To not understand they UK class war???

[Notcontent]

Right, so I was just reading the "not fitting in on MN" thread and that got me thinking about something i have thought about many times: why is it that there seems to be a bit of a class war - the whole work class versus middle class thing. I just don't understand it. I have lived in the UK for quite some time, but I just don't get it.

Why, for example, it is seen as a middle class thing for children to eat vegetables?? This is actually very personal to me, because I have just discovered that my dd is being picked on at school about the contents of her lunch box. Now it seems I know why.

Google it darling.

Or you could just explain your point, if you have one?

Nope, no point really, I was just being silly.

Morris no need to be touchy. These are simply my observations.

As for my own class - I think it was lequeen who coined the phrase muddle class and that seems to sum things up.

I am from a solidly WC background. Yet to say I am still WC is disingenuous as I am highly educated, wealthy and haven't lived in a WC comunity for knocking on twenty five years.

However, I'm certainly not MC.

In many ways it's very free. I can pick and choose based entirely on my feelings/instincts/research how I live my life and raise my DC. Obviously I chooose some very MC ways of parenting, but equally I won't steer clear of things because they're considered 'chavvy'. I have no fear of being viewed that way.

Fair enough Freddie.

WordFactory, we're all 'muddle class' really, surely? I call myself MC but my life is as full of anomaly and contradiction as everybody else's.

You're entitled to your own observations, but I think you'd be touchy too if I said 'working class parenting is mostly providing junk food and crap telly. And swearing at your kids'.

Which I wouldn't say, before anybody thinks I'm that narrow minded.

And I've never met anybody who doesn't pick and choose in their lives. The idea of doing things purely because you think your social class dictates it is frankly odd.

My grandad says things like 'well, it seems to me perfectly self evident that I worked, and so I am working class', before turning the page of the Torygraph and asking for the marmalade spoon to be passed.

Complex business, hmm?

MorrisZapp, sorry, I frequently take the mickey, anyone's fair game. It's all meant in good humour though.

No worries Freddy, you summed up my parents pretty well as it happens. But they're lovely people, and although the biodynamic stuff is ripe for humour, they're into that stuff because they think, and because they care.

And while I can rib them all day long, I don't like others doing it. Family, you know.

No probs Morris. In all honesty I have am not adverse to that kind of thing myself, and I clean my home with bicarb and teatree oil. I just don't have enough money for biodynamic wine, so it could be a case of sour grapes on my part - get it.

My dad is quite MC and he played in a folk band and did festivals, sprouted his own beans and made his own yoghurt.

Thing is nit I don't think it is things like that that make us WC or MC.

For example I don't think I'm no longer WC because I read The Times or shop at Boden. It's far more fundemental...if I own the means of production, if I don't live in the WC community, if I'm now highly educated, does that make it disingenuous to identify as WC? These are fundementals no?

No, it's everything else about him as well, to be fair! But perhaps there is some disingenuousness about reducing the definition just to whether you work, is what I meant.

I don't know at what point one 'should' start or stop identifying as a particular class, really. Hence the usefulness of the 'muddle' definition, perhaps

you cannot grow up in the UK or around British people without being minutely aware of class differentiation from primary school onwards. what school and uni you went to, how you speak and what you eat are just three of a thousand indicators of your position in our 'classless society'

OP with time you will pick this up and unfortunately your kids will already be subconsciously aware of social classes. the newly arrived and emergent groups automatically slot into the existing class structure.

wordfactory i think i understand and agree that mc parenting is display focused - being concerned for your child's educational attainment is a classic mc trait - as is speaking in the the elaborate code. elaborating and extending your child's experiences and knowledge is part of your hope that your children will have comfortable lives and the best you can provide for them, irrespective of funds available.

Also does anyone else read the thread title in a Dorset accent?

Christ Freddie! Now it all comes out :)

Why, for example, it is seen as a middle class thing for children to eat vegetables??

No idea OP, but I went to a mainly working class school in the 1980s/90s, where anything healthy or even slightly unusual would be derided as "posh" or "weird". Things probably haven't changed much since then.

In my experience, a lot of working class people (though obviously not all) are very suspicious of any food that's outside quite a narrow range of what's considered normal. For example, meat, potatoes and two veg like cabbage or carrots would be fine but not more unusual veg like aubergines or any food that's got a foreign influence. And I really don't think it's just to do with prices either, it's cultural.

morris I think you need to open your eyes if you don't see people's behaviour constrained by their class.

A lot of WC people view things as not for the likes of us.
A lot of MC people avoid anything considered remotely 'chavvy'.

Afterdinner, I agree about education being v important to middle class people (and lots of non MC, of course).

But in my world, this is because of wanting them to have a culturally rich life, decent career if they want it etc. I find it a bit insulting to be told that it's for display purposes.

Of course many people behave according to their class background.

It's just that you mentioned MC parenting but not WC parenting.

What are the indicators of WC parenting, in your view?

nit I must admit that I hung on to my WC identity for too long. I should probably accepted that it lacked integrity when I became a laywer and bought my first flat in Chelsea ....but no I hung on to my identity like a totem pole.

I finally gave way when I was writing a piece for the LLR...

morris agree.
i understood the display as an act between parent and child, to cement the enrichment, rather than to be made outwardly. too imaginative??

I beleive that some posters are assuming wealth = middle class = food.

morris I think the indicators of being WC are far less apparent in parenting per se. WC parents usually have too much to juggle to have a cogent style or a philosophy.

WC credentials are far more apparent in working life and in leisure activities.

Very true, Sherbet. My grandparents were all WC, and viewed my parents diet as weird and extreme when they became vegetarian in the 80s.

They were typical meat and two veg types. It's generational as well, of course.