To wonder what class I am and why it should matter

[ForMashGetSmash]

I might come over as a fool here....but be gentle...because I really want to get decent input.

I grew up on a council estate in a very poor area...the local steelworks closed when I was about 8 and the majority of Dads were out of work...we were lucky in that my Dad got another job.

I had a wonderful childhood...big family, very close community...traditional type upbringing with chapel, school and corner shop all within a stones throw...you called the neighbours Auntie or Uncle whatever and could trust anyone in the street.

In the Summer the older kids would take the little ones off on excursions on the bus with a picnic...they just did it, they weren't told to...it was all very homely and close.

Now the area is a midden...a cesspit of drugs and teenage Mums with no support for them at all, there are a lot of offenders living there in halfway houses and it has had a big effect as it is a tiny community...

I now live in a nearby city in what I would have called a "posh" area...people don't speak...other parents are wary of one another and the kids aren't allowed out to play at all.

I feel sad and mourn the fact that my children won't experience the things I did...walking to school alone...playing out all day in the Summer...having a great big gang of kids who were sort of extended family...all we have is a nice house and polite neighbours. ..my older DC goes to a private school nearby and has lots of friends but it's all arranged playdates...she is happy...but why then do I keep thinking back on the past? Is it a case of rose tinted an all that?

I miss the seventies and being working class. I Still am working class...I'm just pretending to be something else...and that's why I feel trapped and miserable.

My Dad used to refer to us as 'upper-middle class'

[roar]

We went to the local comp, we could barely pay the mortgage, out Nan lived with use and she gave my parents the (£4K) deposit and we all had hand-me-downs.

Dad went to a private school on a scholarship - interesting what his perception was..

When I moved to a more expensive Edinburgh environment, the first time I met one of my neighbours she said, 'Nice day today. It's nice when it's nice,' and walked on. Never saw her again.

My son went out into the shared front garden to look for woodlice under stones. The next minute he rushed back in having been shouted at by an old witch from the next door building who probably didn't know he lived here, and must have thought he was damaging the flowers. Or something.

A few months later, when he finally plucked up courage to go outside again, he was kicking a ball up against my wall, when I got a knock on the door and there was an elderly neighbour saying there had been a complaint about the noise. At 2.00 on a Sunday afternoon.

We had come from a Manchester council estate where the day that we moved in, neighbours on both sides had said my kids were very welcome, could play in their gardens etc.

So I feel your pain, OP. But good advice given by other posters here - don't lose heart.

'Sfunny, we lived in one village around here when we first moved up, and they were a bit snobby. Then we moved a mile up the road to the other part of the village and everyone was really lovely. Same types of houses, cars, jobs, everything. It's just the people that behave differently.

I reckon you've just hit on an area that isn't very likeable and actually it's got little to do with actual class and more with the type of people there. But meeting the neighbours is usually a good idea, I think. Just in case you've got the wrong idea.

Maybe so...there's a nice street about 5 mins away...at Halloween it always looks like a mad competition to decorate...I think that the more kids on a street the better.

oooo Beer someone else who calls it squeaky cheese!

I would say that you are probably no longer working class as you don't lead a working class life.

If you made it to university before making money in a profession, you'll be middle class. If you made money in a more entreprenurial way, like selling frozen fish, I'd say you were probably what would be termed "nouveau riche"

But I don't like these terms, they're just limiting. What does it matter, you are the person you are with the experiences you have. Sounds like you're doing ok.

What OP says about how children live are nothing to do with class and everything to do with modern paranoia about Paedo danger. I grew up in the 1970s in what we Americans would call upper middle class areas (doctors, teachers, lawyers, judges and politicians were the normal full-time occupations in our neighbourhood, for moms and dads). From 9yo I went walking for miles without my parents really knowing where I was. I was bullied & had few friends but I think most the other kids in the area had a vibrant and spontaneous social life with each other. Most of us attended state schools, too!

But my mom found much less community feel in the upper-middle-class area (compared to beach and multi-ethnic run-down areas we lived in previously). I suspect there is an affluence factor in how much community feel there is in a area.

I don't care what class you are OP, there's no reasonable or consistent definition of "class" anyway. The British obsession with defining one's class is weird.

I know ragged...I'm working on it! But I have to disagree that class has nothing to do with the way children play...you said it yourself....you found the poorer areas more sociable...kids running around outside etc.

However...research DOES suggest that children from socially disadvantged areas are more at risk from road accidents and attack or molestation than those in socially advantaged areas. I am sure the margin is slight but it is still there....so you can't win really can you? I suppose that's why people invented gated communities? Not that I would live in one of them!

There was an interesting documentary about White supremacist gangs and gated communities, so maybe not, eh?

I'm middle class, I've always been middle class it hasn't stopped me from being occasionally very poor or from socializing with my neighbours now. Although, when I was a kid my parents never did. And if I was turfed out for the day, there were never any other kids around (90s)

I get where you're coming from Mash. I was brought up in a similar environment (except my Mum insisted we were upper working class )

I used to think I was middle class because I had a degree, read the Guardian and listened to Radio 4 but the older I get the more affinity I feel for my working class background.

On a practical note, I notice there are loads of estates (I think I mean housing developments, not council estates iyswim) around where all the kids play out together so maybe it is just a case of being in the wrong neighbourhood.

I can't say what social life differences where were for children between areas, and if kids didn't play out on streets so much it was probably because we had our own bigger houses and gardens to play in.

I meant that my mother had a much better social life in the poor area! And she found more community things going on for adults to share in and do in the poor areas. She found the neighbours in the richer area to be a little snooty (my mom was very egalitarian, her father was a minister and she found all kinds of inter-class resentments to be quite annoying, she despised any form of snobbery or elitism).

I wonder about this. My parents are middle class and I was sent to a very posh school. After messing up quite a bit I am now a single mum working in a shop and claiming benefits in a middle class town. I am left-wing.
Read the Sunday times for middle class tribes today.

Generally though, people have a very skewed idea of their own class don't they? Like Jareth's Dad, most people who claim to be "upper middle" just mean that they consider themselves a cut above the suburbs.

Children not playing out has more to do with an increased fear of risk-taking and strangers. Blame the Meeja [hgrin]

"I think class is dead-I am a barrister"... sorry babybarrister...but it DOES read amusingly!

I think children not playing out has a lot to do with computer games and TV too.

If you don't mind me asking, Formashgetsmash, why does your DC go to a private school? I think a lot of people send their kids to private schools because they want them to mix with 'the right sort of people'.

If you are concerned about social divisions, I'm not sure this makes sense. (You might have other reasons for sending your child to private school, none of my business, but one of the effects might be to separate him/her from the local kids?)

"its like wanting to be upper but heck the trust-fund just does not exist...so you hope the good education and posh voice will get you by..here's hoping you have a big cock"

I know. The trust fund is there but the lineage is not, hence keeping me out of the upper. I don't think we have many Irish natives who could claim upper as all of us are only a generation or two away from poverty and hardship so can't exactly claim to be part of a pure elite lineage.
The cock is sadly lacking.

What about the Anglo-Irish elite of the 18th and 19th centuries? Where there is poverty there also always great wealth. Just turn up the odd stone, and there they are!

grannyonaike...my choice was nothing to do with the local lovely kids...but the fact that the only school our of three local ones that we were offered a place at was failing and under special measures. It quite literally stank...it was dark and opressive...the kids were miserable and most of them had tutors to make up for years of being badly taught.

Well if people won't et their child play with another because they go to private school we might be better off without them! As a kid, 2 of my best friends from the edge of the village were at a very posh school...we thought nothing of it.

ah but that's the point. ANGLO-Irish (ironically they're now the biggest cause of poverty in modern Ireland).
My elder generations were too busy shooting black and tans to find time to mate with them and get some of that protestant money.

Mash, is there a park nearby, if so, would be good idea to take your DC there frequently, then you'll meet others trying to do same. We have big garden, lots of play equipment (not showing off, honest, garden is like a tip!) but I regularly take my DS to local parks, better to meet people/other kids.
at the comment that if you work for living you are working class, does that make senior surgeons in hospitals, solicitors, headteachers, the PM (?) working class then??? Don't think so, class def more about attitude, education, whether you read a tabloid or not

I'm working class, with a degree. Was "under" class for a few years, homeless and on the dole. Class does matter. Values between the classes can be very different. I don't really mix with middle classes in RL, only lecturers at uni, and have been shocked and horrified on here many times, simply because I've never spoken to anyone in RL with such views. As many Mumsnetters are horrified by other parenting websites I suppose.

Agree it's about attitude rather than money or job. Most definetely.