What improves social mobility for children? Is it extracurriculars, education, money?

[Downwarddog2]

At the moment social mobility is very low, UK is officially in a recession. What can make a difference to a child's chances of climbing the social ladder. DH & I are working class but aspire to so much more for the dc aged 12 & 10. How do we go about it.
I'd like them to feel very comfortable in upper middle class company & in a corporate job if that's where they end up. DH & I are very ill at ease when in middle class/umc company either through school parents or work. I don't want our dc to be the same.

I grew up in Oxford poor but around middle class people generally. We live in an area of London now that is traditionally more working class but a mix of both. I totally second the ideas of Scouting and acting classes for building confidence.

We take as much advantage of the free National Trust passes as we can when they are on as I feel this is a great way to get the kids comfortable in these fancy environments, particularly the grand houses, and walking recreationally in the grounds as a pastime.

We try to introduce proper cooking and meals. Helping them feel comfortable with a variety of foods like seafood, olives, kiwis, raspberries, pistachos.

We try and organise educational days out as much as we can to widen their minds. Open house days in September are a great way to take them inside historical buildings for free.

And checking out a wide range of books from the library- fiction and non-fiction and reading every night at bedtime.

You also need to teach them social skills. Painful and cringey but essential and involves you modelling these skills too.

Taking your children to NT properties so they can get used to ‘fancy environments, particularly the grand houses’ is unlikely to be of much help to their social mobility unless they’re interested in curatorship or being a footman! (I had a friend who was briefly a footman at Blenheim Palace, before he got fired for giggling…)

I feel I have stepped into Diary of a Nobody, although at least that was satire.

@herewegoagainy the irony. In that the majority of people expect those with Grandparents, books perhaps handed down from the late 19th Century are the only ones that will have a clue as to what you’re talking about.

@Moonpig82 then they need to be more well read. I come from a very poor family and clawed my way into the lower middle class. But I always read loads from the public library.

Gosh Papyrophile - I am sure when you attend grand dinners at stately homes that people are charmed by your moving chairs around and mispronouncing words. In my experience, members of the upper classes will give you the side eye and smirk behind their hands.

Kate Middleton had the upper classes smirking behind their back at her and calling her doors to manual. Why does anyone want to fit in with someone who would behave like that?
I do know some upper class people. You would not know they are upper class and are thoroughly judgemental of upper class people who judge others based on classist etiquette.

I'd never even heard of NT until I joined MN (to be fair there arent any properties within hours of us) and was made to feel that I was dooming their chances in life if I didn't join. No matter how much my dc 'move up' I doubt their NT stately home visits and walks in the ground are going to be of much help 😁

I really would recommend reading Diary of a Nobody. It is a satire of someone who is lower middle class and aspires to a higher class. The protagonist would fit in well in this thread. It is funny.

Have high expectations of them.
i remember listening to my daughter and our friends son talking about going to University when they were 6. For them even so young, they understood that’s what would be expected of them.
Use terminology that pre paves the way, when you go to Uni or when you’re working as a …etc. Belief is 80% of the work.

@herewegoagainy what were the expectations of you as a child? Did your parents encourage you to go to a Public library? What did they value?

This thread has been brilliant, thank you for all the sage advice. It's awful feeling you don't fit in with the hierarchy.
I had a boyfriend growing up who was incredulous that I had never skiied.. His response was "what? Never even with your school?" his sister was there also & they were both gobsmacked!

Downwarddog2 Honestly that says far more about their limited understanding of the world than anything else.

My Ds called me to rescue his very posh mate who had a flat battery on his very expensive car that his dad had brought him.
Got there and he was a bit worried about if he shouldn't be getting a 'proper mechanic' out.
Hooked up jump leads to our van and him, and got him started. His response was amazement and to ask where he could get 'magic wires' from.
Explained what jump leads were and said Halfords, which he'd never heard of. Both Ds and I automatically covered up being gobsmacked, because whatever we might of thought thought, there wasn't a need to draw attention to him having so little idea of the world.

Oh gosh yes I had a few cringe moments when everyone present had been to public schools and assumed they were “amongst friends” and would say awful things about state schools Dh and I would kind of exchange glances. So awkward.

herewegoagainy
I actually tried to read Diary of a Nobody a very long time ago.
Maybe saying this will mark me out as too much of a pleb, but I found some of it interesting historically in some of its little details, but just didn't get how it was overall supposed to be funny.
I remember a bath scene that was funny partly because it was well set up in the way comedians set up a joke for the punchline, and there were a few bits where his misunderstandings of what he wanted to be part of, had their moments, but my main memory of it was it was just a lot of tediousness and inverted snobbery going nowhere. TBF maybe it gets better later on, because that's how I found it, I never actually finished it...

That's much more of a reflection of them than you, OP. I can't imagine being so insular and downright stupid.

When I say "much more," I mean "totally."

@mathanxiety 20 years later I still remember it. I really didn't fit in their world! I never felt comfortable & would never want my kids to be so out of their depth..
I went for dinner with his family to a very fancy restaurant, the menu was in French, I ordered the beef tartar, his sisters delighted in asking me "do you know that is raw beef"? I didn't just pretended I did & ate it. I was like Mr Bean in the restaurant episode 😭

I wouldn't use NT properties as a way to introduce fancy environments. All you get from visits to such houses is the impression of taped off nice things. You don't get to sit down on the lovely furniture or bounce on the beds. It's all "stay in your lane, plebs, and don't forget to visit the gift shop on your way out."

It would be well worth looking at the history of such houses and understanding the piracy, the extraction of resources of other lands and their own, and the exploitation of the labour of others, that built the fortunes that were spent on the houses and their contents.

Instead of visiting NT places - or maybe as well as visiting - I'd subscribe to artsy publications focused on architecture and design.

This is totally the angle I'd be approaching with my dc now. How the upper classes were upheld due to slavery and exploitation. Like everything else, someone at the bottom has to pay the price.

No grand dinner invitations to at stately homes, but lots of lunchtime fish finger sandwiches around the kitchen table of families who regularly appear on the Buck House balcony during state events thanks to kids' friendships at school. No more than that. I don't recall any corrections of my pronunciation either.

@Papyrophile you can't make a statement like that without providing more info😃

It was 20 years ago. My DC is 25 now, and my then chum is long divorced and out of the picture.

Place marking for later