Upper, middle, or working class?

[Greycatgingercat]

I was speaking to another parent at DD's nursery and she said that she was upper class. Her husband is a doctor and she does embroidery but mentioned that she also uses dr as her title. She's a lovely lady and we work in similar fields as I run a small business making children's cloths.

I'd never really spoken about class before this, so it prompted me to have a conversation with my mother. I'd consider myself working class but my mother would consider herself middle class, as her father was a head teacher yet she never worked after I was born so after my father left we relied on benefits.

The lady at DD's nursery is originally form Pakistan, but has lived in the UK for 7 years so I'm not sure if it's more of a cultural thing her telling me her class.

What class would you consider yourself as and what do you think makes someone a particular social class?

[Bagelsandbrie]

I have no idea anymore.

I don’t think class is something that can be ascertained with wealth, it’s complex. Colleen Rooney for example is working class isn’t she, despite being very rich. (Random example I know)! So if class isn’t about money, then how does it all work?

My Mum was adamant she was middle class. My Gran was a manager for a hospital, she went to a grammar school with a full paid scholarship, my Uncle became a scientist with two phds, my Mum had health issues and was unable to work but became an organiser for a poetry group and was very artsy. She didn’t claim benefits or anything as my Gran sold her house and moved in with us and so Mum owned the house outright and we all survived on my Dads money (chief executive of large company) and my Grans hospital pension money.

I don’t feel middle class though. I don’t know anymore. I feel working class. I didn’t go to university due to health issues / my Gran needing care for terminal bowel cancer. I’ve done all sorts of jobs from beauty consultant to marketing manager. My dh works in senior administration. We aren’t well off. But - we own our house outright through inheritance. Does this mean anything?

God knows. It’s all so muddled nowadays. Does it even matter...? I guess I’m questioning it so maybe it does matter in some ways. Weird.

[BoulangerieBabs]

I've taken up embroidery recently.

[TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince]

If she’s married to a doctor she’s upper middle.

And money is nothing to do with it. All the Slebs and Wags are loaded. But they are NOT upper class with their vajazzles and botox

[MellowBird85]

That is batshit OP, she sounds a right pain in the arse.

I think some people think they’re middle class by acting as pretentiously as they can.

[Lucindainthesky]

Upper class people don't go around saying they're upper class. And they're unlikely to be doctors or doing the nursery run themselves.

[WoolyMammoth55]

I remember asking this qu of a teacher at my grammar school after one of my classmates had bullied me for being "poor and working class." I knew it was a cuss but didn't understand the term!

Teacher's explanation was along these lines:

• working class = little or no formal education - i.e. my granny who had to leave school at 13 to look after her little sisters because her mum had a stroke. Worked at home and as a domestic til she got married.

Need to work to live?

• middle class = higher education, "professional" jobs that don't involve getting dirty :) Teacher, doctor, lawyer etc.

Have career choices and are financially stable?

• upper class = born into significant wealth. Have financial resources that mean work is not necessary.

You can't buy your way into upper class - even if you become mega rich, it's the blood not the bank balance! :)

Of course it's all BS and basically irrelevant.

But incidentally I'd agree with PP that the person you were talking to sounds mad, not upper class!

[KeeefBurtain]

Richard Osman wrote recently that it depends on what time you opened your Christmas presents - the earlier in the day the lower the class

[Ideasplease322]

Have you tried the bbc class calculator- just a bit of fun

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973

I don’t think it really works for single person households, but interesting to see the indicators used

[zafferana]

Upper class = titled/landed gentry so unless your friend married someone with a title (and I don't mean 'Dr', I mean Lord, Baron, Duke, etc), then she ain't upper class.

She's probably upper middle, but it's hard for people not born in the UK to understand our convoluted class system.

[TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince]

I agree with the present Xmas present thing!

[Reedwarbler]

It is only on mumsnet that I see people pondering about class. It is not a conversation I have ever had in real life. Anyway, if someone is discussing class they are certainly not upper class. Discussing class is frightfully non-u.

[legopolicelady]

I grew up on benefits and I'm currently raising my DD on benefits (am a student though). So I think I'm underclass.

[Cam2020]

She's probably not well versed in the vristish ass system! Only the aristocracy can be upper class.

I'm working class as I come from working class stock. I'm a higher rate tax payer and university educated (Russell Group). Class isn't something I consider important or even consider much at all - it's never held me back in any way, it just describes my origins.

[SonjaMorgan]

@legopolicelady

I grew up on benefits and I'm currently raising my DD on benefits (am a student though). So I think I'm underclass.

I hate this term. You are raising your DD and studying, I think this is aspirational. Far more so than trying to adopt a husband's title and embroidering in your spare time, whilst bragging to school gate mums about where you believe you fit in an defunct class system.

[Cam2020]

Epic typing fail! British class system

[RickOShay]

@something2say
I’m so so sorry that happened to you.
You didn’t deserve it and I hope things are better for you now. My childhood was cold and unloving, my mother also from the same class as yours.

[CaptainCorellisPangolin]

@x2boys

Class is a ridiculous concept ,you get many people on here insisting they are working class ,when they live in nice four bed houses ,send their children to private school etc ,because their parents once lived in a council house ,but Mumsnet is a bit obsessed with class .

Oh God, yes!
What annoys me is the increasingly prevalent (on MN and in real life, among people my age) is the rather sly "My parents grew up very poor", neglecting to mention that their parents grew up to be doctors/teachers etc and that they themselves actually had a very comfortable childhood.

There is no clear definition of each class group so it can be twisted to mean basically anything. Growing up, I thought of it as being tied to income but, on here, there seems to be a focus on a middle class culture, which now encapsulates everything from reading upwards.
I can see how some things, like horse riding, could be thought of as a middle class activity as it is (I think, haven't ever done it) very expensive. But I keep seeing on here like "Well, that's all very well if you're able to cook from scratch/read to your children/ visit a museum/ manage money but, outside your middle class bubble, not everyone can do those things."
No, not everyone can do those things. My mother was functionally illiterate, her reading to us was a bit of a non starter. And some people simply don't know how to cook or manage money but we should be treating these things as a problem, not a culture because, at the moment, this idea of a working class culture and a middle class culture is just keeping poor people poor.

[Rudolphian]

Pakistan has a different class system so maybe she meant in the Pakistan class system.
In the Pakistan class system we would be upper but here working class.

[HeronLanyon]

I am upper middle. That bbc survey from a few years ago puts me in ‘elite’. Given we are class riddled in the uk I think it’s important not to deny that and say ‘it doesn’t matter’. Tell that to everyone who isn’t or can’t be socially mobile or who can’t see their own class privilege etc. It’s central to widening inequality and increasing number of children living in poverty. Unless we acknowledge it we’ll struggle to tackle it.

[MikeUniformMike]

I think I was elite on the bbc survey. I'm actually lower middle class.

[Prokupatuscrakedatus]

I find these threads educational (I am foreign and live somewhere else).
I recently read a number of mysteries written in this century and I thought the descriptions were caricature, but apparently not.
It's a minefield.

[HeronLanyon]

Interesting. Mine seemed to align. There were interesting qs which carried significance more than others. Can’t remember - think social circle (variety or otherwise) was one?

[VaggieMight]

Being a millionaire doesn't make you upper class, I know some right common millionaires

[AdultHumanFemale]

But at what point does it change, Cam? You may have working class parentage, but if you are an RG grad and a higher rate taxpayer, when do you transition? I know loads of professional parents at the DC's leafy burb primary, who would definitely identify as WC on account of their parents, but who will be sending their DC private after primary, commute to well remunerated city jobs and live very comfortably. It's as if professing WC credentials makes you a 'good person' somehow. For full disclosure, I'm an immigrant from a country where all but blue collar working class are eyed with some suspicion

[Thewithesarehere]

if she herself is not a Dr in either the medical or academic sense, then using the Dr title just because her husband is a Dr is just nuts.
This.