What defines "class" in a family?

[chatenoire]

It got me thinking as my DH would be considered WC on his own (manual work low salary, GCSE), whereas I come from a more middle class (parents went to uni, I have a master's). Our joint income is just above £100k. So my assumption is that as a family we're MC.

Joint interests are going on mini breaks, a bit outdoorsy (but no camping!), the arts, but we also like going to your average indie gig.

As I told DD, you can't buy class!

According to my long-gone DM, it would depend on whether you say lounge, toilet, and garridge (for the thing you put the car in).

Or her acceptable alternatives. 😂

What does it matter? You'd probably be seen as a middle class family but so what?
In UK class is much more subtle that job and income anyway. It relates to how someone talks, the clothes they wear, the names they give to their kids, where they go on holiday!! It's so far reaching - a thousand little judgements are made about someone.
Someone like Barbara Windsor (or Joe Swash for a more recent example) may be wealthy and live in a big house but from their upbringing and the way they speak (spoke) they'll automatically be seen as working class.
Conversely, someone who speaks with a very middle class accent whose parents were doctors and lawyers will be seen as middle class even if they work as a dustman.

DH had a working class upbringing and sees himself as working class... yet admits he has a middle class job and lifestyle, and DDs are solidly middle class. But finds his current lifestyle doesn't override his upbringing if that makes sense..

The British class system is complex and simultaneously irrelevant and relevant at the same time.

No actually they weren't first generation. My grandmother went to uni too and she was born in 1917.

What a weird obsession for your family to have. I have never once discussed what “class” I am with family or friends in 58 years. Why does it matter to you?

Why wouldn’t it be relevant?

Hobbies and pastimes, along with a myriad other things, are class indicators.

Football supporter? Probably working class.

Go to the opera / ballet / symphony orchestra / chamber groups - more likely to be middle class.

But it’s not an exact science, and no one thing is, or isn’t, definitive.

If you’re not interested in a discussion about it (and some people on this thread - not mentioning any names! - seem bizarrely annoyed by it), then just don’t click on the thread.

Like I've said I find it interesting.

Class is having the dignity to not consider someone a lower class than yourself

Agree, I will never understand the need of anyone to discuss, label or validate themselves based on an outdated categorisation system designed to demean others.

OP your parents may still whitter on about class, doesn't mean you have to. And no it is not "interesting" trying to work out where you sit as it is irrelevant. Find a hobby.

FACTS! I only ever hear it mentioned on Mumsnet which seems to be full of champagne socialites who try to convince themselves they're down with the peasants even though they're above average financially 😂

Why on earth is this class nonsense still seemingly important? Surely it's time to move into modern times and get over it all.

You are university educated and in a profession. Solidly middle class.

Not crazy - it was baked into social conventions. A woman would take on the status of the man she married, hence all the snotty social dramas in Pride and Prejudice etc about women marrying up or down. Right up to Prince Philip not being able to be King Philip. They didn't conjour it up out of nowhere.

I think it is strange that people think that the class system isn’t very much present within the UK. As a pp has already said, it is disingenuous.

If you even have to think like this then you have no class !

Eh, I think it's part disingenuous, part limited social experience. I tend to think that these types live in a bubble of lower middle/firm middle/working class done good types, and very rarely meet anyone outside of that.

I've worked in jobs where the trustees were upper, management were middle and working class were general staff. It had a huge, unacknowledged and negative affect on employee relations. But then lots of people just encounter people like themselves.

(My dad's family tree, with crest/motto etc goes back to the domesday book, whilst my mum's is made up of a melange of working class immigrants - both of them give very short shrift to the idea that class doesn't exist. But then my mum is also a social historian specializing in labour movements of the 20th century, so go figure.)

I think nowadays there's too many things that vary. It used to be a blue/white collar thing. So if you were in a profession you were middle class.

Now you get these really longwinded metrics from the Guardian and they've made new classes up too like technological working or something.

Without a clear test, is it even real?

I thought he couldn’t be King Phillip because otherwise he, as “King” would have outranked the Queen?

Well, that's what I mean by baked into social conventions. Camilla can be Queen because she won't outrank him because she's a woman.

Not dissimilar to a woman being called Mrs Mark Johnson, but a man never being called "Mr Lucy Jones".

I’m in a similar situation. DH is working class and I am middle class. The kids are middle class because of where we live etc but dh still talks about being working class and working class culture and his background. As a family we present as middle class I guess. As a wider family it is something we’ve talked about as my mum divorced my dad and married my working class step dad who found his working class heritage depressing and wanted to learn all the ‘correct’ terms like pudding, loo etc that my mum learned at boarding school and despised things like doilies and slippers. He once refused to take his shoes off in our house when we got new carpets. He had the smallest tv and a house full of antiques whereas my FIL always had the best newest gadgets.

Is this for an article in 'Just Seventeen'. It doesn't really make sense without context.

@Karwomannghia isn't pudding the way commoners speak?

I thought the upper crust term was desert?

Settee - bad
Couch - American
Sofa - middle class?

It's all a bit of fun.

|then there's lounge, living room, front room

There was a thread from someone saying that they were working class, but people were resoundingly telling her no. Probably inspired by that.

This thread reminds me that I just read a book where the author labours the point that the heroine identifies with another character because of their oh so humble roots whilst all the other characters are middle class - aka all the children going to private schools, and having been to prestige private schools themselves.

It was so jarring to read, because the markers were all upper-middle class, and it was written as if that was all the heroine had experienced - but it didn't make sense, any of it!

People don't really understand the nuances of class, wealth and local culture.

Yes, exactly I saw a lady saying she was not WC but she was.