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 presume your real name is not "LightSwerve" in which case you are already acting here. I could dive into dramaturgical role theory (psychology) but feel I'd be going off on a tangent so I will resist the urge.

The single most important factor in child poverty is having a single parent. If (generic) you want social mobility for your child(ren) think very carefully about the person who choose to have children with.

As a teacher with a daughter who got straight level 9 at state school (FSM) and then got a double scholarship to a top indie school this

1. reading - read everything The Week Junior from a young age, newsround
2. discussion eg why you you think that? Slavery etc and understanding for different viewpoints
3. Any topic she did we both did eg mummies we went to the British museum etc
4. scouts - fantastic for her
5. Programmes like David attenborough
6. audio books and podcasts
7. knowing we never ever stop learning
8. knowing you can learn something different or more in a certain subject
9. empathy knowing she is not better than anyone else and she can learn from others
10. watching what people do and not what they say necessarily
11. learning vocabulary as I’m sitting here typing she’s learning words - she has a set of new words - academic words she want to learn - I think there is 2000 she is learning them all
12. she takes opportunities eg met an oncology doctor and asked for her email and expressed that she was interested in medicine and followed it up with a nicely worded email asked for advice or anyone she could contact for WE etc did the same for vet med etc
13. she listen to others - she will take herself off to free lectures at the local uni or departmental open days etc
14. shes naturally shy and has forced herself out of her comfort zone to do theatre etc learn public speaking
15. we can’t afford holidays etc but she will take herself off with a rucksack sandwiches and a day sack - she knows the local area like the back of her hand and it is full of history or she’ll go on the train - she has access to the whole south west
16. she loves and we love board games good for social rules thinking etc
17. she always has a book or word search on her
18. a genuine desire to make the world a better place starting with herself
19. she has studied all the main religions and has far more knowledge than most people I know

she a grumpy teenager too on top of all that but I can’t fault her learning

I am WC. I was continuing @LightSwerve and other posters’ sarcasm at the expense of classist MC ideas about the WC. It started with a comment about lack of dining tables, morphed into a clearly mocking post about WC people not needing to eat at table, only eating soft food on their sofas because of their rotten or missing teeth. The target was not WC people, their furniture, food, dental hygiene etc, but the ideas of the aspirational looking down in horror at a stereotype.

And I am the single parent - I did think carefully and it wasn’t my fault - he hid himself very very well. However, I had enough confidence to be better off alone that stuck in an abusive marriage

child poverty - I get sod all benefits and my ex pays nothing - surely the government should make absent parents pay much more and deduct it at source - if they own a house but don’t work - the government should take it off them and give a % to the ex! Rather then loads of self employed and wealthy men paying nothing

Good parental role models. 🙂

You seem to have a strong need to project your views onto others, but in my world I can accept that other people think and behave differently to me.

Dive into anything you like, it won't make you right about other people you don't know.

And one of the chief causes of relationship breakdown is poverty.

Your post is very judgemental, life is complicated @FuzzyManul

Bad Covers I went back and realized I'd missed your post about your background and education. I read it with LightSwerves and thought you were being sarcastic. Sorry..
(As it happens there are a couple of bare knuckle fighters in my lot and most of the rest came up dumb enough to have a go after a Saturday night.)

I think social mobility is about major structural issues in society and there are some great reports from the government and sutton trust on how social mobility is declining and worse here than in other european countries.

Yes & some of the posts on this thread are nonsense.

The most important things are education & giving your dc a safety net. Easier said then done & a lot harder to implement vs table manners hence why social mobility is declining.

Confidence
Cultural Capital
Debating/ Reasoning in Discussions
Reading
very good active vocabulary
good general knowledge

It’s not about school grades reading and playing the violin though is it? It’s more nuanced than that.

Watching this play out in real time with my teen. She is at state school but socialises widely her main friends are a group all at different private schools. The parents of her friends are the grandest families in town they love her - three separate families invited her on their summer holidays. She’s whizzed up the social scale of her own accord not on purpose to be fair - she just feels confident in that world fits in and has been welcomed into it.

LightSwerves
...but in my world I can accept that other people think and behave differently to me. But can you do so without sneering at them?

I'm not English, what's the difference between middle class and upper middle class?

A shit ton of money!

Theyre over achieving academically but do you really think they’re going to be the decision makers of the future, taking up positions if influence and power in society? No. These roles are reserved for the truly, generationally privileged.

Like Rishi?

The development of an enquiring mind. It really helps if they actually have a thirst for knowledge.

Does that help you socially though?! Not sure many teens or indeed any other people are particularly impressed by their mates general knowledge or string of 9s. Maybe in a pub quiz scenario.

Watching this play out in real time with my teen. She is at state school but socialises widely her main friends are a group all at different private schools. The parents of her friends are the grandest families in town they love her - three separate families invited her on their summer holidays. She’s whizzed up the social scale of her own accord not on purpose to be fair - she just feels confident in that world fits in and has been welcomed into it.

She hasn’t changed classes though has she? she just has posh friends.

Having posh friends is social mobility. Ask Jane Austen!

A corporate job does not buy you class. I hope you get what I mean. You are born with charm and elegance or not. A job description cannot produce the traits if you don't have them genetically

Having posh friends is social mobility. Ask Jane Austen!

Not unless you marry in imo!

You are born with charm and elegance or not. A job description cannot produce the traits if you don't have them genetically

Middle class doesn’t mean you have charm or elegance!

I also don’t know anyone who has married outside their social circle or from a different background eg surgeons marry GPs, bankers marry accountants. Although i’m a millennial so maybe it was different in the past.

I am someone who lives a very different life due to social mobility compared to the one I grew up in.

I’m from a poor family with a lot of children.
First in the family to go to University.

I was very academic and confident, I’m quick witted, good at making people feel at ease and have a pleasant speaking voice apparently. I have also been told that I’m attractive. DH is from a relatively wealthy family and went to a top public school, his family had a house in the countryside with a few acres.

DH and I met working in the same place as young professionals. His Mother was not hugely keen on me.

So I ended up at a University that had a lot of students from middle and upper class backgrounds. Got a decent professional job, met DH and married in to a long established upper middle class family that had land, a few painted family portraits, some family silver.

On a very peculiar note I am the product of an affair, DH has always said that having my Fathers genes gave me the brains and my Mothers the looks. I didn’t meet my real Father till I was a much older teen. All my sisters are good looking nice women, nicer than me I would say but they remain in low paid work.

Confidence, ability to read and write, and aspirations.

Manners, confidence in new situations and the biggest in the modern day is being able to afford internships. Unpaid or minimum wage internships destroy social mobility.