Do you have friends outside of your social class?

[tolatola]

I hadn’t realised what a bubble I live in. I’m privately educated, come from a very upper middle class family, went to Cambridge, and now work in an ‘elite’ profession. I live in an expensive area of London. Naturally, my friends or social time is spent through people met through work, university, or family members.

I went on holiday recently to a seaside town. We rented a house on the seafront. We went to a local pub and got chatting away to a lovely couple. They were from London, but very very working class. We had a lovely evening chatting. But it made me realise that I live in a real bubble. How many people have friendships that span class boundaries?

Not sure as I have never thought about the 'class' my friends think they are in. Maybe we are all similar.

I know people from different class backgrounds, yes. My family background is varied, my school friends were varied, the people I've met since are less varied (due to the sector I work in). I deliberately didn't move to a MC 'bubble' area as I find the people who exist only in that bubble quite annoying! I actively chose to send my kids to a school with a wider range of pupil backgrounds.

strikethrough error!

I don't, but it's not through conscious choice as such... it's more because (I think) people naturally gravitate towards others with shared background, experience and values.

I do, but that's because I'm lower down the class ladder. People look up, but rarely down as you have discovered.

That said, if the number of people who claim things 'only happen on Mumsnet' are anything to go by, most people stick to others who are exactly the same as them.

I have loads - mainly because I'm from a working class background, now working in a very senior professional role and live in a very diverse part of North London. The breadth of my friendships is one of the things I treasure about my life and one of the things my parents are most proud of, that they raised a kid who can mix with anyone.

My husband grew up on a central London council estate. I had a nanny growing up. So I'm going to say yes

I've never really though about it until now. Similar back ground to you and so are all my friends. I suppose that's what happens in life, stratification.

Jeez. 🤦‍♀️

I'm married to someone outside my class I guess.

DH is proper old school aristocracy. Me, working class but from another country and English is not my first language so he says no-one can pigeon hole me.

That said, his so-called best friend refuses to acknowledge me in any way (married 20 years now) and alot of his other friends are a bit patronising.

Since menopause hit i am a very great deal less accommodating of this than I was years ago and am now proper fierce when people try and walk over me.

DH doesn't care about class at all. He has friends from all classes. He has however been the object of alot of reverse snobbery including from some of my family members which I also stamp on.

Well I married a man from a different class from me. It has resulted in some funny moments when we organise things like Christmas. Our friends come from lots of different backgrounds (a couple went to boarding school, many from council estates and most somewhere in between). Despite this it is quite a bubble of liberal minded folk. For example I don't think any of our social circle of about 120 people voted openly for Brexit (apart from my FIL), pretty certain none voted Tory etc

I've got friends who grew up on council estates/currently live in social housing. I've got friends who are/ were raised by single mums on benefits. I've got friends who went to private schools including Eton.

Not the working classes???? For pleasure?????

OP never speak of this amongst your circle

I do.
I am very middle class, and while I didnt grow up very privileged, my parents did have enough to send up to private school.
My mom then remarried, and my stepdad, being a doctor, improved on our quality of life, so more upper middle class.

And Id say most of my friends are middle class, if not upper middle class.

But when it came to buying a house, my money only stretched to the equivalent of a council estate.

I have now made friends with my neighbours, at our local, and they are all very much working class. If I hadnt moved to that neighbourhood, Id probably still be in my middle class bubble!

I can't say I ever really think about "class" there are people I know and like across all walks of life. I don't ever consider if someone is a different "class" to me.

I find it hard to make friends outside of my class (which I’d say is the ‘in betweener’ class) I find the extremes either pretentious or instantly take a dislike to me as they think I’m pretentious!

I hope you washed your hands after.

Yes - from my council house background - through work and living abroad I now know people who are very rich (and some quite "important") and people who very much are not. I don't tend to judge people by where they live, and how much dosh they have though.

What?! I think it's actually quite fascinating that our life choices unwittingly lead us to have very insular lives, in general. I realised I have one friend (and really, he's not a friend so much as my friend's husband) who didn't go to university and in fact left school at 16. That's shocking! Even when I've made good friends in my workplace, they've all been university educated. I never noticed til my friend was discussing her husband's qualifications one day. You quite often hear about people struggling to get their passport signed because they don't have an acquaintance with a professional job so it obviously goes that way too.

Yes, I had a very working class upbringing but I ended up studying at Durham (not known for its working class heritage) and now work in a professional role, so I have friends from all walks of life

I was raised by a hardworking single mum and we were poor, but went to a grammar school where all my friends had ponies and went skiing. I spent my weekdays speaking properly with them, and my weekends on street corners speaking very differently with my (very lovely actually) hoodrat poor friends. I always felt I had a double life.

My DH is firmly middle class. This means my sons are also middle class and I never did get over them as toddlers asking for “humous please mummy”! I felt such working class betrayal 🥸

I can, and do, rub along nicely with anyone I meet and feel like I can find things in common. So perhaps my double life as a teen was useful after all.

@Firstworldprobs 😁 this I can relate to

I don't have friends let alone friends from a different social class.

I do, myself and a handful of cousins were the first generation in the family to go to uni. I met DH there (both of us from very working class parents) and we also made good friends with a very wealthy course mate (long standing family money and large business). His life is so completely different to ours. We own our house but up to our ears in renovation loans. Problematic now that the general cost of living has gone up. They are well off enough to have a 'wife at home looking after the children' set up indefinitely and never worry about spending. His dad bought their huge house.
I love my life, but to have a little bit more of their comfort would be a dream!

However OH is middle class, he argues that I am too but my mum raised me and my brothers up in a council housing estate... working every hour to provide for us so no... so me and OH tend to clash sometimes about things. He is a bit of a snob