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!

Working class people can own their own homes you know, and afford music lessons. Working class does not automatically equal poverty. I am a working class single mother living in a HA flat and claiming UC top ups but I manage to give my DS horse riding lessons and private guitar lessons when he was younger.

My grandparents were working class (grandmother was a TA and grandfather worked in a cigarette factory) and owned their own home. My parents also owned their own home when I was born and they were working class (my dad was a barber and my mum a carer) until my dad ran off and stopped paying the mortgage.

I don't know why people think the working class can't be home owners.

They might be free in London but they’re not universally free. York Castle museum is £7 adult, £4 child and York Museum is £8 adult and £4 child for instance. Not theme park prices admittedly.

I’m not sure that is fair. There are plenty of free cultural attractions in York and also plenty of paid for ones in London (Tower of London is extremely expensive, Transport Museum, Postal Museum etc are all paid for) so it’s not comparing like with like.

It is an issue that is known, as far as I am aware, that even if you make art galleries and museums free it’s often just the people who were happy to pay in the first place (and tourists!) that benefit. How to widen the demographic who regularly visit is difficult.

I agree with others that living in poverty and being middle class are two separate issues. There are lots of working class jobs that pay more than middle class roles e.g lorry driver vs teacher.

My father was a miner, then a factory worker, my mother was a cleaner. I had ballet lessons, we went to the library every Saturday, paid museums for birthday trips and my brother had guitar lessons.

It’s the effect that growing up in a deprived area had on my aspirations that has had the greatest impact on my life as it seriously reduced my earning potential for the first two decades after my graduation. I was raised to believe earning £30,000 - £40,000 is doing well in life.

I don't feel I missed out. There's a common narrative that there is no WC culture, there is but it's not as valued by society as MC culture. We are storytellers. There's so much to learn from just listening and talking to people.
As I now work in social care, I am so grateful I grew up in a WC, rough area as I can relate to people so much easier. The kids at uni who didn't grow up that way struggle a bit with making genuine connections with their service users and also aren't good at being direct. Same with men mouthing off and shouting, I grew up with them, they don't intimidate me, they're all bark.

I’ve not been to any of those London museums so when a PP, presumably London based, says museums are free I was pointing out that they aren’t. York museum is just an average museum not a tourist attraction, like say Yorvik, and I’d expect it to be free in the same way iyswim.

No. We had food and holidays and clothes and books etc. We were encouraged to follow our interests but not pushed into things or parents thought we should do just because their friends' kids were doing them. We had freedom to play and explore. My parents were never bothered about history or whatever but I was so they bought books from the charity shop and took me to the library and we did go to museums and stuff - even though they're free, the council museums are very good and we've always don't stuff like that. Not as regularly as people mention on here because they did work very long hours in manual jobs so had to wait for the holidays, but we still went. We learned practical things like cooking and cleaning and gardening and sewing and mending and DIY. We had friends and everyone seemed to know and look out for everyone else. We had a different, probably less privileged upbringing than some families I went to school with but I didn't ever feel I was missing out on anything.

"My point was, it's less about money than it is about having parents who try to see outside their bubble."

@Bumface56 This is a privileged position though its all very well saying your parents saw beyond their bubble but your mum could afford to work part time! Your dad was an Electrical Engineer which is a very well paid job and certainly in lower middle class territory at least even if that isn't where you parents originated from or that wasn't reflected in the area you grew up in.

What you say sounds insulting to my parents who worked themselves to death to get us out of the slum we came from and even then it was only to a slightly better quality housing bad housing scheme. They didn't have the luxury you and your family had to ponder life outside their bubble, they were well aware but what could they do. They both worked fulltime and then had other jobs besides, they might have lived in poverty but they were definitely working class.

I'm not insulting anyone.
I just don't like people assuming that working class people are a homogenous lump who can't afford housing and holidays or books.
You are describing poverty not working class.
In the 50's to the 70's people were able to buy a home in my area on one wage. And it was thought of as a home not an investment.
It is far harder now for young people. Their earnings might be a lot higher but between housing and childcare costs alone they don't stand a chance.

MN always do @Bumface56 . Any thread about working class people very quickly starts sounding Dickensian.

I think that being the child or grandchild of immigrants impacts a lot on your working class experience because immigrants generally have a high level of aspiration, they move to have a better life for the future generations as much as for themselves, better access to education, more opportunities to further themselves and make money. This is passed on to the next generation and then again, their parents expect them to be more successful than they were with more opportunities, and on to the next generation afterwards as well. This is very different to the experience of a family who have many generations living close by and having done the same kind of jobs for generations, there is a lot less motivation to look outward or change the status quo.

I am not sure I fundamentally agree. The definition of working class is unskilled labour, earning a wage rather than a salary, without higher education. Seldom do people in this group be able to afford to buy their own home, in the 50’s to 70s and certainly not on one wage. Saving the deposit alone would have been out of the question.

however I agree that working class doesn’t equate to poverty, there is a vast shade of grey between poverty and being able to afford to heat your home, feed and clothe your kids etc, but the fact remains, many working class people, true working class in unskilled labour on a wage get by without benefits or government support. And this was true in the time period you comment on.

we got benefits, a council property, money for decorating, free school meals, because quite simply my parents would have been in even worse poverty and we’d have been on the streets without it

That reasoning means I am neither working class or middle class as neither my parents went to university. Neither did I.
Miners would never be described as anything other than working class.
I'm from a former mining community and everyone I knew owned their own home. Most mothers stayed at home or had part-time jobs.
I have no reason to lie about any of this.
Believe what you will but I lived it.

Just to add, my parents bought their house in 1964 after living with my maternal grandparents for two years. They had started saving for a deposit from the time they got engaged. My mother started working in an office full time at age 15 until she had my sister at age 24.
It was achievable then in lots of areas, unlike today.

The house cost £2000 and that's not a typo.

My experience of growing up poor was similar to yours in some ways but different in other ways. My parents both left school in their mid-teens as they were expected to start work and help out financially at home. Despite the lack of a secondary education, my Dad was quite clever and loved doing things like crosswords and word puzzles. He was fascinated by science, nature and history. We were exposed to countless TV documentaries on those subjects. I sometimes wonder what he might have achieved and where he might have ended up if he had been born into different circumstances.

My parents were both voracious readers, as are all my family. Our house was full of books and we were encouraged to join the local library.

Most of the people at my school came from similar backgrounds - poor or not very well off. I knew many families without cars (my parents never drove and we never had a car). If a family did have a car, only the fathers drove. I don't think any of my classmates had mothers who could drive. Everyone walked to school.

Holidays were confined to a week in a caravan by the sea, if we were lucky. But we were taken out on lots of day trips - to the zoo or beaches or parks. My friends were all the same. I would occasionally hear about someone who went on a sun holiday to Spain, but they were very much the exception and not the rule.

I never had any desire to play the piano or take ballet classes or art lessons. I did very much want legwarmers though . Can you guess my age?

I did well at school (and experienced bullying because I got high marks in exams and got on well with all of my teachers). I moved on to college. I was exposed to people from different backgrounds. For example, some people came from farms whereas I'm a city girl. One girl lived near the sea and her family owned a boat etc. But they were all fairly down to earth and I don't think any of them came from especially wealthy backgrounds. Perhaps this is due to the subject I studied - if I had studied law or medicine, I might have met the sons and daughters of solicitors or doctors.

Although my parents never went to college, they supported us when we expressed a desire to go and were very proud of our achievements (and their grandchildren also). I'm very grateful for the sacrifices they made and the values they instilled in us - the importance of family, empathy and respect for others, a work ethic etc. I hope I'm not painting an overly rosy picture. Life was a real struggle for my parents at times. I remember having holes in my shoes but not telling my parents because I knew they didn't have money to replace them and it would have caused them stress and guilt. So I said nothing and put a piece of cardboard in my shoes to cover the hole. More money would have eased their lives (and ours, by extension) considerably. But I'm not sure that piano lessons or art classes or holidays abroad would have made that much difference. I didn't feel like I was missing out because I didn't know anyone in real life who did those things.

I've made up for some of those things in my adult life. I love art galleries and museums and concerts and I've brought my DD to many of these. Likewise, I've been on many foreign holidays. I haven't signed up for piano lessons or art classes though.

I'm not dismissing your feelings and experiences OP but I didn't have that sense of missing out myself.

I don't think you need to be middle class to provide those things, though it might be more difficult.

I had a middle class upbringing and was privately educated, sometimes a boarder, ballet classes and piano. I was the same as you and immersed myself in reading also. Though my parents (one anyway) were terrible with money and in the downturns I attended a state school and they rented a house. It made me determined my own children would have stability.

I dropped ballet (adult ballet classes are plentiful- and for beginners) and piano as an older teenager. I started both again in the last couple of years, piano very recently.

Poverty is the issue, not class. David Beckham is working class with a ton of money and privilege.

Although middle class people who are poor don’t tend to have the lack of aspiration and confidence that comes down through several generations of grinding poverty.

I say this as someone who grew up in absolute poverty and shared a bedroom with my mother until I left home. It affects your ability to do well academically (shitty schools with disruptive pupils), self esteem and confidence. My own children have had a very different start in life and it really shows.

David beckham is jot working class. Don’t be silly. He may have grown up working class, but he is an adult in his own right, his class is him, he is a skilled athlete. He is upper middle. As is his wife.

Of course he is working class.
He's very rich, not upper middle class what are you on about?

David beckham is jot working class. Don’t be silly. He may have grown up working class, but he is an adult in his own right, his class is him, he is a skilled athlete. He is upper middle. As is his wife.

He is working class still. Class isn't just about money. If you read the class threads the Beckhams are often mentioned.

I would also like to point out (I'm sure we all know already). That not all WC people are raged filled bigots with right wing views.

I'm WC and so is my partner and we're left wing through and through.

Of course he's working class.

Class is ingrained from childhood. It's nothing to do with money and it's not something you can change. He's a skilled athlete yes, but he's not well educated, he didn't have well educated parents, he grew up as working class. Football is not a middle class sport anyway.

His kids are upper middle. He is not. Victoria grew up wealthy.

Just to add that my parents bought the house from £10 poms emigrating to Australia. Part of the deal was they would adopt their cat.
The cat lived to a good age and while we looked after him well, he hated us. Even our Labrador was terrified of him haha.