To ask, if you grew up working class or not well-off and have done well for yourself?

[TheHouseOnTheLane]

Do you ever get a weird longing for the past and the way it was even though you know the reality wouldn't please you?

Do you ever feel a sort of guilt if you left your home town?

DH and I have done ok...we're not rich but have a lovely house in a very lovely town. Blah blah...DH is from a middle class family but I grew up in a steel town during the 70s in the UK...my memories are probably tainted but I sometimes hanker for the close community that was my home town...I feel guilt for leaving....or something...what IS it?

Having said that, people boasting openly about their "property portfolios" and "6-figure city salaries" can stick in the craw of even those who grew up comfortably but modestly middle-class...

Not in the slightest. I've always been MC at heart, so never fitted in my hometown. No way would I want my daughter being brought up in a 'community' where girls had no aspirations beyond being a hairdresser or a teenage mum or where kids were regularly fed pot noodles for dinner, which was the reality in the area I was brought up in (just to be clear my parents were not like this, we just happened to live there).

Oh god. I can identify with this so much. Working class mum, middle class dad, who met at university. So middle class life first few years in another city...then they split up in 1979, after moving to my mum's hometown. My dad disappeared a few years later, physically, emotionally and financially when he got his feet under the table with another family.

So straight back to her working class roots, except it being the 80s and her on her own with her kid, she struggled to get consistent work in her profession and couldn't get a "job" to replace it as people thought she was over qualified, so we were on and off benefits for years. she was very educated and high brow in a lot of her tastes, very working class in others and we never had tuppence spare.

It was a toss-up between us who was the main breadwinner in my teens, whilst I was expected to get middle class exam results alongside working 20+ hours a week at school then university. We got a council house when i was 20 and it made such a huge difference to be in a secure house at a reasonable rent.

Then worked in very middle class environments after university, met my husband (also working class made good in very secure and well paid professional work). We're comfortable enough now that I don't need to work for a few years so will study for another degree in the meantime.

Never really found anywhere I fit in totally or where I feel I can be totally myself. Fed up getting patronised by middle class people who assume because have some working class roots and attitude that I'm uneducated, uncultured and unthinking. Equally, don't like being seen as different because i have a bit of money now and have left some habits behind.

Like doing things like accentuate the culture clash, like living in a georgian flat but wearing long pointy false nails in glitter and neon, or eating potato waffles with truffle & wild mushroom sauce.

My experience of growing up in a solidly WC community was largely positive.

Yes, we were poor but the good outweighed the bad.

Yet still I wanted to live my life differently. I wanted to get a fabulous education. I wanted to travel. I wanted so many many things that were not possible in that WC small town.

I did not want to be MC. I still do not. I am not. But I don't want to remain the smae either. And that makes some working class people very defensive.

I'm araid I get the exact opposite. I grew up in a cold, damp flat on a council estate. Now I'm in my thirties, I'm a Director at a large organisation, I own a flat in. Lovely part of London that has a strong sense of community and lots going on. I wake-up every morning grateful to have escaped poverty.

When I see rough-sleepers and programmes about people living in temporary accommodation, I get a very real 'tramp-fear' (as I call it). Unlike many of my friends from established middle-class backgrounds, I'm acutely aware that it could all fall apart tomorrow.

I definitely don't romanticise the anxiety and insecurity that comes with poverty. Maybe your definition of working class is different to mine, but my associations (based on personal experience) are mainly negative.

I'm still thoroughly WC.

My DCs go to the same school DH went to although it is now doing well unlike when DH was there.
80% of pupils are FSM and majority are from the estate next to the one I grew up on.

I don't look down on anyone. As I said earlier, I have no education beyond GCSEs, I work in a minimum wage retail job and I had my DCs young.

I just didn't want my DCs to feel scared of where they live like I did as a kid.

There weren't really any benefit scroungers when I was growing up. I don't think it was a thing. Every single one of my friend's Dads worked, (mostly in the colliery) and everyone owned a little terraced house. Lots of our Mums stayed at home. My friends all had the latest fads and fashions and we went on holiday, ran a car etc.

Working class means something different now.

I've done both. Hard childhood, poor and working class family. Moved away to London and lived the high life to the full combined with successful career. Moved back to home town with DH and had DS. I miss the city but realise that DS is having a better lifestyle. We're also treated like aliens because "ooh they lived in LONDON don't you know?" As if we morphed into completely different people.

Nope!

I am thankful every day that my children do not have the threats of violence that were subtly lurking around. They will never realise that the number of rapes in the local paper is horrific. Never know their friends engaged in child prostitution.

I live in a much much better place and am far safer. The things we don't have in terms of community are massively outweighed by what we've gained.

My ddads family were well off and my dmum's as poor as church mice. My childhood was somewhere in between and very happy. We never went without, but didn't have no where near what we have now. I always knew I preferred my ddads side of the family's way of life.
DH had a similar set up. It's like we'd seen both sides and knew which way we wanted to go.
We don't live far away from either families, so that's not an issue.
DH has a good job now, but really property has made the most difference to us.

I grew up on a farm, in a tumbledown house that was bloody freezing in winter. My parents weren't particularly well off. I couldn't wait to get away but fell pregnant at 16 and according to my parents "shamed the family name" . As I insisted on keeping my child I was shipped off to an aunts house until I had my son and to make me "see sense when the child is born". I never saw the sense they meant my parents wanted me to have him adopted I kept my son. I returned to school with my aunts insistence and I'm grateful for that now. I got my o'levels and highers and managed to land myself a place on a Primary Teaching Degree at Uni. I was 22 when I qualified and had already met DH. We now live in the house I grew up in although it's not a tumbledown wreck any more. The farm is completely different as well as DH has his practice here. When we initially moved back a lot of the older people in the village wouldn't speak to us as I'd "shamed" my family. I missed the full area when I moved away and I loved bringing our children up where I'd grown up

My siblings and I were brought up by a single mother whi struggled to bring us up.
However, we all went to university and have relatively well paid professional jobs.
My dc's live a completely different lives

However, I feel that they really don't appreciate the wonderful

Sorry - sent too soon
I don't feel that my dcs truly appreciate their lives. They take the foreign holidays , nice clothes , music lessons for granted. These are the things that I craved for as a child

My experience of being working class was very positive. No violence, drugs and actually very little poverty to be honest.

Working class doesn't always mean poverty, drugs or lack of aspiration.

I lead a very middle class lifestyle now due to DH, but I agree to looking back and wondering how things might have panned out if I hadn't gone to uni. I was the first in my family to go...i ended up earning less than my mum!

Husband and i grew up in the same very wc town, whole place was practically a council estate. We are the only ones from family and friends who have moved away and my husband has done exceptionally well considering our background. We don't want to live there again but we miss spending more time with family and our old friends.

I worry that my kids take their lovely lifestyle for granted and sad that they grew up without the close family ties my nieces and nephews had. All our family and friends who still live there all have nice lives though. Have good jobs, own their own detached houses, cars and nice holidays. We all still think of ourselves as wc though. When i grew up, there were many working, decent aspiring families from council estates -,most moved out when they could though.

I'm finding it interesting that PP's view private school as "middle class"... to me it's a "posh"/rich thing, yet I'm considered incredibly middle class by most people! I suppose middle class covers a lot...

It's also interesting how income fits in... I too, feel I don't fit anywhere but sort of the opposite situation - raised middle class but now on benefits (ill health). However, I didn't have a luxurious MC upbringing - one parent on a professional salary but split between a relatively large family and London house prices even then were high (parents moved suburbs in order to buy). So we were really taught the value of money - although we were all allowed music lessons we also had mainly secondhand clothes, and food shopping was carefully calculated. I also remember arguments and stress about money... And totally relate to this comment:

meddie I didn't replace my 25 year old kitchen until it actually started to break, rather than replacing it because I just didn't like it. I only buy clothes because they need replacing not because i just fancy it, yet I can afford this now. But a childhood of only getting new clothes at Easter and Christmas or when they were beyond repair is hard to shake off.

My teen best friend who was technically poorer than us on paper had a lot more disposable income/pocket money whilst I had to have a Saturday job (unfortunately, as I was already struggling with heath problems and it affected my studying). It's all so complicated, but class is about so much more than money. Having enough material things whilst still watching the pennies was very good for learning to budget, but I feel like I've let down my middle class start in life, somehow.

It's not just WC families that can be dysfunctional though! Interesting that PP's have thought money comes with no arguments...

I suspect posters will describe themselves as poor and dysfunctional as it is an obvious true point that being poor or WC can be combined with having a happy family life.

My background was secure and functional!

Reading this thread has made me giggle tbh, despite some of the stories of deprived upbringings and poverty.

It seems to have morphed into people who are convinced that they had a WC upbringing but are now obviously firmly entrenched in a 'MC lifestyle' - living in a MC house (would love to know what a MC house is!) or a MC area, or having a MC social group.

I'd be interested in knowing what people's definitions of MC are. Quite a few posts indicate that going to Uni was the tipping point for them which I struggle to understand...I know a lot of Uni graduates, none of whom I would label as MC. Is it income? Job title? The car you drive or where you holiday?

I grew up firmly working/underclass. Unemployed parents, no holidays or extras, hiding in the kitchen from the Provy woman and knowing that you never, ever, answered the door to a man in a suit.

I wanted different. No Uni education but started in a bank in an entry level position straight after A Levels and worked my way up.

I'm now in a mid-high management role with about 80 staff under me. Dh had a similar upbringing and also dragged himself up by his bootstraps and now works in retail management and runs a large department store (along the lines of Debenhams) with a multi-million turnover and 100 staff.

We both have high incomes, nice cars, a large expensive house in a posh, expensive area, savings, 2dc that have opportunities we could only have dreamed of and want for nothing.

I wouldn't class myself as MC. I have the same tastes, interests and enjoy the same activities that I did before I 'made good'...I just have more money now which lends more opportunity.

I don't understand why so many are so desperate to shoehorn themselves into a MC label or try to turn their lives into a tragic drama where they're longingly looking back on all the poor souls they 'left behind' just because they have a bit of cash now. It's all a bit ridiculous IMO.

Of course not all WC people live on estates.

But those of us d'un certain age will probably have been brought up on one!

Although I grew up in a large 5 bedroom farmhouse on a large farm we definitely didn't live the middle class lifestyle. Freezing house and everyone worked all the hours God sent. We never went on holiday. Our kitchen was like something out of the 1930s.

I think the historical line between MC and WC has blurred so much as to make it meaningless in lots of cases tbh.

In my street of what many would class as big, expensive, posh houses my NDN's are a Solicitor on one side and a plumber on the other. Both have very high incomes, all the appearances of wealth. Interestingly it's the plumbers family whose dc go to a private school [head explodes]

OldFarticus I find it hard to save and constantly want to buy "things" that I don't need while I can afford them.
This makes no sense to me!
I mean, if you didn't buy the things, you'd then have more money lying around/in the bank for the future... £100 you don't spend today is £100 more in future when you have no income/whatever thing you fear. It only disappears if you spend it .

I'm the opposite, I don't want to spend money, I want to save it for the future when I may not have any!

I'm shocked at the attitudes towards WC people on this thread, and the amount of posters who now own several properties. So they're happy they've "escaped" and are now making their money from poorer people renting, but no desire to change the overall system that leaves so many without!