To get annoyed that a middle class life style is not "real life"?

[Roseflower]

I don't get- why is trying to move to a nice, safe and quiet area with a good school not "real life" as some people like to tell me?

How is this any less "real" that living in a crime ridden, ugly area with an unsafe school?

Seems its only real life if your let your child actually live in the middle of all sorts...

Does anyone else get this attitude sometimes?

Yes, I think so

Well that makes sense. I went to a Grammar (fought tooth and nail against the advantaged) and there were quite a few nice-but-dim girls who had been tutored to within an inch of their lives who struggled to keep up and eventually went to private schools.

at "alluring"

massivemammaries - I'm curious as to why you think so. Why the need for it?

Maybe I'm being thick but I wonder why you feel it necessary to respond it that way?

Is it wrong that a little bit of me wonders whether LeQueen's DC will rebel, leave school with no GCSEs and go to work in McDonalds...?

(Only joking LeQueen )

My DC don't live in the real world either. We live in a nice, rural village where they can cycle to the shop for penny sweets and climb trees in the fields behind the house. Their school is fairly ordinary, but it has a strong sense of old fashioned community. We aren't rich but we aren't poor either, so the DC don't go without. Theirs is a world of piano lessons, horse riding, blackberry picking in the woods and picnics on the beach. Which is exactly what I want for them.

LeQueen - as long as you STAY there and don't some clogging up my city by commuting in for work or coming to the fucking country living show.

Lol @ one of my DD's best friends is Asian, thats alright then

Asdashopper - FFS, grow up.

Don't forget the donut to go with it

I agree with regard to ethnic minorities. Our area is relatively multi cultural, but this is due to the fact that two of the main employers in the area are the university and the hospital. So most of the children from ethnic minorities have doctors or lecturers for parents, which is hardly gritty "reality".

And another lol @ all the 'Miss Marple' villages,anyway can't stop, have to go into town to buy bulletproof vests for the kids first day back at school

@ BarmyArmy, because I need to say what I think. Sorry.

I've been there, it sucks.
I could easily afford to move back too - I wouldn't.

I went to a Grammar school full of kids who were brought up in boxes, wrapped in cotton wool and I grew up in a cosy suburb myself.

What I found was that the school produced young adults who thought the world was so small that social standing was all that mattered - a bit sad to be fair.

Most of these would consider that, having achieved leafy suburbia, they have arrived and they have done the best possible for their kids.

All they have achieved is to have given their kids aspirations to the same box they were brought up in - all perfectly ok but it is a bit of a small world.

I give my kids a secure upbringing, they are happy. I would like to thing that they won't grow up with middle class tunnel vision and can shape their own futures as rounded individuals

domesticsluttery/Le Queen - alot of sense spoken here.

Unfortunately some of the posters here appear to have the attitude akin to that of some black schoolboys...namely that to work hard at academic study is a "white" thing to do and it's far better to "keep it real" and get nowhere in life.

One is reminded of Chris Rock's stand-up act, where he talks about racism and low expectation mother-f*ckers

BalmyArmy, if any of my kids turned out like you I would be truly ashamed

YANBU, I see this every day on here. It's like being MC makes you automatically closed minded, stuck up and materialistic.

The thing is, there is a rich diversity even within MC and WC etc. WC can mean people from Shameless or it can mean hard working people who hand in a pound coin if they find it in the street like my grandparents.

MC can mean people who live in 'Footballers wives ares, where all they learn at school is how to spot a porsche or a lexus' as mentioned upthread, or it can mean a childhood like mine in jumble sale clothes and hand made 'rags', lentils for dinner, taking home made wholemeal bread to school, and parents driving a clapped out old banger with CND stickers all over the back.

And all points in between.

So, I don't think they probably fit massivemammaeries strict criteria for a suitable ethnic minority...I supect that in order for them to be of a suitable real ethnic minority, they'd need to be impoverished, and living off benefits - and then DD1 could appreciate the diverse cultural richness of their real life, and be the better, more rounded person for it?

you missed the point I think, blinded by your own superiority and snobishness.

Ethnicity is not the primary feature of societal diversity any more than social-economic position. I didn't say that it was.

You need to get over yourself, others of us have money too, actually - we dont all choose to live on a cloud though!

massivemammaries - fair enough.

I far prefer your latest response because it actually explains where you are coming from, whereas your earlier one just came across as a tad bitter and unnecessarily unpleasant.

I think we're all equally guilty of generalising here - not least with regards to class and race.

Tunnel vision is not restricted to the middle classes, nor is an exposure to the "harsh realities" of life the sole preserve of the working classes, or people from ethnic minorities.

Asdashopper - based on what I have read on here, likewise, my dear

Christ, I have ran kicking and screaming from my impoverished, Catherine Cookson poverty and Shameless-esque lack of ambition since I was able to dream of a better life.

So I have moved away from my upbringing, am doing things differently, and am probably viewed (actually I know that some of my family think this) as 'stuck up' and 'pretentious', because I spend time and money encouraging dd in her activities, spent a fortune on studying part time when I could have just laid back and gone on teh dole etc etc.

I have what you would consider a very comfortable middle class existence despite having working class roots. I consider my life now just as real as my mother's typically working class underclass existence. It's just I prefer my life to hers.

MorrisZapp: I agree completely about MC and WC encompassing a whole range of people.

To me, MC means well educated, well read, tendency to be liberal minded, not obsessed by wanting the latest gadgets etc. It was about values rather than income. This is how I was brought up to see MC (admittedly a fairly sheltered upbringing with friends who were generally children of teachers, doctors, lecturers etc). But I realise from MN that to some people MC means something entirely different, ie what I would think of as a "nouveau riche" lifestyle with shiny 4x4s and manicured fingernails.

I don't think that any of us are wrong, just that our perceptions are different!

'middle class tunnel vision'

Why oh why is it ok to say this? How would you feel about 'working class tunnel vision' or 'working class lack of aspiration'?

The only WC person I'm really close to is my dear gran, she is an absolute gem but her cultural outlook begins and ends with Coronation Street, and she considers any food with garlic in it to be a threat.

I love her so dearly but I wouldn't look to her to widen my horizons or help me out of my 'tunnel vision'.

It was the same at school - was the WC kids mainly who laughed at anything different to themselves, while my friends and I were all encouraged to accept different types of people, try new things, learn about new experience etc.

Huge generalisation of course but it was my experience.

I don't vote alturistically no. I try to vote with a conscience but as I have experience as being in a minority it may be classed as alturistic in some way or another

I don't know why the assumption that we are all white with white children on the thread either.

Sorry Love, Just because someone says what they think, it doesn't make them bitter or unpleasant - you are clearly a bit oversensitive owing to your middle class cotton wool wrapping (JOKE)

I neither approve of snobbery or inverse snobbery as a matter of fact - I am just most concerned that my kids see as much real life as possible and not just a bit of real (be it on a council estate or a mansion) life

I don't like working or upper class tunnel vision either as a matter of fact ...... as for lack of aspiration in the working classes - that is down to the individual, people have different goals in life and money does not mean everything to a lot of people