Why are middle & upper class children so confident?

[Staroftheseas]

This is really a sweeping generalisation but the majority of middle & upper class children we know are extremely confident. This has nothing to do with private or state education. In our state school the kids usually chosen for awards or solos are also from middle class backgrounds. They just have an inner confidence & polish that lower middle class & working class kids don't have.

I was a little sad when I helped out at dds primary the self limiting views some of the WC children expressed. They literally said “that’s not for the likes of us” slightly wistfully about certain things. I have never heard a child of my own or my friends (all confident tertiary educated professional types) say anything approaching that. Just wouldn’t occur to them.

On her first day at a mixed demographic primary aged 4 dd2 found the other girl whose parents were also both solicitors and played with her.

I agree with this 100%
Re class - think Lady Diana. Bulimic, sad, depressed, emotional, insecure. Why? Terrible and absent parenting.

I would say I was lower middle class - parents worked for public services and not educated past 16. Definitely modesty (in behaviour not dress) and a certain amount of deference to those in authority were encouraged. In addition, the church upbringing I had encouraged putting others first which although admirable in many ways, doesn’t exactly make you claw your way to the top!
I have probably ( inadvertently) passed on some of this to my children. I was however given music lessons, went to theatre/ ballet / opera although very little travel as that would have been too expensive.

For me it is breadth of experience. Where kids have travelled more, had much more social interactions and experiences, they gain confidence on how to react in multiple situations with ease.

I found the opposite. See my earlier post on the thread, but when I started at my very posh Oxford college with a traditionally high proportion of ex-public schoolboys, from a very poor WC background where I'd had been parenting my parents (who struggled with literacy and needed a lot of help), and my four younger siblings from a very young age, as well as working in a wide variety of jobs, from relief milking and farm work to bars, I was surprised at how young and inexperienced a lot of my cohort seemed. Not just the very UC ones, but the MC too.

They'd done work experience, had impressive hobbies they did to a high standard, and and travelled a lot, and their parents had the type of jobs I'd never even heard of, whereas I'd never left the country and my parents were a binman and cleaner, but to be honest, it felt as if they had just been playing games while I'd been engaging with the actual adult world, holding down fairly responsible jobs, supporting my family etc.

If someone had dropped us all in Mogadishu in the middle f the civil war with only the clothes on our backs, I was pretty sure I would have been least likely to be going home in a body bag.

Upper class imo see themselves as a superior species to the rest of us through 'superior' genes and 'better breeding' giving them a sense of being better than.

You've me ruined helicopter parenting but also Also a lot of soft, gentle, attachment parenting which is completely different.

If the dc are at the same state school as the OP so it's not that they've had a different education.

Most middle class people don't use private health care. Most middle class people have super high lifestyle costs with big mortgages so they don't have shed loads of spare cash. They tend not to stay in smaller cheaper housing and have lots of spare cash to throw around.

I think it is more that the parents are on the whole, well educated and that brings with it different behaviours and expectations of how their dc behave. They prioritise manners and how to present themselves in public. From a young age they remind their dc to look people in the eye and put their hand out and to smile and speak up.

Because their parents and carers listen to them, interact with them, eat meals with them, encourage them, send them to schools that suit them, take their education seriously, allow them to develop their own interests and hobbies.... it's pretty obvious, really.

My child is uber confident. Always stands out at school concerts/ nativity

no idea why. Nothing like me

it’s just her

I disagree,I think some children are naturally more confident than others whatever their background/class.

But why would this be specific to MC and UC children?

Hmm, I’m not convinced as we are upper middle class, children (12 & 10) attend a selective school, the eldest is quiet in a group (confident in himself but never one to put himself forward for anything non-sports related or volunteer for public speaking etc), whereas the youngest is super chatty and loves to put himself forward for anything and everything. He is also always always picked for things at school mostly because he is so confident and the teachers know they can rely on him to do a good job. My eldest is almost never picked for things that aren’t sports teams. So I don’t think it is so much to do with class and more to do with individual personality. My eldest loves to chat in small groups or one to one, and is as happy talking to an adult as he is to one of his peers, but he is definitely an introvert. Pretty much all the children at his school are middle / upper class and yet there is a real range of confident to very shy children. It’s probably just that you notice the confident children more and perhaps assume they are middle class because of their poise. It’s hard to tell from someone’s flute-playing whether they are working class or middle class surely.

I’m an ex teacher. In my classes the most confident children were often those who ate meals sitting together as a family and talking to each other.

Vanishingly few are ‘upper class’, noting many here saying that many are at school etc.

It’s more likely in MC families, by a long way. We can’t pretend it isn’t

Being a very attractive child helps enormously with confidence, teachers & peers warm to them from a young age, even subconsciously.

Also having 'polish' is the absolute pinnacle of having made it in life. 😆

@mathanxiety concerning class sizes of schools in the US, and all that the US education system has to offer, you might want to listen to the podcast: Nice white parents .

I think she’s right. Definitely not a case of ‘Um ok, if you say so.’ And the OP did preface her post with ‘ I know this is a sweeping generalisation…’
Middle class children often are : better fed, better clothed, are treated with more respect at home, have regular holidays, are listened to, have parents who engage with them, live in more comfortable houses, have more access to books, have more days out. The list goes on.

Children frommmore affluent backgrounds tend to do multiple extra curricular, and from a much younger age. They may do Ballet, horse riding, tennis lessons etc Because their extra curricular are with other people who are confident and out going they learn to be that way from their older peers. The same is not said for the less affluent families

Most definitely working class here, much to the dismay of my partner's mother. Her ideal would have been a nice upper class girl from a renowned family. She herself married into the periphery of the upper class, her sister in law being a marchioness. She thought me a common coal miner's daughter (My father did indeed work in the pits of N Wales doing research into Pneumoconiosis). What she hadn't taken into consideration was that I had an intellectual background, did very well at state school and it certainly wasn't a hindrance that I was also 6' tall, blonde and drop dead gorgeous. (Shrivelled now).
Her beloved only son went to boarding school from the age of six, was positively traumatised by this (and his parents acrimonious divorce) and was of average intelligence. Her contempt for me was magnified when I refused to get married when I was pregnant - 'We've never had a bastard in the family before'.
Naturally it all turned to shit and I returned to Wales with my five year old daughter.
Her son never paid any child maintenance and I was reliant on benefits for quite a while. Free school dinners, second hand clothing and social housing were everyday essentials.
Our daughter did exceedingly well at state school obtaining 11 A* GCSE's, has a successful career and is a confident, perceptive adult who can talk with people from anywhere with reason and comprehensive knowledge. And guess what, he drank himself to death at the age of 54, his mother outlived him but died in penury, sitting in nappies. And for all her airs and graces and her attempted intimidation of me I subsequently discovered she was born in the slum area of the Gorbals in 1925 and narrowly missed going into the Govan Poor House as her father had abandoned the family and left for Rhodesia. Her mother tracked him down and they settled very nicely into a colonial lifestyle.
It is essential to instill self-respect, respect for others, good manners and integrity in your children. Teach them to stand for what is right, to beware of superficial, narcissistic people and they will hopefully succeed. They might not be bringing in millions but they will contribute to society a billionfold!
Mine is instrumental in running the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury next week. Yeah, she fucking rocks!

Apologies for the long rant/ramble. Bendigedig if you lasted this far!

I definitely notice this. I come from a working class Irish city and have nannied in a few different countries when I was in my twenties. I remember thinking wow Canadian kids are really confident and their parents really try to meet their every need, I was gobsmacked coming from a city where children/ teens were left to their own devices, sort of ‘seen and not heard’ attitudes to parenting. Then I moved to London and was like wow, British kids are so confident and their parents really seem to pay lots of attention to them.

After a while I realised it has to be a class thing. More money correlates with less stress, more time with your kids, more experiences. More education leads to more effective parenting, better schools etc.

I have worked with very shy middle class kids tbf but they still seem self assured at the same time. It’s definitely to do with attachment, I study psychology now and realise that now too and research shows that middle class children have better outcomes in life in general.

When I go back to my working class family and in laws at home, the kids just don’t have it except a minority who have inherited confidence naturally.

It comes from the parents. Parents are the most profound teachers and their influence on their children lasts a lifetime. Cultural, emotional and social learning takes place at home, right from birth.

Extra curricular activities give kids more confidence. Parents with more disposable income can afford to have their kids do more after school stuff. Learning an instrument, dance classes etc. Those kids will be comfortable in a stage/performance setting

I came from a very upper middle background and was never that confident. I did well at boarding school and had friends, but outside of that I was always very gauche and had poor social skills - wouldn't answer the phone (or use it) as a child and when I got my first job at 18 in an office I was terrified. But I did get better with experience, and even did (small) presentations much later in my career. But I've always been rubbish at small talk and fairly introverted.

I married a working class but very confident man. My teenage kids take after him, especially my DD. She is incredibly sociable and chatty and gets on with anyone. She is not academic and is very dyslexic so won't get an office job, but if she did she would be perfect for the 'lift chat with the CEO' that I always dreaded!! Whatever she does I think she will be a success.

DS has ASD so social stuff is harder for him - but he's really confident and ignores the knockbacks. They both put me to shame.

So I think there is a mixture of genetics and social experience, the old nature/nurture debate. I agree that better off people may be able to give their kids a wider range of life experiences which may help - but some will still struggle - and other children from less privileged backgrounds will be amazing.