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!

Not all museums and art galleries are free. I live in the north east and our closest museum is the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle which is £36 for a family ticket.

Most of the big museums in Newcastle are free but the Life Centre is £42.66, and the Beamish is £63.60. All the local castles and stately homes charge entry (and we have far more of those within half an hour than museums).

In York the railway museum is free but most of the others charge entry.

I think people who live in big cities forget the rest of us don't have easy access to multiple free big museums and art galleries and those we do have access to cost money.

I'm as middle class as they come and we obviously do take our children to museums, art galleries, stately homes, castles, etc etc all the time but it's somewhat disengenuous to wonder why people don't go to museums when most people don't have easy access to a choice of free museums. Say you live in Middlesbrough (with a population of almost 400,000) there is the Dorman and MIMA that are free but that is it. Everywhere else cultural charges entry.

Really? In London?

were more central and in most of the centre and estates and the nice bits are all mixed up. I walk past / through an estate on my way to the tube. My kids do a weekly activity in the community hut there.

estate residents walk along my street of middle class houses on the school run. We all use the same corner shop.

did you really NOT see bigger nicer houses and wealthier areas from the bus?

Well I didn't feel privileged when glue sniffers used to pitch up and sleep outside my front door,. Or when my mum used to put a bucket of water beneath our letterbox just in case they decided to post lit items through it. Or when we had human waste bubbling up through our bath because the council were rubbish. Or when we didn't have hot water for days on end sometimes. But yeah, the piano lessons were fun😅

What is a MC house?

I did not feel like I was loosing out when I was under 10 and lived on a council estate which a lot of my family also lived on. However when we moved and lived in a wealthier area (but we were still in council housing) and I went to a more middle class school, I really did notice the difference.

For me it was things like friends mums reading books, friends parents correcting my speech, friends having posh cars, parents stressing about money if I wanted to do the activities my friends did, eating dinner at a table and the type of food my friends ate….that really made me realise the difference.

Living in poverty obviously does limit your life chances.

Really interesting thread!!
I think I am an odd case class-wise.
I grew up in a south coast town and my dad worked in a factory so we were working class but my parents managed to buy a house in an area that was Lower middle class (not that it was categorised like that in those days.
Was the 70s so no one had frisbee clothes or fancy holidays where I lived.
Only a few in my school went to university and that is where I encountered rich people but they kind of assumed so was like them as have always ha neutral accent.
Had a career in London and have friends of all classes. Yes I would have flourished as a middle class child and my own children had a vastly better education (top independent school in London, big house, lots of holidays etc) but I don’t think they are v any happier than z a I was then.

I had no idea there was even a middle class. Working class in a working class area, I didn't know anyone who wasn't.

I totally get what you are saying. I was very aware of class when I was growing up. This was mainly due to my mum being solidly working class and talking about class a lot. I quickly worked out that being middle class sounded a lot better and aspired to become so.

My deprived coastal town school was pretty rubbish but I worked really hard, I saw being clever as my way out. I read constantly, mainly Victorian classics and worked my way through the central library too. There was no Internet but I educated myself by reading everything.

I longed for museums and anything historic but they were never on the agenda and there were none near our town. Like you, it wasn't material things I wanted it was culture.

My parents were very supportive and although I was the first in my family to go to Uni it was always assumed that I would be going and they sacrificed a lot to make sure I didn't have any loans.

I am now very solidly middle class.

central London (zone 2) is pretty stark.

middle class houses are the Victorian Georgian houses that cost £1-2 million plus. Either family homes or split into flats for young professionals at £500k a pop or £2k a month rent.

around here it’s that or estates.

not much in between.

@Mitherinmolecules I am speaking only for myself. of course.

There are different kinds of poverty, financial is only the most obvious. I grew up in a house with a racist, aggressive controlling man, who didn't believe in the education of women. Who resented our achievements and did his best to bring us down. It was difficult.

My middle class school, and my middle class friends and their parents showed me the way out, for which I will always be grateful. The library became my safe space. Funnily, later, as a student I was the only one who could actually survive on my budget. I still know how to eat reasonably well on a pittance, so there were some benefits. 🙂

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?

Erm, no? I grew up on a council estate in SW London by a single mum who worked two (and sometimes three) different jobs to make ends meet for my sister and I. I still did music lessons after school which I eventually dropped because I was no longer interested. We found art galleries boring but we loved museums so we’d go often.

Despite my mum not going to university and not being a keen reader, we had books all over the house as she encouraged our reading A LOT. My auntie also had tons and tons of books whenever we’d visit her house; she still has hundreds of books to this day. I’ve never felt like I’ve missed out but I also think your summarisation of the WC is quite distasteful

He was a racist,aggressive controlling man. This thread is about having WC parents, not abusive ones. Unless you think all WC parents are abusive?

I had a happy childhood in a nice area, with music, books and travel (no ballet though!). But if there was a downside to that, it’s inverted snobbery. For some reason the council estate kids were more readily accepted at school, and used to mock/bully those of us who did anything extra-curricular, so the hockey team/choir etc had to stick together for safety! I still find a few people have issues with anyone who is remotely well-spoken

No. But none of my peers were middle class either so I never had anything to compare to.

You can't change what class you are by the way. If you were born and raised working class you always will be. Your kids can be middle class though.

Also I'm working class and my DS has holidays abroad, horse riding lessons and visits to museums. I'm not educated but I read a lot! Working class doesn't always mean poor or deprived or thick. I grew up properly poor and my dad was in prison a lot. DS has had a different experience to me.

No. I grew up on a tough council estate and as a child, it was fun. All children running around together. Probably wasnt that fun for my parents tho. Aged 11 I took the 11+ and got into grammar school, as did my brother and sister. Then we got good jobs and started doing more activities. After a while I left work, went to Uni then resumed work. My DCs dont know what being really skint means. I dont tend to think of class, doesnt matter to me. Im working class. I did music and dance lessons from my 20s onwards, learned a language too. You dont have to be middle class to do that.

I went to a direct grant grammar school, in the older days! It was a fee paying school with 20 places a year for us scholarship girls. The difference between us was huge- think skiing holidays or Blackpool! We stood out like sore thumbs, even in the school uniform you could tell the differences. At times, I felt as if I was missing out, it hit me hardest when 18th birthday parties started coming round, mine was definitely lower key than most! We lived over a shop, many of my classmates lived in very large houses and were distinctly middle/upper class.
But my parents supported us throughout, they were so proud! I couldn't have wished for a better upbringing and money had nothing to do with it!

Please don’t do that patronising ‘how hard we work’ thing to explain your wealth - lots of low paid workers ‘work hard’ on long night shifts in warehouses, nursing homes, cleaning, labouring etc. You’ve done well. Good for you. But it’s not because you’ve worked ‘harder’ than other people.

I was going to say what @Ibizabar did. It always happens on here and I am not sure why MN apparently can’t distinguish between a working class background, which is fairly ‘ordinary’, and a chaotic background spent in poverty

Where did I say others don't work hard? I saw my parents work very hard to give us everything they could, me and husband have worked in low paid jobs, I worked 3 jobs at one time. I hope my children have the same attitude that my parents and we have about working hard. I know we are very lucky to be able to give our children what we do.

I can really relate to the wanting to do ballet. Very WC family, estate home but my dad was interested in the world, read, had radio 4 on all day and watched science programmes and The Sky at night. So i was encouraged to read and also disappeared into Mallory Towers and Ballet Shoes, so I knew this world existed. Also bullied at school for wanting to do well, first person in my family to go to university- my dad was dead by then and my mum didn't understand at all why I didn't just get a job!

Having a clever dad and a glimpse of another life was a double edged sword really. Have always felt like a fish out of water, that I don't belong in the WC or MC worlds really. Have no contact with much of my family who still live on the estate, they think I'm a snob but actually we have nothing but blood in common now.

My mum took me to a ballet class just once because I begged. It was awful and still sticks in my mind. They all had the shoes and leotards and I had nothing, stuck out like a sore foot- never went back. A really sad memory.

My kids have had everything they want/ need, and are both at university studying things they are super interested in and good at, have broken a cycle and i'm proud of that.

Well that doesn't sound nice but you didn't mention any of that and you did say you didn't feel you missed out on anything but then you now say you did miss out on a safe clean home, obviously none of that your mum's fault and living with that level of antisocial behaviour, poor housing and to be honest much worse are not things I am unfamiliar with at all, its literally too traumatising to talk about some of the awful things that happened back then.

However living in London at least isn't a cultural desert and you at least had a fab local market, we didn't really have any access to fresh food at all.

@fireplacetiles I can really relate to your one ballet class experience I went to brownies once as a child but we couldn't afford the uniform and so was told not to come back. It is really so sad I can't believe now looking back that they would do that but they did.

You contrasted your life of “Private school, eating out, trips to theatres and holidays abroad.” with their cousins “who have a different life” and “they see how hard we work.”

So you equate private school, holidays, theatre and eating out is because you’ve ‘worked hard’. When the reality is it’s sometimes about work, but more likely a combination of luck, opportunity, investment, education, accent, contacts, personality and privilege.

None of my peers were middle class either, far from it but I did so want to do all those lovely things, ached to do them really. To be completely honest in many ways I care much less about the class thing and I agree that you personally can never fully ascend your birth class but its just that social class and the cultural capital that often comes with it opens the door to so many opportunities to learn and try different things especially activates that are considered a bit snobby or high brow which just happen to be the things I am naturally drawn to and have been all my life.