If you grew up poor and in bad areas, did you feel like you were missing out by not being middle class?

[cocolamer]

I grew up pretty poor and come from a housing scheme once considered one of the worst slums in Europe. My parents did manage to move to another scheme when I was 8 but it was still a poor area and my parents really struggled to make ends meet.

I was clever at school but it was rough and if you were clever you got bullied. I did escape into reading and I think it was though books, films and TV that discovered a different world of middle class people where people had things like holidays abroad, music lessons, ballet lessons, trips to the theatre or the museum, different kinds of food and experiences in life. I would have been about 7 when I realised I'd been born into the "wrong" life! I longed for all the trappings of a middle class lifestyle and loved to read books and watch films that depicted the kind of arty, intellectual middle class family life I wish I had myself.

It was something I really felt right though school and I did seek out by myself schemes that would allow me to get free music and art lessons (never did get to do ballet though sadly) I did go to university and have a home and life more like the one I wanted as a child although I have made peace with my working class background now and appreciate the good bits of it.

Did anyone else who did grow up poor notice and feel like they were missing out on all the benefits of a middle class upbringing like music lessons, the piano, the art gallery trips, the educated parents with lots of books? I certainly met middle class people at university who seemed to wish they had been brought up poor like the boy I dated from south London who had me convinced he was from the "ghetto" but was in fact from a lovely town house in leafy Greenwich and his parents were both academics at good London universities!

Well yes, but I also understood that those things were a privilege and not everyone has them. My parents both left school at 14 with no qualifications. They did encourage me to study and used their own experiences as a deterrent for me following a similar path. I threw myself into any opportunity I could at school and developed a very thick skin with regards to people thinking it wasn't cool to be clever, bullying etc.
I got the qualifications I needed, got into a good university which I self funded and now have a professional career and am able to give my child the opportunities I didn't have.

@SgtJuneAckland Well yes I did understand that not everyone had those privileges as my own situation clearly illustrated but it didn't seem to me like many other children around me where that bothered by not getting those things, like they might have wanted more money for stuff like toys or a trip to Disney World but I wanted piano lessons and trips to Rome!

I suppose while we didn't have any money, my parents took an interest in current affairs and would talk about politics etc, and my mum loved to read so we had regular library trips from a young age and books were seen as things to treasure. There was a big effort made to pay for me to go to a school trip to the west end, my mum took on some extra ad hoc cleaning work and I thought that was incredible. There was never any emphasis on stuff or labels in relation to class or status

FWIW I have already decided that as soon as DS is old enough for piano lessons, and we get a piano I will also have lessons myself. It's something I wish I'd been able to do as a child and it's never too late

My parents were bright and did stay informed of things but they were too poor and too busy working to multiple jobs to keep us housed to have much leisure time. My school didn't have trips to things like the west end, we were nowhere near London either for that matter.

I was never bothered about labels or stuff except maybe books and musical instruments it was the opportunity to do things like ballet or music or to learn to play chess, or have access to a telescope for looking at the moon that was the stuff I wanted as a child but didn't get. Except the local council did have some funding for music lessons for deprived kids and art classes but I found out about them for myself.

Perhaps I should get myself down to the local school of dance with the 5 year olds, I still wish I could learn ballet!

I don't think I'm middle class but as a child i has ballet lessons, there were lots of books in our house, we had a very comfortable childhood with holidays, trips to the museum and so on. I am degree educated but dh and i both work. Our ds has guitar lessons, we go the theatre regularly, own hundreds of books as voracious readers and had a holiday in LA over the summer. I still think I'm working class. Is class even really a thing now?

Op your background sounds like mine. Even the school!

I knew I wanted better so ended up at uni and now have a couple of properties and a MC lifestyle to some degree. Not wealthy by many people’s standards but a million miles away from where I began.

My DC have all the music, art, sport, theatre, dance etc. you can imagine, because I didn’t.

I look back on my childhood with a lot of sadness. It wasn’t good but being poor on a sink estate is only one of the reasons for that.

That sounds pretty middle class to me but then I grew up in a real shit hole and life wasn't comfortable at all. You sound very lucky indeed to me. However I do think I wanted to live in the nice arty part of town and that my parents had degrees and have jobs like being musicians, writers or academics.

I think class is absolutely still a thing and its quite a privileged position to imagine that it isn't so I do think you must have been middle class then and middle class now (the middle classes are not rich but comfortable and usually educated). I have a middle class lifestyle now but I am still working class, perhaps my children won't be though as DH is middle class.

Absolutely, poverty and trauma are inexplicably linked. Anyone who says money can't buy happiness has never experienced poverty and not having basic needs met.

If you have to ask "is class even a thing now?" then I imagine it's likely you had a pretty comfortable upbringing, comparatively speaking. When you've had to go without, you know about it.

OP I get you. I longed for ballet lessons, and didn't go on holiday for the first time until I was 21. It really felt unfair and my childhood felt very limited.

I was bought up on a massive council estate - I was completely unaware of music lessons, dance classes, museum visits, art galleries. I don’t think my parents had ever been in a gallery or museum in their lives

But no one else had it so why should I? These are things I discovered I enjoyed as an adult and have been a part of my life since I went to university. I did go to a grammar school in a deprived area when grammars were everywhere. They offered little enrichment but the qualifications I got allowed me to move on.

Although I didn’t get the ‘extras’, we had fantastic family parties, great holidays at holiday camps and camping and my parents gave me a love for life and an ability to get on with everyone. I don’t feel they deprived me because we had a happy home. The rest are just ‘interests’ and I found them later.

I grew up in South London not far from your leafy Greenwich ghetto boy (I know the type!) but I was poor and living on an estate in a low income family. I was also clever at school, although in context I would have likely just been normal in a lot of middle class schools.

I don't think I missed out, I think I just had different experiences. There were no extra curricular classes, but I'm a dab hand at keeping myself occupied with not much, whipping up a good meal out of some basics and navigating benefits and council systems. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I am now middle class, I can't deny it. It could have gone either way in my late teens to be honest.

I dont really give it too much thought these days, but every now and then I notice something someone says or does and I think, wow, you have no idea what some people go through. I had a chaotic and traumatic childhood and I think some people who never experienced that genuinely have no idea. I don't think they are being malicious. I'm glad my eyes are a bit more open to that.

I went to a rough comprehensive, also very bright but again bullied.

I didn't think I was missing out much at the time as everyone was in the same boat.
We didn't have holidays or days out and my mum and dad worked extremely hard. A lot of my time was taken up with chores at home.

It wasn't until I started work that I realised how much I had missed out, mixing with middle and upper class people. It did make me sad that I didn't have the same opportunities that they did.

University wasn't even spoken about as a way out, not even A levels. You left school at 16 and were considered lucky if you got an office job.

I remember a teacher once telling us that we were working class kids and wouldn't be anything other than working class.
Oh and the one trip we had (economics) was to a car battery factory!

I grew up in a different kind of poverty. Rural Wales, living in caravans with no electricity or running water. All I wanted in my future was to be 'posh' (how I articulated middle class, I suppose as we didn't know any middle class people.
We did have books, reading was cherished as Mum was a big reader. But no ballet, music lessons etc (not sure they were even available locally and we didn't have a car) and the only sport I did was briefly basketball club in secondary school.
Chaotic childhood with a lot of moving around, single mum for some of it (who had MH issues), then step dad who was mostly lovely but on off with mum and some domestic violence (on noth sides) when alcohol was involved. Parents often wrapped up in their own drama and not involved in education etc really. It was expected I'd leave home at 16 and get a job. We didn't know anyone with a proper career, most of the people we knew were either on benefits (by choice) or low paid work and renting and generally making dubious life choices and spending their free time getting drunk/high. We were actively encouraged to join in with this.

I definitely felt like I should have had a 'better' life. I was bright and academic, predicted all As for GCSE until we moved from Wales to England when I was 14 and I kind of stopped going to school. Ended up with 4 GCSEs, running off with a 30 year old artist at 17 (because that was better than sharing a 2 bedroom flat with 2 siblings, drunk parents and their druggie friends) and bumbling around dropping out of things until I got pregnant at 20! With a different upbringing, I'd have gone to university and probably got a decent job and bought a house.

As it is, we've got 3 kids in a rented 3 bedroom house and are having to relocate hundreds of miles away to give them a better life. We still won't be middle class, but we could buy a 'posh' (to me!) house and allow our DCs to live at home long enough to do whatever education they want and save for their own futures. With a safety net of a home to return to if things don't work out. That's the kind of privilege I never had and seems aspirational.

I grew up on a council estate in east London. I didn't see wealth anywhere where I lived. We were all the same I had a fabulous loving family and we all lived very close to each other. We knew all our neighbours and we all played out together. No I don't feel like I missed out.

I grew up very wealthy. 5 holidays a year, huge house and pool. New cars every year. Music lessons, any activity we wanted to do. I was still depressed and I'm an underachiever(despite going to uni) . I have a shit job and am raising my daughter as a single mum. She's awesome, happy, confident, we spend huge amounts of time together and her friends are always here or with us. What I lack in money I make up for in other ways. Her friends know they can come round whenever they want. I've had knocks on the door when my dd isn't here as they know I'm a safe place to
Wait to be picked up or get
Me to ring their parents. Wealth isn't always everything

I grew up on a council estate, all the people I knew were like me. I had no sense of missing out as actually I had a great childhood despite not much money or middle class stuff. My own kids are a bit more MC perhaps but we're still not wealthy!

I took up the piano again after 50 years and from an extremely low base (almost had to start again from scratch) after retiring. One of the women at the group I joined some time later had just passed her grade 3 - having never even touched a piano until about 3 years previously. She was maybe mid 40s-early 50s.
Having been far too chicken for exams, I admired her enormously!

I had a similar upbringing. I used to watch films and read avidly too. I yearned to go to boarding school.
We never got any extracurriculars. The expectation was you would leave school at 15/16 and start working. A job in the local supermarket was considered a plum job because you got a discount on food.
I felt like a square peg in a round hole. I knew there had to be better options. out there, but there was a general poverty of ambition where I lived, and being academic just made me a target for bullies.
I've done well in life, considering my start. Had a public sector career, retired at 55, and was by no means rich but managing ok. (poverty teaches you to be resourceful) but I know if I had been brought up in different circumstances I could have achieved so much more.

I grew up very WC. Not on a CH though. My mum read loads so there were always books around. We spent lots of time in the local library and museums because they were free. We went to guides and had ballet lessons, so no I don't think I missed out. There were always lots of neigbourhood kids to play out with so all in all it was a great childhood. I have never felt that I was somehow lesser because I'm WC.

I'm not sure I felt I missed out (we didn't have much money/fancy holidays etc, and my parents worked multiple jobs to make ends meet), but from about adolescence I definitely had a sense of wanting a life that I can see now is classic middle-class-slightly-arty/boho/intellectual.
I don't know where I got this from as no one we knew was like that; our neighbours (Barrett housing estate) were lower-middle and conventional and I went to a sink school where some boys carried knives and there was no sixth form because there was no demand for one.
I don't even mean money so much as life in a different class/mileu. At my school you were roundly bullied if you were at all academic/got praised by teachers. And at home I was always considered suspect by my mum and her side of the family because I wanted to do A levels and go to unit, I loved reading (no one else read books for fun), and was interested in theatre and ballet and 'serious' documentaries and learning and culture generally. They thought all that wasn't 'for the likes of us' and I had ideas above my station. And we ate in front of ITV, not at a table, and if I ever tried having a conversation with my dad (who was more like me) about anything vaguely cultural/books/similar, my mum would throw a strop about 'who did we think we were'.
So I missed out in that we didn't have family Christmas theatre trips and discussions round the table where you learn to interact/listen/converse, or encouragement to do well academically.

I feel you, OP, although not quite the same origin story.

My parents were middle class - private schools and university - but both had mental health, addiction and executive functioning problems, and were estranged from their families. We were on the bones of our arse financially and lived in a shithole (it literally featured in a book called ‘Crap Towns’) where we were ostracised by our neighbours for being stuck up, and ostracised by our extended family for being “povs”. I went to a terrible comprehensive school, had no nice things or hobbies, no friends and none of my emotional needs met. I sometimes tell people all the parenting I received was courtesy of Noel Streatfeild books.

I’m still a complete misfit socially and find people who are at ease with themselves and others very intimidating.

A lot of things are priviliges. Do you have parents (at least one) who loves you and is/are still alive? Loving extended family?

I used to wish some aspects of my life were different but now I realise (mostly from reading some of the discussions on places like MN) that really I had a great life. Loving parents who did the best they could. Enough food.

my parents are very educated but for various reasons (mostly because we had a big family) I didn't get any of the extra things in life. But I guess I grew up in an intellectual family, which I appreciated. Some of my friends whose parents were in business had a lot more money though!

to an extent. I grew up in various council estates, we were generally amongst the poorer in each school i attended.
I grew up wanting clean clothes, pretty clothes, shoes without holes, certain food other kids took in their packed lunch boxes. holidays, to know what it was like to have working parents, to not be bullied for the way I smelled.

I just wanted more. not to the extent that you did, I wasnt too bothered about the arts, I just wanted a nicer life because life was pretty grim.

As things have changed, I wanted away from racists, I wanted away from the council estate mentality that my parents had, I wanted to be able to hold a conversation based on facts, and wider interests than gossip and general divisiveness.
I wanted to be able to fit in with professional people, I wanted knowledge and a skillset.

Ive provided my children with a childhood thats different enough that they will be able to go into professional settings and not stand out like a sore thumb.