Cultural & social capital..

[Snoozyschoozy]

Coming up to Christmas the difference between mc children who are provided with social & cultural capital is so obvious.. It has started already on social media & within my circle... The carol services, xmas markets, pantomimes, lunches out, come xmas & half term the ski trips or Caribbean trips will have started... I would love to be able to provide my dc with all these cultural & social advantages (they are advantages) but it's very costly.. I guess my point is that unless all children have access to all I have mentioned all UK society will remain unbalanced.. The kids getting these advantages are learning all the soft skills to fit into mc society comfortably & feel like they belong.. Christmas highlights it for me...

Ah Bordieu…

I’m laughing at the idea of an expensive AI in the Caribbean providing in anyway a cultural experience.
In my city, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to go to a school where you make friends widely and go on a play date to a home with elements of actual living Caribbean culture.

And language exposure! Forget school French exchanges. About 1/3 of the kids at my local secondary have parents with EAL - and some little English at all. My daughters have been round to friends’ houses where they listen their friends switch from Polish to English constantly, for example.

There is a world of free experience out there to be lived!

Yes I agree with what you're saying but many ambitious parents will seek out much more on a Caribbean trip... Scuba diving, glass bottomed boat trip for example...

And so what if they do? For all your jealousy (and that's what it reads as) about not being able to do this, or ski, there will be a someone looking at you and think how good you have it.
Worry less about what other people are doing and focus on your own life and experiences.

You can scuba dive in the UK. It’s more fun, in a gritty bonding activity kind of way. University clubs are a very cheap way of doing it (train in a swimming pool, then winter weekends in Cornwall packed into caravans, and getting up at 5am to listen to the shopping forecast/make sandwiches/inflate the Rib). If you want warm water, Egypt packages are also pretty cheap, as is Malta.

You do seem absolutely determined to believe that nobody can achieve anything if they aren’t living Carole Middleton’s best life.

None of us can break into the aristocracy no matter how much cash we have, because by definition it is about family background and who your parents were (not ephemeral stuff like Caribbean holidays - a rich MC person will still be frozen out, see all of the “doors to manual” comments). But “normal” stuff like well-paying jobs in the city, accountancy, tech, medicine, law etc are open to people regardless of all of this rubbish about playing polo or skiing in Val d’Isere.

Also really struggling to see what is “ambitious” about taking your children on a glass bottomed boat tour. Are people meant to brag about it years later while riding their polo pony around the work drinks party?

I agree with you on this.... There is a secret, unspoken code within that set & if you don't know the code you're more or less an outlier...

You sound as though you have a massive chip on your shoulder which I hope you won’t pass on to your children. You can disregard my opinion though, as I’ve managed to get to an advanced age without knowing what social and cultural capital even is.

I'm a tiny bit skeptical about cultural capital. Its a thing obviously but I think its a bit limited and a bit misunderstood.
It's easy to look at middle class people, identify some arbitary cultural difference and think "That must be the secret to their success"
But actually a lot of it is just a cultural adaptation to being middle class. Doing that stuff in the expectation gaining access is putting the cart before the horse.
Sometimes middle class people observe these arbitary cultural differences themselves and use it as some kind of short hand marker of who is "like them". But that's all a bit meta and it doesnt trump hard economics in my experience.
I say this as someone who did all the museums, libraries and enriching cultural conversations my working class but incredibly intelligent and cultured parents could lay on. It was all very lovely but I'm still working class now.
In fact all my social mobility is now downwards as I'm hitting that age when women pick up unpaid caring responsibilities and it's limiting my earning capacity quite drastically. You can't outrun that with all the library cards and classical concerts in the world.
And actually, the value in those childhood experiences was not so much the things themselves, but the love that went into them. The fact that my parents were sharing something that was important to them.
It seems a bit sad and forced to go do enriching activities self consciously for the "cultural capital".

I've just snort laughed at this, I can't sleep and this thread is hilarious 🤣

@unlimiteddilutingjuice I agree. CC is a theory about lifestyle and objects. Generally speaking, those that have it do the things because they love them, not for the sake of propelling themselves upwards and thinking it is the key to success. I think when you are below others (or perceive yourself to be) it's easy to look up and think these are requirements or the keys to success.
I don't know why everyone is assuming that everyone who goes to the Carribbean goes AI and just lies around the pool all day. The polo set that OP is referring to much more likely have their own place there.

”There is a secret, unspoken code within that set”
Tust me there isn’t. Through DCs school I met loads of “that set” dinned at their tables, gone on holiday with them, ridden with them, walked my dogs with them, gone shopping with them. They’re just normal people some are nice some aren’t, some splash their money around others live very frugal lives, some are incredibly dull others are simply lovely people there really is no secret unspoken code. Some do lead very exotic lives and their children have numerous opportunities that you can only dream of but many as far as I can see lead very dull lives between doing much of the stuff we do and experience everyday they attend often tedious local functions pressing the flesh of local dignitaries who's names they can’t remember and cut ribbons, or sit on local committees and of course worry about the up keep of their very large homes. One in particular always had people saying how “lucky” she was to live in a 15 bedroomed pile but she hated the place and the constant worry about looking after it despite employing loads of staff.
Its easy to over romanticise the lives of the upper classes but they do not live in a set of Dowton Abbey.

My eldest dc has expressed an interest in accountancy (maths whizz, just loves figures!),

There is a thread on MN about careers and jobs.

If your child is actually interested in Maths then accountancy probably isn't for him.

There are however plenty of other areas e.g. in insurance, in tech, in financial services, where Maths is actually used.

My MC friends and acquaintances who were brought up by MC parents learnt to scuba dive as adults.

They spent their childhoods learning to swim well.

Even the the most wealthly MC plus the upper class people - so went to public schools - I know don't scuba dive. And only going on trips with those lower down the social ladder has got them to try things like glass bottom boat trips and other wild life watching.

I get it. I’d love to be able to take mine to the ballet but make do with YouTube versions of the nutcracker. Over covid there were loads of CC things recorded. Maybe use that for things that are expensive? Google 360 for being ‘in’ places and so on. But yes, it can bite.

To be fair the vast majority of kids would find the ballet really boring

It sounds like have a warped view of what middle class life is like and you're more bothered about how your DC are perceived than whether they have a broad general knowledge and experience of culture.

I don’t know anyone who goes off skiing so I don’t think that’s particularly usual. Pantomimes are affordable so I think you’re being teaching a little with your assumption there’s a swathe of children who are missing out on cultural and social capital (whatever that is).

Christmas is for family and I feel far more concerned for those who are alone than those who aren’t off on their holidays to some far flung place.

*you’re reaching

We are mc and we do maybe 1-2 of these things each year. Don't forget a lot of it is performative for social media.
Last year one family I knew were all smiles and family fun on the grid last year - parents are now divorced.
As others have said find some free activities that you fancy locally and otherwise just concentrate on everyone being happy

Why is scuba diving limited to the Caribbean anyway? I've dived. I did it on holiday in Turkey. Significantly cheaper all round than going to the Caribbean. I want to take DS1. Not for any sort of 'capital', but because I know he'd absolutely love it. When I did it, I was on a boat with a group of perfectly ordinary people.

You do seem to be confusing the upper classes with the middle classes with talk of their code, polo etc.

We have a middle class lifestyle. Yes, we are skiing at Christmas, so I am exactly who you're aiming this thread at. But you know nothing of us. Of the choices we make about our lives and lifestyle to ensure that we can ski at Christmas.

Is there anything you'd specifically like to know?

Or do you think that we should cancel the trip so that it's not unfair on the DCs classmates?

You can watch ballet/opera/plays at the cinema.
That's the only way I've seen them but easier and cheaper than the real thing.

Someone upthread mentioned soft skills and I think that is what is important.

In any conversation it's hard to be the one who doesn't have the shared experience with the others, a good conversationalist will notice the person that's left out and bring the topic around to more common ground. Not many people have these skills. Equipping your children to be able to do it for others and for themselves will help them massively.

Another good skill is to know what you don't know, not try to mask and to be able to ask interested and intelligent questions about it, with no embarrassment, just curiosity. That's something that you can model for your children.

"Oh I've never been skiing, but I've always wanted to try and I'm really enjoying hearing about it" puts your cards right on the table and either allows you space to be more involved.

I'm a bit 🙄at the obsession with the Caribbean. I've never been and I can't say it's held me back. Perhaps I'd have progressed better at work if I had.

I think you are making a point about how children gain from experiences parents expose their children to and some children are additionally disadvantaged by lack of opportunit and shared experience. But you've used examples that are a bit of a reach.
I do get your point though, celebs drive me mad talking about childhoods with little money and then often mention a parent is a teacher or similar and so they presumably were encouraged re education,had books around, heard interesting conversations etc

At 4am I was lying in bed. I had woken early so started to read a book. The chapter I was on had a Christmas scene and the ground was hard with frost and snow was expected. The book is set in the 1970's in England and that sent me back to my teens. Indeed, in the late 60's through to the 70's Winters were always cold. We would walk on the canals in January, the ice was that thick. Snow would be common from Christmas through to February, melting occasionally then more coming along. I remember three white Christmases in a row.

But there I was this morning, thinking about what I needed to do today outside. The lawn keeps growing and I will mow it in a bit. I saw others mowing their lawns yesterday too. I have never mowed past the first week of October before and this will be the third time since then. There will not be snow again this year. Christmas highlight to me how much climate change is accelerating. Themes of Santa Clause, reindeer and snow seem so outdated now.

When I closed my book and opened Mumsnet this was the first thread I found. I was struck by the Christmas highlights it to me comment and could not get beyond my own thoughts. All these cultural and social differences hardly matter really.