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?

Class does exist though, doesn't it? And I think you'd be hard pressed to say that it doesn't.
I'm WC through and through. As a student I worked in a shop and a terribly posh young lady used to come in and sort of waltz around asking us to stock things and then never actually coming back to buy the products.
Now I'm in a professional role and she has started working in a shop near my work (a stop gap as she calls it, whilst the divorce is going through). So I come in as a customer once a week but she is somehow still in a position of power due to the difference in class. I still feel inferior and that she is somehow doing me a favour (?) by serving me. Somehow I can't stop myself bowing to the UMC. It's like it's innate.
Even by working in a shop, she does not become WC.
And yes I do have friends of different classes but my WC friends see more of the real me (a bit of a mess). I still haven't told some of my MC friends that I have been separated from my child's dad for around a year, that's how uncomfortable their privilege makes me feel at times.

@crocodileindenial That is all in your head, though. You are the one deciding that you are inferior. Babies aren't born with class. It isn't something genetic. It exists as a way to divide and group people because for some people hierarchy matters. It isn't innate. It is completely man-made and you can choose to observe it or reject it.

Yes it does exist @crocodileindenial Some people confuse it with income/money but it's more than that; accent, background - what your parents did and their background.

But the shop 'thing' sounds more inferiority complex (hope that doesn't sound rude) on your part and you can choose to disregard it if you want. The woman in the scenario probably has no idea, it's possible she feels embarrassed about the shop work if she feels the need to explain.

I agree that people don't just change class after a change in fortune or occupation (going back to my first paragraph it's not about income or money really).

A few, partially because I used to renovate houses and some of the guys that worked for me became friends. These were general labourers/jack of all trades, not qualified electricians or anything, who left school to work at 16. Also a few who may have had a working class upbringing but were doing solid middle class jobs when I met them.

I feel like I have moved class, and that’s problematic in lots of ways
my parents really pushed education and I ended up going to Cambridge and then working in science research (not well paid, but most would consider middle class profession)

it’s the worst - at home family consider me to be a snob because I like the theatre, and coming from a fairly industrial town a fair few of my family are racist and dont accept that they are so that leads to arguments and accusations that I’m out of touch with “real life”
at work (and at uni) my accent always marks me out for jokes, my love of pork scratching is fair game for laughs, etc
i get wheeled out for media interviews when we need to show “diversity”

it’s also hard having VERY wealthy friends who have no idea how out of touch they are, because of you pick up everything they say then you’re the angry “Ken loach” in the group and that gets tiring

you’re damned either way right?

I like having experience of all aspects of the class system though, definitely gives you more perspective

That’s nice that you had a lovely evening chatting.

Any plans to expand your circle further after your holiday? Any other input to this thread? Otherwise, your post seems a bit pointless.

Yes. Old Etonian through to local farm worker. But I come from a FSM family, went to grammar school, university and have a son at independent school. Class has never bothered me really. People are just people.

And growing up poor means I'm much better at dealing with the CoL crisis than some of my friends. Funny how things can be useful, years later. 🙂

I'm from a working-class background, and most of my friends are from working-class backgrounds. I went to university and have a middle-class job and a Masters degree, but what I find really interesting is the DD's (20) friends are pretty much all from working class backgrounds, many of her friends' parents don't have degrees, and the group of boys (young men) that she hangs around with are all in manual trades. I have also been a lone parent so financially she hasn't had the opportunities that she might have done if I was in a couple. I find it fascinating that there has been some social mobility, but not as much as people expect I think just from one generation going to university. I am the only person in my wider family of my generation to have a degree.

I don't have any friends. I'm the lowest of the low in class though. I'm on the poverty line. I work with 15 other women and only one of those owns their own home. The rest of us are housing association. Not even private rent. We work just above minimum wage as care assistants.

Social mobility is largely a myth. Unless we have specific circumstances that make it happen, we tend not to move emotionally or psychologically far from our roots. I have friends from a wide variety of backgrounds, but my "inner circle" tend to be from very similar backgrounds to me. I think most people would say the same.

Why do people keep mentioning Northern university towns as an indicator of widening their social circle? I went to Newcastle university and apart from one friend, everyone who I hung about with had parents who were doctors, solicitors, teachers etc. Middle classes are more widely represented in university so that's not surprising. The students who had been to posher private schools did tend to hang out together - I always wondered how they found each other.

@CurlewKate I agree. I think people navigate towards those they feel comfortable with. My best friend went to a very good uni, got a first but then moved back home and took a job she could have got with no degree. She is still friends with mostly WC people, and is only in touch with one friend from uni.
It's a bit like being Asian and choosing to make friends with only white people, you have to do so much explaining and there's a sort of

Ha, ha, ha. With all your education and elite profession, you must still be as thick as mince if you hadn't realised that you live in a social bubble. You sound revolting.

Cont.
disconnect between our two realities.
For example, I've recently made three new acquaintances and we have bonded over our shit dads (three absent, one prematurely dead), fights that happened at our school, crap school dinners (i imagine at least two of us were on free school meals), our first jobs, where we see ourselves in five years etc. Yes obviously anyone can have these chats but I find with MC people I have to either minimise things or explain things and it can sometimes sound either overly bleak or dramatic.
Goals like becoming a home owner are not a given for us, it's something to aspire to.
Again, not speaking for all WC people!

Absolutely!

This is a problem I have with big cities and London in particular.

I have a diverse set of friends, of different social classes and cultures.

I am very fortunate.

We mostly have a set of common values though.

Yes mainly through ds going to private school

has made me aware that the class system, snobbery and entitlement are still very much part of our culture

People don't like to associate with people who eg have smaller houses and less expensive cars, so they don't.

Seriously? Thank goodness I don't live in the UK then. I don't own a house or a car, all my friends have houses (some have more than one) and cars and couldn't care less that I don't.

I find all this class rubbish mind boggling.

Actually I don't. I am probably the richest of my friends and I'm not rich.

Probably not had the chance to meet them tbh due to location and our jobs.

I would say my own bubble is very middle-middle class although I have had friends from council estates and also the aristocracy during my almost-50 years so far. Most of my main friends went to state schools and some were the first to go to university but all over our parents had lower to middle-middle class upbringings and so did we. So yeah I guess I live in a bubble of sorts but it's not that I am not aware of and haven't socialised with or associated with the other 'classes' both 'higher' and 'lower'.

We might range in jobs from carpenters to lawyers to journalists but are still very much the middle-middle class. Earnings vary from 50k to 150k per person but none earning that each in a couple if that makes sense, there's always one person earning more than the other in a couple. In many of my friends' households the woman is the higher earner and the man does more cooking and housework, if that's relevant! I would say it was 50-50 in terms of this.

Some single parents like me but still managing to afford to buy a three-four bedroom house albeit struggling with the high mortgage on their own. My lot can afford one or sometimes two family holidays abroad a year and also the odd UK weekend away, often camping. Very few of us can afford to/would fight to send our kids to private school. A couple of outliers earning a bit more and going on better holidays with bigger houses but generally still middle middle class. We're generally all left-leaning remainers but there are a couple who surprised me and voted for Brexit.

That’s something I noticed too at University. All the people who had been to private schools hung out together. They seemed to have some sort of radar which scanned everyone and homed in on those like themselves.
I am puzzled by the Northern Universities comments too . Newcastle is very well regarded. As is Durham. What about the Scottish Universities? St Andrews, Edinburgh and Glasgow are also very highly regarded.

That's very well put. I'm similar to you.

It stands me in good stead at work though (teaching) as I can morph a bit to talk to all the different groups of parents, particularly in my last school where there was a really massive divide between the Joules and Hunter welly brigade and the poorer families.

I always felt a bit homeless, because although in lots of ways my DF was "as rough as a badger's arse" as he might have put it, left school at 14 and always worked in factories, he had also educated himself about many things, read the Guardian, and had much higher aspirations for me than most of my working class friend's parents had for them, so I was often seen as "up myself / swallowed a dictionary / whatever" and got bullied for it (though I could fight back!) but without any of the social capital to really go anywhere else.

That’s really sad. Good for your Dad though! There are several people on my Dads side (WC) who never had the opportunity to do anything with their fierce intelligence. One knew all the Latin names of plants . One taught himself the piano without any lessons. There were those who got into Grammar school but couldn’t go due to lack of money or needing to help support the family. My father was a self made man ( WC) but his family thought he was arrogant and up himself because he had moved into a different world from them. They had absolutely nothing in common when he went home.

That’s something I noticed too at University. All the people who had been to private schools hung out together. They seemed to have some sort of radar which scanned everyone and homed in on those like themselves.

That was my experience too. I was Northern WC and bonded immediately with another Northern WC girl in my halls corridor. There was a group of private school 'posh boys' that didn't really mix with anyone other than other posh people (all the girls had long hair they flicked and very cold eyes). We had a bit of an 'in' as we became friendly with two of the boys because we were always in lectures together. They were really lovely guys and writing this makes me wonder where they ended up. But there was a gaping chasm in terms of our lives and experiences. I remember being in one of their rooms in halls and seeing his huge trunk and him telling me that's what he had at boarding school. It was just another world to me. The rest of the group kept more distance and the really posh boy in the group (the Lord whose father owned vast swathes of south west England) didn't interact with us at all despite being in lectures with me. I got the impression he thought we were beneath him. I think for the others we were just some weird zoo exhibit - interesting to see once or twice but you wouldn't want to bring it home. 😂