To be a bit jealous of people who grow up within a 'culture'?

[haagendaz]

By culture I guess I mean a sense of identity and belonging within a group, cooking food with family, traditional music and dance and possibly religion, although this is not a necessity!

I grew up in a small, middle class, athiest family in London, we moved around a lot so I didn't have somewhere I 'came from' as such. My parents were keen for me to learn about other cultures (which fascinated me) but it made me sad we didn't really have one ourselves. We didn't really cook or listen to music or have extended family.

I spent 8 years living abroad in several different countries (Thailand, Brazil, Italy & Japan) and loved the sense of belonging and being 'part' of something that people felt. AIBU or does anyone else feel like this?

i have both i have english culture and asian. when i was very young i was immersed in them both then from 6-21 not so much now again both (too long a story to explain why)

asian culture i love it at times, it amuses me, confuses me and at times suffocates and annoys the hell at of me. my english atheist culture does not it allows me freedom though a little less security, i know what is expected of me from my asian side of the family

i switch from being what is expected of me daughter to just being totally me and at times it clashes. i like that the cultures are very different at times it is not always easy but i have adapted and i love them both for me it makes my life richer

Freudian, my dd has a similar mix of Asian and English culture, and I see her switching in and out of the roles each culture expects her to play. I'm glad that you feel they both enrich your life. My own view is certainly that there is value in each. :)

If you give me a bit more than that, PeaceLoveandCandy, I might even clarify whatever it is that's confusing you.

I grew up in care and have never had a feeling of belonging. I did some research on the internet and have managed to trace some of my ancestors to the south of ireland. They came across to England in the 1800s to work as navvies on the railway. I get to feel a bit Irish these days and that's quite nice

I'm an Irish Christian working-class-by-background woman living in a secular affluent English enviroment and the latter is just as much a 'culture' as anything else I've encountered. It has cricket, Radio 4, RP accents, Richard Dawkins, garden centres, reserve, hyper-anxious parenting, the sacred ritual of Sunday lunch and many many other things I find rather exotic and 'ethnic' . Why is it that people within that demography see cultures, accents and ethnicities as things others have, like the ones who keep telling me that I "had an accent" as if they somehow don't? I don't get it at all.

Growin up in a "culture" can also be quite limiting and restrictive.

But everyone grows up in a culture. :)

Hello, today I've been trying to be more aware of and 'absorb' my own culture and have come to the conclusion that my (along with a great many others) problem likely does stem from a feeling of disconnection from a wider community and extended family. I feel if I had these I would have much more of a sense of 'belonging', I think this is a really important part of being human and it is sad that so many of us feel it is lacking. I think we are on the cusp of change though, we live in a funny age were our identity is shifty and changing and morphing into something more inclusive but hasn't quite got there yet and we are the generation in the midst of the shift, if that makes sense?!

So you have a middle class London culture this means:

You understand the tube map and do not think it is confusing

You associate 'Sunday Lunch' with a roast meat, roast potatoes and veg - from a pub or home cooked is irrelevant

Christmas (atheist or not) means the shops decorated, playing only 3 songs on a loop, crowds on Oxford St for weeks followed by 2 days of total shut down

I think what you are missing is having a large extended family who get together several times a year.

I think we are on the cusp of change though, we live in a funny age were our identity is shifty and changing and morphing into something more inclusive but hasn't quite got there yet and we are the generation in the midst of the shift, if that makes sense?!

Not completely sure what you mean, but it sounds interesting, if you could explain it better? Are you talking about how identity is in many ways shifting online and thus our community is becoming less about people in our local area and more about people with out shared interests globally?

summerintherosegarden - What I was trying to say after a couple of glasses of wine rather badly is that we are on cusp of a huge cultural change in England (can't speak for the rest of the UK but it may well be true elsewhere). My generation is very different culturally to my grandparents generation and even to my parents generation, and I don't think this has always been the case throughout history.

It is an exiting time to be alive in many ways, although the downside of it is that it seems our generation is a bit 'lost' culturally, which I suppose is a side effect of so many major changes (mainly positive) which have happened in England over the last 60 years or so.

I think the war took a huge toll on cooking and women then went out to work so convenience food became very popular. The contraceptive pill meant smaller families, the hippy movement 'opened' a generation of baby boomers minds which created a massive cultural change. Immigration has made people more tolerant of other cultures and perhaps allowed us to adopt certain bits we like from other cultures. The huge technological advances has also had a huge effect on our social interactions. I frgot to mention the decline in Christianity, I think this has had a profound effects on the country, both positive and negative.

Gosh that was long! I hope it makes sense

yakbutter - Yes I think it is, do you think larger families make people more secure? Obviously I mean a large family you are happy in, compared to a small family you are happy in?

The English do have culture and many traditions (which form part of the culture). I think that the English are firghtened of being proud to be English because it seems to be disapearing from British life. I wonder if this is a deliberate government policy. For example on the census or any othe ethnic monitoring form, English is not a enthnic group, unlike Scottish, Welsh or Irish. We are all British, which is true but it does mean our own special English identity is being subsumed

I did say at the start of the thread that it is extended family that youmay be missing.

I think that when a family works well, the larger that it is,the more that it works, iyswim.

I think that i went through a period were i 'studied' other people's family set up, because i didn't have a family.

It is something that i wished that i'd had and one aspect of my life that i have no control over, which makes it all the more frustrating.

mirry2
I'm glad that someone else has noticed about English not being a separate ethnic group. I've had to fill out many forms in the last year for various organisations (the joys of job hunting) and it was only on very rare occasions that being "English" was an option.

You'd often get the choice of being British Scottish, British Welsh or British. You either have to include British English as an option there or just have an option for just British. It is very odd.

I have only really come to my 'culture' as I have grown up.

As a kid, I was quite embarrassed of my family's Irishness. I wanted to be like the little Sharons and Traceys, who did gymnastics on a Saturday, not Irish dancing, and who spent Sundays having a quiet roast at home, not at the raucous Irish drinkingclub after Mass , or who's dads all watched football on the telly, rather than dragging their poor kids (me) to hurling matches. I felt very different.

As I got older, though, I had a lot of friends from different cultures, and became friends with a lot of other London Irish, and started to appreciate my own culture more.

I do feel English/British when ever I am abroad, though. And in Ireland I am a cockney