What makes a person working/lower class???

[MrsSopranos]

Following from the other threads, they are really interesting! So what makes someone/ families working class and lower/ Chav class?

If you weren’t born into the landed gentry

Working class jobs - by the hour.
Middle class - salaried , paid monthly.
For me anything under 20k would be working class , 20-30k lower middle then above 30k middle class.
It just affords you things that are considered middle class - owning your own home, considerable disposable income, nice holidays. Imo!

How would this work then? Both my dsis and her dh earn more than £30k in a factory warehouse and live in an ex council house, they are certainly not lower mc, they're working class and proud

Working class up to about 50K

Do you feel assured you’re middle class now, OP?

Class is simple.

If you have it, you don't worry about it.
If you don't have it, you judge everyone on it.

DH and I are working class, as are our families. I just see it as having to work for the rest of our lives and not having immediate access to money for luxuries, having to save up, etc. We are both in middle-of-the-road jobs salary wise and all male members of our families have trades rather than ‘professional’ jobs.

There really isn't a financial value against the classes as is being said.

Someone doing unskilled industrial or manual work can out earn someone with s degree doing a skilled role. There is a lot of grey there and no financial corridors.

It has nothing to do with wages or salary really, from memory I have some notion of learning about British classes in sociology and in or to be middle class YOUR PARENT(S) should be educated to a high level and would be likely to be in professions such as lawyers and surgeons. You would also be educated to degree level or your husband is and also a professional person.
So even if you're educated to degree and professional but your parents are not and they have regular jobs say manual and retail work then you're still working class. Your children may end up working "up" to middle class though.
My dad earns over 100k but he's as working class as he ever was, but with disposable income.

MonkeyToesOfDoom you have nailed it.

No-one that I know, gives a toss about which class they belong to. The only place class is important, it seems, is on Mumsnet.
I couldn't care less about how much someone earns, or where they live, or how they speak. If they are warm, kind-hearted, empathic and friendly, that'll all I care about.

Lower class/underclass....living on benefits long term when healthy as a lifestyle choice. No aspirations. Anti social behaviour. Chaotic life.

Working class...conscious of keeping up appearances. Blue collar jobs. Close knit families. Aspirational

Following from the other threads, they are really interesting! They are only interesting if you’re the sort of person who enjoys feeling superior to other people.

So what makes someone/ families working class and lower/ Chav class? Telling people to fuck off for calling them chavs would probably do it.

In my family, we have a long and noble history dating back to the time of the Norman Conquest of

• putting racing stripes on our offensively loud cars
• deepfrying our tracksuit
• having a crate of lager as a little snifter before dindins.

We are considerably classier than you in starting this thread, OP.

Enclume

I'm just glad I live in a place where stuff like this doesn't actually matter, and nobody uses these terms to describe people.

Does any of this really matter? You are what you are. If you behave decently to each other and to other people it makes not a jot of difference what 'class' you are.

catonly sorry but that's rubbish. I earn less than 20k but I'm not working class, it doesn't fit that neatly into categories.

catoney sorry

Oh so easy.
Antimacassars
Serving trout with a dining fork
Passing the port to the right
Horse riding instead of riding
Hanging baskets
Sitting during the National anthem

Fussy eating and wastefulness
Savings in a tin rather than in Japan
Using first names for boys

Calling dinner 'tea'.
Using cutlery incorrectly .

Buying bear shaped ham and liking it
Not serving chicken nuggets with the ketchup in a sterling condiments dish on the side.
Roughing it in M&S instead of waitrose.
And according to Jilly Cooper drinking gin and orange.

I'm working class, because I'm not middle class. I'm not posh enough, rich enough, and I don't have a big enough house to be middle class.

But I also have a degree, so I'm not a 'chav', thank you very much.

Accents! Middle class and upper class don’t really have regional accents. And jobs as others have said, blue collar or white collar as we used to say. It doesn’t directly have anything to do with money though - you can be rich wc or poor uc. Schooling used to be the key but lots of mc and even some if can’t afford it anymore. Parents; the son of an earl ends up as a druggy in a squat they will still be uc. If the daughter of a factory worker becomes a surgeon she’ll nearly be mc and her children probably will especially if they go to independent schools. It’s very interesting but supremely unimportant only horrible snobby people actually care and judge people based on ‘class’. Someone I know really looks down on people that she thinks are less smart than her - but she is desperately insecure and nearly 80.

I'm a surgeon with a masters and post grad qualifications. My mum raised me as a single parent in social housing. She's a dinner lady who has CSE's and some vocational qualifications. I'd say I'm working class by upbringing but middle class by job. Class is odd.

Paid by the hour? We pay our lawyer by the hour - she does pretty well out of it..Dh's clients pay him by the hour - mostly per day though. Hourly pay does not mean unskilled work.

Whole- being paid by the hour in a professional job where you are your own boss who has control over your pay/hours is different from a factory worker clocking in and out for 12 hour shifts.

In my job I see the sharp end of class conflict. There is a subsection between wc and mc who feel quite (rightly) insecure and I see this manifest in discrimination/oppression of what they consider to be lower wc/ non working class/ social security class whatever you want to call it.

It’s that same kind of mentality of wc people who vote Tory/ UKIP/brexit who think people on social security/ unemployed/ immigrants/ disabled people/ people with large families/ people with mental health issues/ people in council houses/ etc are the cause of ‘the squeezed middle’ not the upper class or the billionaire plutocrats.