to think that "middle class" has become a derogatory term

[hijk]

and actually, most people aren't actually part of any class, really, they are just individuals who make their own way in the world.

Is she really an anthropologist?

I struggle with the class thing. My mum's side of the family are all very working class, my mum didn't see them for 20 years so I only met them a few years ago. I was always proud of my mum for running away from an abusive family and making her own life and she always told me I would be "so much more". I never got the gravity of the wording until I understood where she had come from. The part of Halifax where she grew up was and is still very deprived. Most of the family work in the building trade, and there's always a casual level of wheeler-dealing and general dodgy behaviour going on. I feel like they will never really like me because despite living in council houses growing up and other so called "working class" indicators, my mum's parenting had made me 'culturally middle class' (since most of class is about cultural capital) and she was very firm about going to uni to fully break away from family tradition.

My accent is a very neutral Northern one after she moved me to a naice secondary (which I didn't appreciate at the time) and as a result I can't understand a word my aunt and uncle say. I can tell that they all feel that they have to clean up their act around me but I'm not judging them, I feel just as awkward as they do when we try and chat and actually I don't want to be thought of as some "aspiring middle class" snob. Most of my life I was very proud of my working class roots but as I've got older and I'm now doing a Masters most people would not consider me WC and it does make me feel odd. My mum's been a postie for a long time and she loves the job and suits it, her regulars love her. She always puts herself down saying she "won't understand" or isn't clever enough for something I reference or say and that's probably the thing that makes me saddest about the generational "class gap" between us. She's an incredibly clever woman who loves to debate with me but hearing her denigrate herself like that just because she believes I'm above her upsets me. Mum is the biggest supporter of my academic achievements but I do know she sees her success as making me succeed. And I guess, that's why I'm middle class and really awkward about it.

I do love the ridiculousness of "U and non-U" phrases.

blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/09/talking-proper-language-u-non-u/

Beyond the usual lunch/dinner/tea conundrum there's some other more obscure ones that just make me laugh :D

tea
Pudding
Sofa
Loo

I'm still wc despite sitting on the sofa after nipping to the loo,I'm currently thinking about a pudding for tea tonight.

Oh she is an anthropologist. I picked the book up once in a shop and thought it read like Sunday paper journalism.

I'm working class. Grew up in a renowned area of deprivation. Got a degree after leaving school, but currently work in low pay support role.

My sister has a six figure income and associated lifestyle. She's working class because of her experiences growing up. Her young children will never know what it's like to go without or be judged for being 'poor'. That makes them middle class, IMO.

10/10 so I guess I am middle class.

Interesting, workhorse. I score three on that checklist I think.

1. no. Never went!
2. no. I’m an artist.
3. no. I rent (to be fair from the family).
4. yes I spose so
5. er, yes in theory
6. no. I don’t care about performing through food. I get a recipe box and cook whatever they send, or order in.
7. no. I don't have a telly hooked up so we watch mainly US box sets like Parks and Rec or the Good Wife and I absolutely cannot stand lobotimised tv documentaries oh dear lord.
8. no. I just stay with people I know in the various places those people live. I have never booked a holiday in my life.
9. yes, probably true on reflection!

10. no. My family is quite close.

"Your attempt to claim that working class people with skills are therefore not working class is a bit disingenuous"

Sorry, I wasn't trying to do that. I was just interested that all the names I've been offered as working class children who "made it" through the grammar school system seem to be the children of what I suppse could be called "aspirational working class". Rather than labourers, for example.

And I'm not letting you have the McCanns because their mother was a teacher and their father was a metallurgist............

Hak - David Frost. Humble beginnings, married Lady C Fitzalan Howard (I knew her cousin in a name droppy way if only MiddleSchoolMuddleMum was reading this... I'm never going to let that thread drop, am I??)

Now I want to be a metallurgist. What a brilliant name for a job.

He definitely describes himself as working class (I was just listening to some audio extras where he did just that). I suspect metallurgist can cover quite a lot of activities... Sting's mum was a teacher too. And Paul McCartney's mum was a nurse. Those were more WC occupations back in the day though - not graduate professions - and many women entered them later in life too.

To a large extent I agree with you about the composition of grammar schools now, they are mainly full of the kids of educated decently paid people, but that wasn't the case in the past and it wasn't supposed to be the case. And ithe fact that it was the middle class Tory electorate who got rid of them is telling - they were providing a ladder, limited though it may have been - and that ladder got pulled up. My party would have done better to improve the ladder rather than collude in destroying it (although obviously they didn't think that was what they were doing at the time). The only way the creation of comprehensive education for all could have worked as intended was by making it for all. It isn't. So the model can't work as intended.

David Frost's humble beginnings- well, if you call being the son of a Methodist Minister humble........!

Ah, so we're redefining "working class" to include the children of teachers and nurses..............

Yep, grammar schools really packed in the children of laborours, factory workers and the unemployed......

1. University graduate - YES
2. Professional, managerial or high grade administrative job - YES
3. Homeowner, unless you're going through a rough patch financially - YES
4. Go to the theatre/art galleries/museums a few times a year - YES
5. Think books are important and read to children every day - YES (well, I don't read to my kids, they are too old)
6. Think food is important and use exotic/unusual ingredients in cooking - NO
7. On television, tend to watch serious dramas and factual programmes rather than soaps or reality shows - I DON'T WATCH SOAPS OR REALITY SHOWS. I DO WATCH DRAMA. I WATCH A LOT OF SCI FI.
8. Holidays tend to be to areas of natural beauty or cities, often self-catering, rather than beach packages - CORNWALL - there are beaches, it's beautiful, we go self catering, never holiday abroad (I go overseas a lot for work I'd rather die than fly for 'fun' on my own dime)
9. Children's names are usually solid and traditional, classical or whimsical rather than newer or made up names - MIXTURE OF TRADITIONAL AND FOREIGN

10. Extended family tends to be less close knit than for either working class or upper class families and friends can assume a greater importance. NO EXTENDED FAMILY ALL DEAD

you're right, it's a bonkers list. You can no more change the class you were born into than you can change your footy team.

I know what OP means. I recall hearing on several occasions references to radio programmes and them being "accused" of being middle class. Usually, being accused of something, implies it is something wrong.

Also goes along with people quite often saying how proud they are of their working class background/roots. Very rarely do people assert they are proud of their middle class background.

However, I always thought that deferred gratification was a feature of middle 'classism' i.e. being prepared to go without in order to get bigger benefit later (or maybe that was just some misremembered thing from a sociology class I took decades ago)

I agree that if you come from a relatively comfortable background you have a head start in life - although clogs to clogs in three generations is not that rare. OTOH my personal experience lives up to the cliche: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".

My mum went to grammar school until she had to leave before official leaving age when her mum died. Her mum was in service, till she got too sick to work, her dad was unemployed due to chronic ill health (exaccerbated by drink). But she was never at the top of the media or world of politics and this wasn't in the 60s. So I didn't think she counted. My dad went to grammar school, his mum died when he was 9 and his dad worked front of house in theatres and music halls (and died before he left school). My DH went to grammar school, his mum worked in a factory and his dad did lots of things around the motor trade - definitely not MC stylee, that. Trust me.

Most of MN uses the word Tea when they mean dinner.

My friend whose Father is Professor of English ( middle class?) both she and he only buys the cheapest ham...only eats simple foods, like white bread, chicken kiev, chips and never without tomato ketchup. What does that make them?

I agree that if you come from a relatively comfortable background you have a head start in life

If you have somewhere you want to go.

Indeed Knitted: otherwise you hit the other scenario - clogs to clogs in 3 generations

Knitted I think you mean supper

I'm afraid that I only use tea to mean an early meal for children. Never for a meal that adults might eat in the evening.

OMG, I thought my Mother was the only one who used that expression - she grew up in "clogs" we had "shoes" and she spent our entire childhood worrying about us going back to "Clogs". Why she thought this would happen I am not sure. But she made our lives hell if we did not score well at school or if we had "cloggy" friends she thought might drag us down.

I really don't see why owning your own business is a barrier to being WC. My dad had a small shop and definitely wasn't MC.

I was happily oblivious to being WC growing up in Scotland until I went to university and a privately educated friend commented on how I was lower class to her. A friend from home recently commented on how I was MC now and it made me a bit sad that she needed to put me in a box.

I honestly don't know what I am - I think I can tick all the things on the list above now - but I'm sure my manners and speech aren't "right" and I don't care.

I do tease DH when he tells me an anecdote about his childhood like going for riding lessons as being so middle class but it's more of a private joke. My parents have a bigger and nicer house than his but are definitely WC while they are MC - mostly shown by taste and interests.

Also, I think the poster who said having "good" towels is naff was being a bit snobby. It comes from knowing you can't afford to replace things and wanting to look after the things you have IMHO. Sounds like there were other issues beside class going on in that family though.

There are plenty of wc business owners. Or do people mean something else about owning v providing labour.

The mc do get a bit of stick here and there, not sure if it's anymore than wc or uc.

We don't have a single nice towel. They are all like sandpaper. I suspect DH has been washing them on the wrong setting. Also - they were all cheap and nasty to being with. Money is for spending on books not towels.