Has the lifestyle our parents had become impossible?

[bumblebugs]

My parents had what I suppose you’d call a very privileged/upper-middle or upper-class upbringing. They went to fancy private schools, there was family money around, and when they married they were able to buy a lovely big family home.
Growing up, we went to private school, had nice holidays (often a few a year), and generally had a very comfortable lifestyle. My parents would go to balls, have dinner parties, entertain friends etc. None of it seemed particularly unusual in their circle.
Now I’m married with a child myself, I’m realising that recreating anything close to that lifestyle seems almost impossible.
Between us, my husband and I earn roughly what I would have considered comparable to what our parents earned, and we both work hard. We have a nice life and can just about afford the things that matter to us, so I know we’re fortunate. But private school, a large family house and three nice holidays a year? Absolutely not. Even the social side seems different I don’t really know anyone regularly going to balls or hosting the sort of dinner parties our parents did.
I always assumed if I worked as hard as my parents did, I’d be able to give my children a broadly similar upbringing to the one I had. Now it feels as though the goalposts have completely moved.
Has anyone else from a similar background found this? Is this lifestyle simply much more expensive and inaccessible to our generation, or am I looking back at my childhood through rose-tinted glasses?

Yes, food, clothing, holidays, hobbies all much cheaper, which is why we have so much more.

No, she hasn't got a comparable life, I understand that - that's the exact point she was making. But she literally says she has a comparable income...

"Between us, my husband and I earn roughly what I would have considered comparable to what our parents earned"

Internal flights in the UK were so expensive until the late 1990s when the budget airlines first appeared

My parents were a teacher and an academic both working full time. Both first to uni in families, no inheritance. State school for us, but money saved to cover uni costs. UK family holidays until we were mid/late teens.

My lifestyle is far fancier in terms of dinners out, theatre trips, gym membership and foreign holidays.
But I live in a much smaller property despite out earning them (adjusted inflation).
Even if I didn't ever eat out, go to the theatre or take a holiday, this wouldn't upgrade me from a 2 bed small terrace cottage in a a nice bit of London to the five bed semi detached house with garden in a nice bit of London that they had. The property cost difference is vast.

I would say similar for my state school friends - day to day life is a bit fancier in terms of activities then when we were kids but we all live in much smaller properties than we grew up in.

I guess at some point my generation will inherit but will come after kids have grown up (I hope) so the grandkids will not have grown up in bigger homes

But I agree with pp that people also did not expect foreign holidays, new cars, perfect houses with new kitchens etc

What are the people you went to school with doing? That's your comparator, no?

Think about the working class in the period your parents grew up in and yourself. The world has changed and children are still going hungry.
We had an outside toilet, freezing windows in winter and no meat on certain days and I left school at 15 but I am grateful for what I have now.

Completely untrue . Benefits for working age people has stayed roughy the same over the last 40 years as a % of GDP. Spending on pensioners has risen substantially The welfare bill: is spending on benefits really out of control? | The Week UK

I used to live in Cambridge.

the colleges do “balls”, most colleges do one every other year. They’re quite big events and cost quite a lot.

the schools around here also often call their leaving events balls rather than proms (the American version). My kids sixth form had a leaving ball. It was exactly the same as a prom or a leaving event - meal, some dancing, photos etc.

the young farmers and conservative association also run balls - again, a meal, maybe a post meal casino/something like that. Anywhere else in society they’d be a night out - but not called a ball.

i got invited to the conservative one once by someone who had bought a table and was looking for friends to go with (and we didn’t know him that well I think most of his real friends knew how boring it was) and bought a floor length dress (bugger to move in).

it was quite enjoyable as a one off experience and I did get to meet our then MP but I wouldn’t go again

I have the opposite. We lived in a council house until I was 18. We were on benefits most of my life and couldn't afford big holidays (usually camping), certainly not private schools, definitely not balls!
I now live in what I would have considered growing up to be a very big house (you would probably think of it as a bog standard Victorian semi), we don't do massive holidays but my kids have been abroad more than I did, we eat out much more than we did when I was young, go to the theatre much more, fund school trips that my parents wouldn't have been able to etc. My kids would absolutely consider themselves middle class.
However in actual fact we are probably in about the same place, you and me, financially. In fact you probably earn a lot more than we do. But I see it as a great lifestyle and you see it as a disappointment.

Yes, it's impossible. A friend of mine was one of six children on two GP salaries and they all went to private school and lived in a massive house. (1970s.) Just not possible now.

But other things are more luxurious these days. Private schools back then didn't have so many clubs, such perfect facilities. Homes were not immaculate and modernised. Same friend's house had an ancient kitchen and bathrooms, and hand me down furniture in all rooms.

My DC had travelled widely by the time they were 18 - to USA, Japan, Nepal and all over Europe. I was considered well-travelled as a teen because I'd been to Italy and Germany as well as on the French exchange

You sound very half empty, you’ve had an extremely privileged upbringing, help buying your first property, you went to private schools yet you don’t seem to appreciate how fortunate you are.

The data says that the proportion of children at private school in the U.K. has hovered around 7-8% since 1964 with a low point in the late seventies.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jun/17/private-school-fee-increases?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

My parents bought their first house (3 bed semi in South West London) with a mortgage that was the equivalent of twice my Dad’s salary. He had a middle management type job at the time.

To buy the same house now with a mortgage of twice someone’s salary, the salary would need to be £450k a year.

DH and I were lucky that we bought our house 15 years ago but it was still 4 times our combined salaries at the time. To buy it now at the current value, it would be 6 times our current combined salaries (and we are both reasonably good earners) so we could in no way afford it.

For us at least, the issue is house prices vs salary increase - they are in no way proportionate. It isn’t feasible that we could have the ‘one working parent, one stay at home parent, several holidays a year’ life in the same area that I had growing up (I know I was very lucky to have that life and am still very fortunate now).

Really? Because I don't recall so many working people needing top-ups from the government because private companies paid them so badly. Nor was rent so excruciatingly high a percentage of income - which must mean the government is now funding this disproportionate inflation through benefits.

That’s the advantage of having grown up in a poor, overcrowded WC household with parents in unskilled manual jobs — my childhood was awful, neglected materially and emotionally, but my (fairly modest) adult life is one of unimaginable luxury and freedom in comparison. (We regularly have friends over for dinner. That doesn’t have to be expensive.)

Exactly this. I'm not well off by any means, but I have way more than my mother ever did in the way of household appliances and a social life. And holidays. We never went on holiday as a child but then nobody did. Life was much harder for her, I can see that now. So worse for some and better for others.

Having grown up in a working class family in a council house ( which my parents eventually bought) I can't even begin to imagine the privileged childhood you had. My parents both worked two jobs each to make ends meet.

My children's upbringing has been much more privileged than mine was. My DD went to private school ( DS to a state grammar) and we have a very comfortable life in a nice home. Apart from paying for school fees we live quite an understated life and recognise how lucky we are. Living where we do and around the people we do it would be easy to get into a keeping up with the Joneses mindset but both DH and I are not into that at all.

The only ball I know of is the one my daughter's school PTA put on once a year to fundraise. I never went - couldn't be doing with all the competitive dressing up and couldn't understand why a private school needed to fundraise for equipment.

I would say our lifestyle is similar to my childhood. Albeit less fancy than your childhood!

The difference is that there are two of us with similar type of job to my dad, whereas my mum was a SAHM after having kids. And my parents gave me a substantial house deposit early on, whereas they came from poor backgrounds with no help.

I agree, I lived on a really rich council estate with lots of problems. Now my newish build house with nice neighbours and a few shops I can walk to, a good bus service with the bus stop around the corner feels like I’ve won the lottery.

OP what job do you have, how much do you earn?

Your childhood is unrecognisable to me, and indeed the majority of people. Growing up we were comfortable but not rich. My dad was a self employed builder, my mum stayed at home but did all his admin. We moved from a council house to a semi. I attended a comprehensive and ended up a mental health nurse training under the old system so I didn't go to uni, though my siblings did. I've worked in the NHS most of my career (I'm 60 now and semi retired onan NHS pension)
Despite the fact my education though standard was better than my dad's (through no fault of his own he was only semi literate.... I've got O levels, A Levels and a professional qualification) financially he was far better off than me. I'm not struggling, I've got enough for a decent standard of living and a decent home though there's no room for a pony!

People have so much more, housing aside, and yet are no happier.

I know what you mean, OP, I also do wonder if a much more glamorous social life was possible in some standard 'middle class' areas because one parent, usually the mum, was at home more if not all the time, (to do all the prep work and make the marie-rose sauce for the prawns / the oranges in cointreau) and also both parents had no real choice but to leave a lot of their work AT work because there was no more connectivity than a landline and occasionally a fax machine.

Also, maybe in an age of less provision of leisure activity, people organised more - I used to provide a drinks reception when I worked for a drinks manufacturer (so they would donate a certain amount of booze to a charity event for a welcome drink, I would biff along and serve it - in a black cocktail dress provided by the company!) and there were tons of black tie events all over the country side - not all super posh like the ambassador's reception, but more: function room of local hotel, a lot of black velvet bustiers with taffeta skirts, men in DJs with bow ties, very hairsprayed hair - this was the nineties. But it was a time when office wear was still really formal for both sexes - I'm in my forties now and been working in a 'formal wear' office but if I popped in in a navy skirt suit, blouse and brooch, tights and court shoes, as was standard for my mum, the under 35s would have put me in a glass box as a museum relic.

I think life has just changed, hyrox and crossfit and marathons instead of tennis and golf, everyone working and so easier to pop out for a drink, 5 million coffee shops so no need to have 'coffee mornings'. It's a shame in many ways as those kind of intimate interactions (intimate in that you had a gathering and no one had a phone or any way of communicating with people outside of the group they were in so had to 'lean in') fostered great social webs.

From my great grandparent generation to my children’s generation each generation has become wealthier than the previous one. My own children have a much more affluent life than I did at their age!

Another peasant checking in here (grew up in a council house, very little materially, went to the local comp) to ask if your diamond shoes are too tight op?

I broadly agree. I inherited the house that I was raised in (in the 80’s). My mum was a stay at home parent and dad was an engineer, with 3 children. I have 3 children and two jobs (so identical family life) and I find it hard to keep everything afloat financially. Even if my feckless husband worked, we still couldn’t have afforded this property.
As children we had sensible UK holidays, about 3 times a year. Even that would be very expensive these days (cottage for a week etc).
We’re certainly not badly off, but I have worked extremely hard just to achieve a reasonably good standard of living for my children.
I’m aware of how lucky I am compared to many, but it’s a very different life to my parents.