middle class

[southeastastra]

why is it so important for them to all conform to a certain standard

the right playschool, the right school, university, job

the right clothes, politically correct opinions, cars. does it not get suffocating to conform?

Good grief Bobo, no wonder I'm confused. I grew up believing/being told we were a middle class family (based on parents' education and careers) and now it seems that my mother's devotion to Delia means we were aspiring to be middle class??

Oh the shame! I foresee years of therapy!

God, I really fancy some hummus now

It doesn't matter if you spell it houmous or hummus. You clearly don't know it's all about the Baba Ganoush these days = not middle class.

I associate being middle class with being obsessed that your children get fresh air every day. I've never noticed it being a requirement that you dress in a particular way or drive a particular car - I thought that sort of behaviour was often considered nouveau riche/common by the middle classes, or something indulged in by an over-pampered minority of the type. Schools, universities and jobs... aren't these obsessions of lots of groups of people? Including recent immigrants? Some people definitely seem to feel safer if they are opting for schools/universities/jobs that people "like them" choose, but again that applies in all walks of life to people of all backgrounds - there is a depressing tendency to stick with what you feel safe. And if you are completely out of your comfort zone, then you may well go for what are considered the "respected" and "safe" professions, to try and gain some kind of acceptance from society and some kind of status - ie you might seek middle class status... not already have it...

I think Delia was also used by lots of MC women to refresh their memories . Her goal was very much one of democratisation, however.

Absolutely Jeeves In the oh so nice and respectable area of my childhood - my father was obsessed with living on the "right" side of town and my mother ensured we were very careful about saying where we lived - there are some shocking views on race, sexual identity and particularly the perception that the disadvantaged are from another world. My experiences in inner city schools were a source of wonderment and my work with disadvantaged adults is greeted with head shaking. When I took my current job my mother was too ashamed to tell the neighbours I worked with offenders and addicts. Plenty of people go to church and give to "deserving" charities but most people regard the poor as another species.

My washing up bowl is from Wilko's

I bought it because it is Teal...to match my kitchen

I think i may have jumped two social classes there

I think I'm middle middle, neither dh or i have a university education and the children are in state school

Im not fussed about posh handbags or cars...that must lower my social standing

I don't care too much but i do think its fascinating...especially when someone ticks every middle class box but insists that they are working class

What are the middle class boxes, Rufus?

Christ what a tedious OP.

I'll be kind and assume somebody had a very bad day.

southeast I know exactly what you mean and I believe everyone else does as well. It's a tribal thing and I don't belong to the tribe no matter how much I may ape its manners. I have lived in Herts for over a decade and I don't fit in because I'm not English. I am in Scotland at the moment and I know everyone in my 'tribe' and am accepted.

rufus sone people get very cross with me for identifying as working class.

I'm Oxbridge educated. I have a successful professional career. I have children in public school. The fabric of my life is the epitome of an upper middle class existence.

But my father was a miner and I grew up on a council estate so ...

So it's nothing to do with social class then, and everything to do with the normal and universal habit of all humans to want to be with others like them?

Gosh, it's capital letters..... rewrite the original post forthwith, if you want entry to the middle class.

I don't feel a need to conform at all. I just want the chldren to have choices so eg I am happy to have a cheap car as I've nothing to prove. However I have a nice house because I want that. Just do what you choose. choose your politics. I have no problems with having a signed picture and letter from Lady Thatcher in my office. Proud of it. Be individual. Fight for British freedoms to be different.

SheGot - you have working class roots. I'm not sure you can still call yourself working class, can you? I suppose you can call yourself what you like, though. I'm often genuinely baffled by the class system along with the rest of the world but I understood it as a fairly fluid thing, apart from the true upper class maybe. Doesn't Carol Middleton have working class roots?

My dad had working class roots, but a grammar school education, University and very professional job meant I had a very MC upbringing. My mum was proper MC. My maternal grandfather was actually fallen upper class (his father gambled away all the family money). So I'm a right old mixture!

I saw that Grayson Perry series when it was broadcast, and I thought that his 'middle class' group (people somewhere near Tunbridge Wells, if I remember rightly?) were definitely 'aspirational lower-middle-class', in terms of their anxious observance of social norms, obsession with the meanings of various brands/possessions/clothing, what their houses looked like, and 'keeping up with the Joneses.'

They were incredibly fucking tiresome, as with anyone who is anxious about their status, is continually policing it, and has a beady, snoopy little eye out for others making class faux-pas.

But what would I know, as a prole foreigner who grew up without an indoor loo?

MC people tend to go for the 'best' of things. Schools, olive oil, etc
WC people have more of an it'll do attitude.

Is it a self worth thing maybe?

Mayeb some of you should read Watching the English.

There is a very good description of how the different classes are supposed the behave.
And the MC is described as one of the closest minded class.

As a foreigner that has spent years trying to work out how I could 'fit in', I agree with her.

oh please why do threads about the 'middle class' always have to refer to 'hummus'. As far as I knew, this was just some rather nasty gritty stuff in little greasy pots that one bought from the corner shop when one had a hangover. Yet on MN it seems to be some rather smug class marker!

Kevin
I've read 'Watching The English' and many other such tomes and I agree with you. I'm tired of trying to fit in.

7days that's not my personal experience at all.

My grandparents were all working class, of they type that wore their best clothes on a Sunday, had a room in the house they only used when visitors came, and kept their home and garden immaculate because what will the neighbours say.

My parents both went off to university, became MC, and have lived in a fug of cat hair and dust ever since. My mother thinks housework is a feminist issue, and happily sits in a filthy house surrounded by books, papers and empty wine glasses. My dad abhors the capitalist monolith that demands mindless consumerism, so his oven door is held on by a string, his windows haven't worked since 1975 but you can just put a jumper on, and his clothes are mainly from charity shops. Neither of them give a shit what anybody thinks.

There's all kinds of working class people and all kinds of middle class people.

7days - I agree. Money gives people the luxury of choice and making better ones.

And I find the idea that the middle class have the monopoly on status markers as hilarious. The only people I've ever met in my life who think that second hand clothes are unthinkable and (particularly with children) want 'everything new' are working class.

Ditto the little girls I was at school with who wore pristine white socks. Working class.

That's interesting because I suppose if you have money you don't have to feel the need to flout it.

I don't want to get torn to shreds for making this comment but I am put in mind of a woman I know from toddler group and we both had babies born in spring 2014 so they are obviously dashing all over the place now and she would not consider anything but branded trainers for her DS.

It's so hard to pin down, MZ, eh

It depends on high you define best though, and what criteria you use to judge - depends on the type of MC.

But I can't make your grandparents fit my theory

Morris Your parents sound just like my dad to a tee. Appearances meant nothing to him at all. He was a farmer and did his own thing. I've vowed to follow his example.