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!

I grew up in a single parent household on a council estate in Hackney in the 1980s. My mum was a cleaner and wasn't born in the UK. I did piano lessons at primary and secondary, loved reading, and lots of books in the house. We didn't have a car, never went on holidays. We did our food shop at the fab local market every week. I don't think I missed out on a single thing growing up.

This is a fab answer.
My husband had a fairly privileged upbringing but he thinks too
many children have too much, too soon, it is important to leave some experiences for adulthood, it isn't necessary to go to a prom in a limo or go to New York shopping when you are 15. Children can benefit from camping holidays as well as 5 star experiences.
Your childhood sounds lovely.

I yearned to play the piano all through my childhood. I started lessons aged 37 🙂

Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. I was brought up in poverty with a lot of trauma but I got an assisted place to a private grammar school.

I didn't realise how poor we were (I'm from a single parent family. My mum had bipolar 1. We were homeless once but managed to get a council flat. When my mum went into hospital I was passed around relatives) until I ended up there. I was mixing with kids who would go on ski trips in the winter, to Club Med in the summer; kids who had had endless music and sports lessons; homes with 5 bedrooms and a tennis court. My face was literally rubbed in it on a daily basis. I would have LOVED one small piece of what they had.

In many ways it was an awful experience but I realise my education got me out of my home circumstances. It made me strive to have a better life which I probably would have thought was out of reach if I hadn't rubbed shoulders with it. I went to university, ended up in a career that paid well. I now live a very middle class life and I've managed to provide a stable, loving home for my kids where we're not stressed out of minds because we don't know where the next meal's coming from.

I don't think I knew what middle class was, growing up. Everyone who lived where I lived was the same and stuff on TV felt like a different planet. I didn't dream of much beyond getting the hell out of there as soon as I could and the frugal attitude and work ethic that upbringing gave me (along with the bullying for wanting to work hard at school so I COULD get the hell out of there) have probably been the success factors for my now very comfortable adult life (have never been given or inherited any money for anything from family as there was nothing to give). Well, that and the student grant system (RIP) that funded my degree, alongside my job in a supermarket.

If I did dream of things it was probably clothes that weren't handed down from cousins/siblings, holidays that weren't weekends at my nannas, being first at weekly bathtime so I got the clean water, shampoo rather than washing up liquid...etc

Yes. I feel like I could have written your post.

I grew up lower middle class to working class parents - my measure of this is that they got a good education and were able to buy their own home although we didn't have a lot of money, but we definitely weren't in poverty. The only thing we accessed from your list is books, via the library.

The big thing for me is thinking about how this plays out as a parent. I've just paid for music lessons for DD13 after having to challenge my perception that they're not for the likes of us. Also had to really challenge my thinking about which secondary school she went to as it was difficult to identify with the aspirational comprehensive school she ended up going to. Obviously I want the best for her, but have had to consciously work out what this is. I realise that I'm in a privileged position to be able have choice though.

@defi I agree about poverty being a huge cause of trauma. I did have significant trauma in my upbringing but I was fortunate enough not to have grown up poor. I'm thankful for that, to be abused and suffering serious illness was bad enough. To have that and be poor as well would have been horrific beyond belief.

I agree with some of these comments, whilst I couldn’t understand how people afforded things growing up, it did make me not want to live like my parents, I often felt shame.

Shame at being hungry or the soles of my shoes flapping around on the way to school. They were also cruel abusive parents.

So I didn’t want to be like them, they could afford booze but not dinner, and I wanted to give my child a life I didn’t have, as , as an adult, I did understand how people afforded things and I did understand how not to treat children. I didn’t want them to be round drugs, petty crime, violence. I wanted my home to be filled with love and care and for shame or fear not to be part of it.

@cocolamer some cities do ballet classes for adults, a friend did some here (Bristol). It's worth looking into if you aren't too busy with the music!

The repercussions of being poor but able and culturally auto-didactic go on and on.

Not just the

I supported myself financially through sixth form and university by working shifts at McDonald’s, and only got a 2:2. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to study and revise and have enough to keep body and soul together. As a result I didn’t get to do the graduate trainee schemes which catapulted you into management.

Professionally, now, I continually come across public schoolboys, who needless to say don’t know their arse from their elbow but have firsts from Oxbridge. I carried a much heavier load all my life, and yet here we are arriving at the same fucking table; but they are still the management and clients favourites because of their middle class past and social capital.

I also had no idea about money management or investment; thankfully I bought a flat early because I was so desperate to escape my homelife, but I never had ISAs or a pension and now I’m facing a really bleak retirement despite having had a solid career.

I think children all need to dream of something. Mine dream of being You Tubers and the latest gadget.
My dreams consisted of getting away from my awful abusive parents and having a nice family of my own.
We were very poor, so I think if my parents were already decent humans I would've had similar dreams to yours of a nicer lifestyle.

No. I was far too busy trying to feed & clothe my younger siblings while dad was passed out drunk in bed and mum had already left home. My only thoughts when I was 10 were if there was enough bread or where I could get some if there wasn't. There were no books, barely any schooling, no tv, no trips out.

My aspirations came much later on in life. I didn't have time or space to worry about anything other than surviving when I was a child.

I'm going to read your thread with interest OP, but the ballet jumped out at me. There are beginners adult classes for abilities, you could still do it x

No, I didn't know I was missing out on a thing until I was jettisoned out of school and in to a standalone sixth form school that drew in kids from other areas who had hobbies, driving lessons, cars, musical instruments, who had expensive social lives that included concerts and holidays and a whole host of other things that were completely out of reach.

Until then I thought I was winning because I got three meals and my family weren't in debt and could pay the house bills.

I don't think that you can define class quite as precisely as you seem to be doing. You seem to be using the US definition of class, which is just about household income, but the UK really isn't like that, is it? Accent, education and culture count as well as money.

@RecoveringBorderlineIsBack & @RoundTheBloch I'm going to look into it now!

Of course. I grew up first in a pre-fab and then on a massive Council estate. I was the brightest at school and hence bullied. Parents never went to any cultural venue. Blackpool was the extent of holidays. It was when I read Richard Hoggart's Uses of Literacy at school that I realised I had two spoken registers - one for school and one for home. University was the way out for me - thank God for the Major Award scheme for a grant. School was good because I passed the 11+ well and I had some outstanding teachers for the sciences, history and English, the latter teaching us how to analyze newspapers, study Greek civilisation and engage with novels from Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Robert Tressel, Wm Golding and others. The public library was outstanding - a product of municipal socialism. Only 4 students from my school went to university in my year and no-one from the school had ever gone to Oxbridge.

That was for that poster and they do mention things like ballet classes, trips to the museum, lots of books in the house, holidays as well as a very comfortable childhood. These speak both of financial means and of a degree of cultural capital that are not commonly available to the working classes especially those that are very poor. They may have been lower middle class but it doesn't sound like an average working class kind of background at all.

I totally agree that accent, education and culture are important parts of class which is why I state in my OP that I saw those indicators of cultural capital that come with a middle class upbringing as something to be desired. Even now after all these years and everything I have achieved I still can't quite shake my accent which marks me out to everyone as exactly what I am someone from the poorest ranks of society. However as I said I have made peace with where I come from now.

You were very lucky it sounds like, living in London can be a huge privilege in some ways. There wasn't even a piano teacher available on the housing scheme I lived on growing up, it was like living in a cultural and food desert. There was literally nothing but streets of slum housing.

You're completely right about cultural capital. I wonder if the PP that you responded to is first generation middle class, so her parents perhaps had had a similar background to yours, but wanted their children to have the opportunities that they were denied. That might explain her feeling of being working class, if the parents still spoke with strong regional accents and had only recently acquired cultural capital. I myself am about fifth generation middle class on my mother's side, my mother's great grandfather came from poverty but rose to become middle class through his brains and through a top class education.

You seem to have a very skewed opinion of an average WC family.

@VanityDiesHard It is possible and then the UK is so stratified in many ways even still that even minor differences in class can feel important.

My grandmother was very bright and got a place at the girls grammar school but the family were so poor they couldn't afford the uniform or the books she needed to go, they also needed the money she would earn by going out to work so she never had a chance to make anything of her talents. She married young had a 6 children and her husband died very young leaving her a single mother, her life was so hard, if only she had been able to take up her education but I suppose I wouldn't be here then! There were no grammar schools where I am by the time I went to high school only private schools and good schools in posh areas where we couldn't afford to live, I know some comprehensives are good but mind was like a zoo.

I deliberately ‘lost’ my accent at my state but selective sixth form. I think it helped me in situations with older people of the entrenched middle class in terms of cultural capital but less so in London where it’s so international that everyone speaks with some kind of accent and foreigners are (often but not always) less sensitive to class indicators.

I was an outsider to the working class kids at school because I had culturally middle class parents (who also pushed back against my developing regional accent), but an outsider to the middle class kids as well because we didn’t have the money for skiing and private school.

All this to say I don’t think you’re alone in thinking the way you do.

Yes definitely. I know people who have had a very easy life as a result of their parents wealth and connections. I have worked and studied hard to get the MC lifestyle my kids now enjoy, when others have barely lifted a finger and still have more. It’s hard not to feel resentful when people from hard working families miss out on so much. As a child you can’t help but wonder why your life is so different, and why can’t you go to the museum, whist your mum works two jobs and sits with her bills in her hands.
I always remind my kids that it is with hard work that we have what we do, but sadly life is quite unfair.