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!

One of the reasons I like living in the USA is that my accent doesn't mean much, it's just international ( or foreign). It's much easier to avoid imposter syndrome than in the UK.

Interesting thread. I didn’t grow up poor, but we lived a frugal lifestyle. My grandparents had what would now be min wage jobs, but ended up buying their council house. My parents went to grammar school and then university and had reasonable public sector office jobs. My childhood was full of “middle class” pursuits. A house full of books, broadsheet newspapers, (cheap) piano lessons, extra-curricular activities, countryside walks, museums, theatre, ballet lessons, health food shop, stately homes.

Perhaps I’m ungrateful, but I never liked any of this, but went along with it. I just wanted my own space to play with my friends and toys.

We lived in a nice town, where most people had modest but clean, regularly decorated houses, and a newish boring family car. Ours was scruffy. I was jealous of my friends who just got to watch TV, or play out unsupervised, got to spend the day shopping for clothes that would be deemed either too expensive by my parents or too cheap, paradoxically. Also takeaways were a no-no - I dreamed of going to McDonalds.

Oddly enough I’m kind of following the same path with my own DC - encouraging them at school, paying for music lessons and taking them to free museums. But they too are not keen on anything cultural - I have to force them to read, they love YouTube and Prime. Both them and I had the opportunity but prefer a simpler life. Maybe that’s a different kind of privilege, I don’t know.

We grew up without extra money for dance lessons or music lessons . I went to nurse training at 18 joined a tap class and learnt to dance, a few years later I bought myself piano lessons and have even tried ballet and have travelled to far flung places. Your childhood doesn't define your whole life you just have to work harder to get those things and if anything makes you more determined

We were financially middle class (university educated parents in professional jobs) but completely impoverished in terms of social capital and cultural capital. Parents had no interest in museums, theatre, ballet, music lessons, books, travel abroad other than to visit family, etc. They were joyless, frankly.

I had a love for reading and knew that I wanted to be more culturally middle class long before I knew what that meant. I yearned for a cultured, intellectual and fun existence travelling the world and having interesting discussions over a glass of wine. I left home at 19 in pursuit of that and never looked back.

Sometimes we’re born into the wrong family. 😊

Wonderful you were able to break free but what sort of relationship do you have with your parents now?