If you met your child when you were a child would you think they were posh?

[GreenCaterpillarOnALeaf]

I definitely would, but I thought anyone who didn’t have to share a room with a sibling was posh. If you lived in a detached house you were basically part of the royal family as far as I was concerned. DH said he would think they were a bit posh because they get to do after school clubs and extra curriculars and he never got that.

Second question: at their age, would you have been pals with them. DD6 asked me this morning if we would have played together at school, and I said yes of course we would have. But really our paths would never have crossed and if they did I would have thought she was a square because I was really naughty at her age. From 6-9 I was just a terror for no good reason. She definitely would have told the teacher on me (as she should). Also I can’t lie, I would discourage DD from playing with a kid who behaved how I did.

DS5 I probably would have played with because he likes cars and messy play and at that age I loved going in the water tray ect. DD2 is 11 months so not really at that stage yet.

No, but posh to me isn’t a detached house or separate bedrooms. And plenty of private schools aren’t Eton.

I wouldn’t have thought she was posh, compared with the neighbourhood I lived in, but I wouldn’t have thought any less of her for that. My child lives in the sort of house my own friends grew up in. I think we would have been friends because she has a wicked sense of humour and a quick intellect but her passion for maths and sciences would have left me struggling a bit!

Yes;I grew up in a council house with no car (my parents couldn’t afford one),no holidays and our local schools were shite;the educational standards were low.

We live in an affluent area,have had two cars,lots of UK based holidays and my kids have gone to schools that were considered "posh kid schools" to us when growing up (they are state schools)-there was a lot of poverty where I grew up.

No.

At my school we had to wear panama hats in the street and being seen eating anywhere other than seated in a restaurant or a private home was considered so hideously common it carried a risk of suspension.

I was thinking about that the other day when mine were skipping along eating ice creams ...

That’s a really interesting question. I grew up in a working class area in the north in the 1980s, and had one ‘posh’ friend - her mum and dad were both teachers, they lived in a semi-detached house, they had two cars, and she didn’t have to share a bedroom. My other friends all lived in terraced houses (like me) or council houses, with dads doing manual work and mums who were cleaners, worked in a factory etc.

I went to university (back in the days of student grants and no tuition fees), so I have a professional job, as does DH, though we’re not in high-flying careers.

DH and I live in a smaller terraced house than the one I grew up in, though we do live in a more affluent city so houses are more expensive, so child me I wouldn’t think our house was posh. However, DD (age 10) is an only child, so has her own bedroom, more toys than I did, and her clothes aren’t mostly second-hand or handed down. We have the equivalent of Sky TV (streaming services). She’s had birthday parties at soft place type places, which were unknown when I was growing up. So that would make me think she was ‘posh’. We also serve ‘exotic’ food like pasta and rice - posh to a girl who was brought up on meat and two veg type meals.

We also call meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner compared to my upbringing of breakfast, dinner, and tea (DH’s influence - he is southern 😀).

My mum took me to the library and occasionally the local museum, but we also take DD to the art gallery, the cinema, and occasionally the theatre. DD has done more extra-curricular activities than I did, and has been out to eat in cafes and restaurants much more. She’s also had two holidays abroad, while I didn’t go abroad until I was 18, though we had holidays in the UK.

I think we would be friends, because we are very similar, both love reading, and are into non-mainstream things like science fiction. However child me would feel a bit awkward as I would perceive her parents to be posh (even though we’re not really!).

Also, ours sometimes eat pizza on the sofa. Never coulda happened when I was growing up!

I remember five months after moving to the uk with my friend sharing my observation with her that amazingly, in this country people still see themselves as belonging to a class, working/ middle, posh/chav… She was like, ‘no, stop reading historical novels…’ Haha.
It’s so ridiculous when you come from a place where class system genuinely doesn’t exist. People are people. Is true equality never coming to this country?!

I’m the same I didn’t look at people this way as a child. Only as an adult have I realised which friends had money and which didn’t based on where they lived.

I wouldn't because I grew up quite privileged and have been downwardly mobile ever since. 😂DH probably would have found DD posh, less so SD. He finds me posh but he likes that. 😂

I don't believe many places have no class system. It may be less pronounced in other places, but "even" America has one.

But this is about poshness, not money ,,,

Not sure posh was on my radar, other than people who lived in stately homes. I knew people in big rambling houses, who had horses, but their houses were cluttered, and needed repair (two sets of cousins), so I didn’t see them as posh.

There were families whose lifestyle I would’ve liked- adventure holidays in exotic places; cottages by lochs in Scotland as second homes, that kind of thing.

We have done the adventure holidays, while the kids were at home, and now as a couple. We have a caravan by the sea in Wales, so I suppose our life has turned out to be the sort I dreamed of as a child. We don’t have a ‘posh’ house or car though (spent all the money on the other stuff 😁).

Probably to some degree.

I would possibly have admired dc1 from afar, interesting to talk to with the coolest fashion sense, but unlikely to venture outdoors or break rules so limited friend potential.

I would probably be best friends with dc2 and plotting for a zombie apocalypse whilst making a tree fort with working weaponry and a library.

Well there's posh and there's rich and sometimes those intersect but not always.

I was/am posh but I've never been rich and as a child I felt poor compared to our social set and we were keeping up appearances.

My children are nearly as posh as I am but DH and I have always been richer than my parents were.

So I would see my DDs as richer but equally posh.

Tricky to say.

We probably have a similar relative income to my parents, but they had four and we have one. They lived in the deep rural countryside in a big detached house and we live in an urban terrace. They like UK holidays, interrailing and National Trust properties. We like eating out, time outdoors and we're currently on an AI beach holiday (but we love European city breaks too).

Our family cultures are just very different.

My son is a lot more sociable than me though, although I might have been more sociable if I weren't raised by an antisocial mum five miles from the nearest anything.

(On the ILs side, they're at the state of "complains the restaurant in Italy has an Italian menu and didn't speak English" and "obsessively watch Gogglebox and Love Island". So my husband and I seem to meet in the middle.)

I grew up in 1980s West Belfast and my son said to me about a year ago “Mummy: can we have raspberries for supper?” in his RP accent.

Damn straight I’d have thought he was posh.

“Only Edinburgh accents are posh” is very odd and limited view, especially for someone I assume is living in Scotland (given your children’s accents).

There are Edinburgh accents which are definitely not “posh” as well as a number of Glaswegian accents which definitely are, have you never visited the south side, the west end or Bearsden?

And that’s before you even get started on Perthshire, Stirlingshire etc. etc.

I wouldn’t say posher because he has the same regional accent as me but certainly he has a more privileged upbringing than me. We have both grown up in 3 bed houses and with Dads who work manual jobs and Mums who have an office job but he does and has things I could never have dreamed of as money was tight growing up. He has many days out and a couple of holidays a year, he has Sky TV, Internet and a playroom, he’s very lucky and doesn’t have a clue how lucky even though we try to make him appreciate what he has. DS2 is still a baby so I don’t know with him

Yes definitely. I grew up on a council estate, we didn't have a car my parents couldn't afford school trips or after school activities, we never went to the theatre and a trip to the cinema was a once a year treat if that .
My children had a totally different middle class upbringing.

Peoples idea of posh is interesting to me, I was labelled posh at school despite living in a council house with no carpet but I spoke with what was seen in the area a posh accent and said things like Grandma and scone to rhyme with stone.
My teens do not have posh accents in the slightest but are known as the mansion brothers as our house is big compared to most of their friends (it’s not anywhere near a mansion!)

I don’t think is the only posh Scottish accent that’s just what I think of as the default posh accent. I’m not Scottish so I don’t have a keen ear for it or understanding but he doesn’t for English accents either. He thinks someone from Shildon sounds the same as a proper Geordie but to me they sound totally different.

By “the Glasgow uni accent” he means something very spesific and I whenever we’re out he will point it out but to me it’s not really that different.

I've often thought about this and I've always thought it would be really cool if my dc could travel back in time to when they were my age or if teenage me could travel forward to now.

I wouldn't have thought my dc were posh, more like the other way around. We have a lot less money now than I did growing up.

I've always thought I would recognise ds2 if he time travelled back to when I was his age. He looks very similar to me so I would probably have thought he was my long lost relative or something, just like on the soaps!

Ds1 is 19, the same age as I was when I met DH. He looks like a combination of both of us so I think if he time travelled back to 2002 and told me he was my son from the future I would believe him.

I think I would get on with all my dc if we met at the same age as children. Ds2 would probably be despairing over my taste in music though. I used to pretend to be cool and listen to green day and blink 182 when I was out but at home I would be jumping around to s club 7!

Ha, yes I would! Interesting post!

My parents actually had quite a 'nice' house but we were definitely not posh, strongly identified as working class until I went to university.

I have around ten times more resources than my parents did, but because of my mother’s raging class anxiety we did a lot more middle-class coded things than my children do on a daily basis. I shop at aldi whereas my mother went into debt to be able to go to waitrose rather than asda. My children wear all secondhand clothes and my mother would have died rather than admit she knew what secondhand clothes were.

I didn't really know what "posh" was at school until we hit about 14 and it became apparent some people had swimming pools and ponies. I went to a private school but played with council house kids on the weekends, so under 14 I would have probably not been able to differentiate.

Posh also now means different to what I thought it was back then, as in now I think posh is more Hyacinth Bucket and telephone voices, back then I thought it was splashing cash. I don't think it means the same for everyone.