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If your family was wealthier than most, did you know/understand this as a child?

3 replies

scalt · 21/10/2026 15:06

I know it's all relative, and that one person's "wealthy" is another person's "your family is nowhere near as rich as mine!". But let's say, as a benchmark, going to a private school, especially primary as well as secondary, usually only affordable to those comfortably off financially. If you did, were you aware of it being a "privilege" to go to private school?

My upbringing was middle of the range, both my parents worked full-time, got lucky with property, and could just about afford to send me to private school (secondary only, not primary), and we didn't go on expensive holidays. But they didn't explain very much about money in general; I think they tried to protect me from that, and I didn't really learn about social demographics at school; or if I did, I never took it in. Somehow, the idea of social class also went completely over my head: I just didn't think or know about that at all until my late teens, I didn't even understand a lot of the humour in Fawlty Towers at first. "We have to attract a better class of customer, turn away some of the riff-raff!" I didn't even know that my parents were paying school fees until I had been there for about two years (and told to work harder), and it wasn't until much later that I realised what a small percentage it is of children that go to private school, and therefore that it was a massive privilege. It was in the days of assisted places, so there were some less well-off pupils there, but I didn't notice that it was full of "posh" people compared to my primary school (which happened to be a very middle-class one), and I probably wouldn't have known the difference. I heard my peers talk about their skiing holidays, or horse riding, but it never crossed my mind that these were very expensive things.

People have asked me "how could you not have known?". I was brought up not to think about money and standing, my family had lots of friends who were both rich and poor, and as a child, I thought "poor" meant starving like Hansel and Gretel. I also didn't read much fiction, or watch much TV: I was only interested in science. I knew that some children lived in small flats, and others in big houses, but the idea that this was to do with money barely crossed my mind.

I do sometimes wonder if this is the problem with many politicians: born into wealth, only mixed with wealthy people, so they do not understand those outside their demographic.

OP posts:
CardboardScott · 21/10/2026 15:20

Your parents really did you a disservice.

We have raised our children in full awareness of their privilege.

We made sure they understand that those privileges have afforded them opportunities, educational and social advantages that other, just as deserving, young people have not had.

You don’t want to raise kids who think “poor people should just work harder”.

We also made certain decisions (like not sending them to private school) so their friends are from a range of backgrounds.

Bigfstfatty · 21/10/2026 15:23

Family was poorer than most as they literally both didn’t have jobs for years and years. Didn’t realise I was technically poor because I wasn’t the class smelly kid with lice.
Turns out the class smelly kid with lice actually had parents with a higher income than me! Lazy bastards just never bothered to treat the poor boys lice.

DonnaHadDee · 21/10/2026 16:41

I grew up in a large house, large farm and went to boarding school in SE England (I'm from Northern Ireland). It looked good on the outside, but looking back I see we had very little disposable money, and everything was spent on our education. My mother was seriously ill (I did not understand how bad), my Dad was transitioning from armed forces back to family farm, etc. What I had was hard working parents, education, religion, but we never went anywhere on holidays, and had very little inside our big house!

I boarding school I realized that I was "poor" financially. My classmates had so much, did so many things, and so on. I knew it at the time, but it did not bother me. I was fortunate to be very good at sports, best in class academically through hard work. I do look back at times and wonder how I coped as well as I did through those times.

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