem is her family take the piss out of him and basically bully him for being different. It is him that needs to change to fit in, not them to accept him as he is.

This. After a heady first term spent amongst exciting new peers at a Cambridge college (especially if it's one of the better ones), it would be strange if he didn't find his more everyday relatives a little bit dull!

There are differences and sometimes however nice you are, you can’t hide them. I have been very good at switching accents to fit circumstances and changing conversation but it can still be hard. I learnt to do that in my Saturday job and am still pretty good at it whereas I see some at work that struggle to bridge some of the divide between the ‘professionals’ and the lower paid staff. Some of it is a lack of emotional intelligence, some of it is genuine cluelessness.

That said, I see it with my husband’s extended family. Some of his relatives have had quite a poor background and live in an area that is very deprived. Their lives and worries are just very different to mine. They have always been lovely and welcoming but I do stick out like a sore thumb sometimes and there can be cultural differences that have contributed to some tense moments with in-laws. Neither of us are wrong or right- we just come at things in different ways. Some of those fundamental differences come out in the current Brexit issues and I’m not sure they are possible to reconcile.

Lots of posts at cross-purposes here I'd say. It doesn't matter how socially adept anyone is (and I totally agree that this 'posh people are at home everywhere with beautiful manners is an utter canard) this isn't about how easily you rub along with different people. It's about your own family and a sense of belonging. I mix with all sorts of people in life, and get along pretty well in a range of settings. That doesn't bear any relation to feeling abandoned or looked down on by my own flesh and blood, or worrying that my in-laws are trying to tell my own kids that their own life preferences are wrong

We have little in common with dh's family - dh is accused of moving on and forgetting his roots - our lives are so different in every way, it's hard to find common ground - we do try but I'm not convinced we succeed given the feedback we get. At aged 18, I think your ds is still figuring out how he fits into the world - he'll learn to shift gears socially, again he has done previously without having to think about it.

This is all a bit silly. LOTS of couple have very different backgrounds, including DH and I, but our DCs have grown up accepting all our relatives for who they are. Their background doesn't matter and it's never even been discussed. OP, I really don't mean to sound unkind but you sound a little ashamed of your parents.

However, no one should be mocking anyone.

Your son may be a snob, I'm not sure, but your family are definitely inverted snobs.

Your son is young and will hopefully learn, sounds like your family won't.

Interesting thread - many people assuming that everyone should find making conversation easy whereas many people especially 18yos find it hard to chat to anyone, and learn various 'safe' topics as they grow up. Finding then that they are laughed at for those topics is going to rattle them, so the ds should be commended for asking for help.

Both my parents are the only ones from their manual-working families to have ended up at university, let alone ended up as professor types, so I've got this culture clash on both sides. Difference is, my mum's family are warm and welcoming to anyone and are curious about bits of the world they've never been to, and will explain loads about their house renovation plans/hunting achievements/gardening, shove drinks at you and love witty jokes even if they need explaining (lots of international cross-culture issues too). So while they might not be close friends if I saw them more often, we all like seeing each other when we do.

Dad's family - well it got much better when we realised granny was a right stirrer and would tell my dad how his brother was a much better son, staying near home and getting a good job at 16 not gadding off to uni in that London, while also telling uncle that he would never amount to anything, unlike my dad...
Uncle and family are pleasant enough, just we all find each other rather boring, none of us are extrovert types who could get a party going, and I swear they have no sense of humour. So once me and same-age cousin grew out of wrestling on the beds, we'd end up watching the Wizard of Oz every year because my parents really can't talk about sport or soaps or pop music for five minutes (imagine Ian Hislop's TV persona), whereas I could apply the skills I learnt as a teenager (at boarding school, ironically) on finding out stuff from others, spend a few minutes hearing the basics of Corrie (at least I know it's a soap up north, there's a pub, a woman called Dierdre who's been married a lot, and some names), and learning about how to buy a used car (much more interesting). Uncle does make comments about dad being all educated, and dad's social skills get as far as not saying 'I got into the grammar and you didnt', but not much further, so they both go silent and it's cringe making...

It's social skills and differing amounts of open-mindedness on both sides, not class, that's the problem.

Fightthebear, is it the private school or the parents. If you read the rest of my post you'd have seen the qualifier. If parents are not reinforcing what the kids are taught, then no matter how much they are taught manners outside the home they are likely to be as lacking as their parents.

User147 why would you feel the need to switch accents? I'm not from the UK and no way would I care to switch accents to feign belonging to some social class.

This whole class thing is utterly bizarre. Posh seems very relative from what I gather from this thread. Drinking wine vs not drinking wine, the size of your house, the tenancy, council estate vs non-council estate, accent, etc.

I guess with my non-British accent and being a foreigner, I can't belong to any class here.

User147 why would you feel the need to switch accents? I'm not from the UK and no way would I care to switch accents to feign belonging to some social class.

Because accents in the UK are seen as a massive massive class signifier. I have about three accents that I use in different circumstances - posh for my mum's family, northern at home, and neutral southern estuary for work. It's quite hard work, but much harder to have folk assume I'm a snob/stupid/have forgotten my roots for the different accents respectively.

So if you came from a working class background with a working class accent you would change it to appear posh because?

Just from your first post, your son just said how he feels, which is fair enough.
It's also completely natural for him to feel like that. My parents were from two very different countries and cultures; I found it different switching between the two when I was young, especially as we hardly saw one side of the family.
Talk to him about code-switching, and ask your family to stop being so petty about him being himself!

Weightsandmeasures

Yes of course.

Because we are judged on accent.

Unpalatable but true.

The way I speak now is quite different to how I spoke as a child.

For several reasons.

One is social judgement, another is the fact I needed be understood, I worked in academic research with many other people from different countries- and my natural ( Scottish dialect) speech would have been unintelligible to others , including many words that are specific to a pocket of Scotland that I come from.
My work took me far and wide, business trips to Europe and the US. Again I modified my speech to be understood.

Now decades down the line my speech is permanent;y altered- I could not go back if I tried. I have a soft SCottish accent- a bit like Sean Connery.