Cultural Capital - working class kids

[MommaGee]

I keep hearing the value of cultural capital being talked about on threads and how important it is so I'm wondering what kind of things I should be doing to give my WC kids more cultural capital and keep up with thier wealthier counterparts? DS is 7.

Foreign travel is currently a no die to medical issues.

We currently

• Visit the Art Galleries near us regularly
• Take up art and family play sessions at these galleries.
• One after-school sport and one session booked at Commonwealth Games to watch it - altho he v much does it for fun, not talent
• Has been to the theatre with me several times to see stuff ike Pinocchio and Animal Farm
• Go to the cinema altho only for kids movies
• Is read to nightly and reads himself to sleep altho it's Dav Pilkey
• Family holidays in Wales are a mix of beach and casino as well as castles, mines etc
• He's not been to ballet but only because I can't find one suitable

What are we missing?

I'm just well read

I think to me that sums it up perfectly.

I have to admit that I find quite a few of the suggestions a bit especially the ones about learning a foreign language. Immigrant children usually/ often have a foreign language and knowledge of another culture, but this doesn’t automatically give them “cultural capital” in the way I think the OP means it. I was a middle class child of two immigrants and as an adult I had to learn about important things like pesto and holidays in Tuscany, or skiing, fine wine and classical literature and all sorts of other random things to fit into the world where my education naturally took me but my parents weren’t able to prepare me for.

Yes...I wasn't suggestin, as another poster said, that you weren't entitled to experience typical middle class pursuits...I was suggesting that perhaps you're not as working class as you think you are. I know many people irl who describe themselves as wc but actually really arent. Anyway, sorry if I was short with you. I'm sure your ds will be just fine.

that I- as I was, with my thick northern accent - was just as good as anyone else, and that I had experiences and perspectives that were valuable.

Especially this.

Encourage him to pursue his passions, whatever they maybe. We don't need more middle class clones who do what they think they should do, rather than what they enjoy.

(And I say that as someone whose family have been middle class professionals for many generations)

And isn't this thread all about giving him the confidence , curiosity and variety to discover those passions.

@SweetSakura

It's not about becoming MC.

Italian lessons
Yoga
Psychotherapy
Play the bassoon!
😂(joking)
Seriously, you sound like you are already doing plenty. I always think one of the most important things is confidence.

You can have access to plenty of opportunities and still be working class. It doesn't mean you are a narrow minded uncultured oik.

It's OK @Needmorelego I didn't take it funnily

Was taking a 7 year old to the casino tongue in cheek or are you training him to count cards? In which case he won't need to go to university.

Honestly that's far more than my parents ever did. We went to a few museums and only went to the theatre to see a panto. I turned out ok.

DH and I are both middle class but had very different lifestyles as children. He grew up in a flat in a capital city, his parents were academics, he was privately educated, they travelled all around the world. I grew up in a rambling farm house in the back of beyond, my father was a farmer, I went to the local school and holidayed in Scotland. I went to the theatre, learnt my local areas natural history and farming/gardening and cooking, I did swimming club, violin, and guides, DH watched a lot of TV and rarely read, food was not an interest for his family and he didn't do any after school activities.

What links the families is that we both always sat down to eat together and talked at the dinner table. Being confident in various social situations is the key to cultural capital. And knowing that a lot of so called high culture is not so different to Marvel or romcoms so is not something to be intimidated by. Buy the Beano and you'll be halfway there.

And for learning a language my DDs (13&14) are finding DuoLingo good.

Honestly, if you are asking on mumsnet about cultural capital it probably means you have nothing to worry about. And reading your list, the experiences you are giving your child sound fab (far more than I ever had, and I ended up with a doctorate). I'm an English teacher and I think a great deal is down to lots and lots of reading, including myths and legends etc.

@MuddlerInLaw what a bizarre interpretation of what I said 😂Glad the OP took it the right way, as genuine well meaning advice; it sounds as if what she's doing for her child is great as it is by the sounds of it

What you are doing so far is great. My DM and grandparents did similar things with me, and we did with our DC.

However, when I went to Uni in the 1980s what made me different was food. I was (am) a vegetarian, which didn't help, but I didn't know what a Courgette was, or a pepper. I hadn't eaten garlic. I'd eaten apples, bananas and oranges, but not cherries, redcurrants or raspberries. I'd never really eaten out, a rare pizza, so didn't understand the etiquette of restaurants and splitting a bill.

Is there actually any evidence that cultural capital in the way the OP and the school system sees it has any value?

I can only speak for myself but when I got to a red-brick uni from a WC estate I felt like I largely felt like I "fit in" partly because I had similar hobbies/experiences to the other girls (ballet lessons and music in my case - flute lessons were free and I used to pay for ballet with my babysitting money as an older teen)

I would add watching the news and talking about politics...my parents were really good for this, they always encouraged us to join in when they talked about the news/politics.

(You can tell I didn't do an English degree!)

Just to clarify, cultural capital is the idea that power resides not only in the form of money or technology but also 'culture' i.e.ways of doing things. In this context, its not that opera or theaters or Latin ( as opposed to Urdu) is inherently better but that they are norms of behaviour of a more powerful class so if you want to join them then its good to imitate. A key part of UMC in the UK is extreme competitiveness and supreme confidence, so maybe that's something else to think about. The problem though is that social mobility in the UK is at its lowest and the lowest in Europe. So important to keep in mind, social capital is lovely but in practice its the trust funds and the connections that keep this show on the road.

all these things are fab I see few people suggest adding a language French Spanish etc BSL maybe

I'm not sure what the cultural references will be for future generations but I'm often glad that I've read certain books like The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy because I've come across lots of references to that throughout my life from names of meeting rooms to Elon Musk and his rockets.
Just being well read in general is useful. Someone mentioned myths and legends. I've always come across comments like 'well that's his Achilles heel' and 'rising up like the Phoenix'. It's good to be able to understand these quotes.
Being well read is what helped me as a child of immigrant parents who knew nothing about cultural capital.

This. Exposure to as many books, and as many different kinds of books as possible. If he's not yet old enough to read for pleasure, read to him. Visit the library. Buy books from second hand shops. Reading expands the mind and boosts vocabulary, and has a profound effect on children's outcomes.

On the subject of being well read, my 8yo loves this book Big Ideas for Curious Minds: An Introduction to Philosophy amzn.eu/d/e4K60yU

For me, some of the things I felt out of the loop on at university, for various reasons:

Knowing what people meant when they said things like ‘left wing’, ‘right wing’, ‘daily mail reader’, ‘guardian reader’, ‘radio 4 listener’ ‘Texas republican’ and the stereotypes associated with these people.

Knowing what a crouton is in soup, what a fish knife is. Basic foreign dishes (pad Thai etc). White wine with fish, red with beef (and confidence to break the rules or to ask what a particular menu item is). Knowing how to order and pay in a group situation in a restaurant.

Basic high level knowledge of history that is taught in UK: Russian revolution, US civil war, British empire, Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan, who Stalin, Lenin, Franco, Mussolini were.

Knowledge of TV/movies and famous scenes or quotes, like Star Wars, Monty Python. Why people say ‘I don’t belieeeeeeeeve it’.

Watch popular TV, movies based on true lives/historical eras, satire (bbc and radio 4), read the news and the comments.

Read widely and make an effort to use a wide range of vocabulary in every day life.

I love these threads & thinking about things we can do with a small effort that may have a huge impact on our children's futures.
I grew up working class in a family of early school leavers who worked in factories or shops.

We lived in an estate on the outskirts of a former industrial town which by then had mass unemployment. I was, I suppose, on the surface , a lonely child but I didn't feel it because I discovered books & was an avid reader. Rarely to be seen with out my head buried in a book
It caused rows in my home as my parents would object to me spending time reading & I was often given out to & told to go outside to play etc

Those books & my self guided journey moving through children's books to devouring my mother's crappy romance novels to my father's thrillers to eventually discovering 'literature' and feeling like I'd hit the jackpot. I was reading words that spoke to me & I couldn't believe it.

I had an insatiable appetite & knew the librarians very well! The owner of the tiny (& only!) Bookshop in the neighbouring town was really kind & ordered in books for me which I paid for through babysitting

I had no one to talk to about these books except the librarian (busy & not so much time) & the book shop owner who hadn't read all the same books but she understood my enthusiasm & to This day I am grateful to her

Against the odds I got to a red brick university & studied the (I suppose) rarefied subject of history of art. You can imagine what most of my class mates were liked. However I thrived & loved it beyond words. It has given me a life ever since

My dc have had a radically different upbringing to me due to the thing & places they have experienced from birth. They ve never had to seek it out in the way I did

The biggest thing I think we've given them is the confidence & experience of discussing & thinking critically about the things they see & do. Our teen dd is an excellent conversationalist. She's not in your face but has a quiet self confidence & can hold a really interesting conversation. This is feedback we get fro school/ other parents etc she is interesting & engaged

Please may I ask, Cheerfully what your childhood was like - as it seems you never read newspapers or listened to / watched national news broadcasts? What were the things your parents / guardians / school prioritised?

And (again, sorry to be nosy) what were your feelings on discovering these perceived lacunae in your knowledge?

(FWIW my parents were immigrants who arrived in England as students. I grew up in ‘a house full of books’ with daily newspapers and weekly journal subscriptions. R4 was the soundtrack to my childhood, and we watched and discussed the news. My parents kept us constantly entertained with stories of their own faraway childhoods, their studies, their working lives. We had all the cultural opportunities possible - food, cooking, visits, tuition, performances, friends, entertaining, travel, holidays … But I still found, through school and university, that there were things children with English-born parents knew or understood that I had no clue about. Just as they knew nothing about ideas and traditions I had grown up with.)

Gosh he’s a little boy not a ‘project ‘

what does he like doing?

I would’ve been bored stiff at art galleries as a child and even a teen

Musical instruments
learn to ski
Read the classics
language
experience different foods
play sports - but sports like cricket rugby tennis
know how to behave and be comfortable in certain settings - eg fancy restaurants
teach them to speak without a strong WC accent
good schools
help them make friends with MC kids

honestly they’re going to be at a disadvantage regardless, half of that capital is the networks of being MC and the financial security being a different mentality. Then there’s shared experiences (foreign travel, private schools, as well as some of the other things you’ve mentioned) and just the confidence, that it’s going to be so difficult to replicate
but fair enough for trying! Good luck

Every child is essentially a project. Whether consciously or not every parent wants to imbue their child with the fruit of their own best experiences and add all the things we might feel we missed out on in our own childhoods.

This is how humanity evolves - this striving to offer one’s child (all children) the best life we can manage, a better life than our own.

And we all recognise the dominant culture in the society we live in. Some children grow up ‘effortlessly’ within that culture, for others it’s more of an effort for their parents to provide the ‘necessary’ components. But it’s not wrong to want to do this. It’s human.