Do you know anyone middle class?

[angelos02]

I don't. But my definition of middle class is those that go to work but don't need to.

Ah, understood Laquitar and I agree with you as regards wishing my DCs to have secure, financially rewarding jobs/careers.

And yes to becoming an electrician, ditto a plumber/stonemason

Ellen if you have a professional occupation you are middle class and so are your DC, even though your parents were working class and you live in a working class area.

You can't be a working class doctor/ lawyer or even teacher or accountant... no matter how much you want to be

Being middle class is very unfashionable and hardly anyone admits to it even though considerably more than half the UK population are situated somewhere within the middle classes IMO.

For posterity Schwab;

I speak with a Liverpool accent, my DC are not privately educated, my partner is WC and does not have a professional occupation.
I listen to Radio 1, my drink of choice is a pint of Stella Artois, my DS plays football, we shop at Iceland and Lidl, in short I am as WC as a person could conceivably be.

The fact that I am a medic is neither here nor there. Its ridiculous to assert that I'm necessarily MC because of the job I do.
Its one part of the myriad things which encompass my cultural and class identity.

Class is linked to your job type and level of education isn't it? Teachers are middle class (lower middle) but doctors are also middle class (upper middle)?

I still think you're middle class with working class roots but I appreciate that you don't think that. I don't think drinking Stella and playing football and shopping at Aldi, nor these days speaking with a Liverpool accent, are remotely at odds with being middle class.

I do think occupation of head of household (highest earner?) and educational level of adults in the household are the indicators - everything else is window dressing.

I suspect you can feel working class but be middle class ... and vice versa of course...

Thats ok schwab I'll let you think that I'm MC if you like.

I am rather kind, after all.

Although I suspect that if a person authentically identifies with a particular social class, then that is the class to which they belong.

I don't culturally/socially identify with MC people. They prioritise different things and have generally different tastes in all manner of things than myself and my partner do.

I consider socially stratifying people via income level/educational attainment alone to be rather myopic, if not futile,

Ellen tbh identifying people by class at all is probably rather myopic, if not futile... :o

But if it is just a matter of which class people identify with Hyacinth Bucket is upper class isn't she? I suspect inverse class snobbery is also available... :o Nobody wants to be middle class...

I'm middle class, very much so. I've always seen it more as a mindset/attitude thing. We were brought up to not even consider the idea of not going to university and getting a 'decent' (as my mother would define it) job (I know there are many decent and worthy working class jobs but that's not what my mother would have meant)

I remember at the age of 7 being asked what I wanted to do when I grew up by a relative and saying 'an artist!' and later being told by my stepfather that I had to be either a doctor, dentist, teacher, lawyer or accountant! At the age of 7! (I didn't end up any of those).

I do think birds of a feather flock together as all my friends are middle class, and 'middle-middles' as opposed to upper middle or lower middle. I don't think I know anyone in a different class to be honest. I'm suprised to hear it's unfashionable to be middle class anymore, when so many people are. What is the fashion these days?

schwab

I believe the operative word to have been 'authentically.'

What class you are has absolutely nothing to do with money.
Upper or middle class people are more likely to have money but the two are not mutually exclusive. I also believe that it is almost impossible for a person to move class, you are what you're born as. With the right schooling and socialisation, I think it's possible to move your children up a class but not yourself.

It is a mindset as NavyAndWhite says.
FWIW, my family are upper middle class country landowners. Most of our friends are similarly positioned middle/upper class just because people do tend to gravitate towards their own kind.
We even have some decidedly upper class friend who own and live in one of the largest castles in England! I love getting invited to shoots and parties there.

I also believe that it is almost impossible for a person to move class, you are what you're born as.

So my friend who grew up staunchly working class in Liverpool but who went to Cambridge (first of his family to go to any university) and is now an internationally known professor of neurophysiology, is working class because "you cannot move class" People who encounter him will think "working class"? Really? he grew up working class. He is now firmly middle or even upper middle class.

The english attitude to class is more like caste. you are born into it and cannot shake it. And this is true of working class as much as upper or middle class. Everyone seems to want to cling to the class of their "poor but authentic" or "privileged but authentic" family of origin.

Just like the american thing of everyone thinking they are middle class. Or the other american thing of politicians being middle/upper class but reaching down into their fathers/grandfathers for blue collar authenticity at election time (culminating in Colbert's wonderful "I was the goat ball licker's son" in response to John Edwards, that prick)

The idea of middle class being defined as not needing to work is very funny. The clue about the middle class is the word middle.

Upper class is all about background- pedigree- not money.

Pedigree, like a dog you mean?

Some of the biggest arses (in the personality sense) I have ever met have been "upper class" hunting and shooting types - lots of breeding and old money, no class at all to the type of young man who addresses young women he's meeting for the first time as "Totty" and thinks it's perfectly fine to drink drive when they can barely walk straight as long as they use back roads...

Theresa May' s definition of working class was interesting as it defined the working class, among other things, as being worried about their mortgage rates rising. I thought home ownership was a marker of middle classness?

What do you think upper class is???

longest exactly- working class means aspiring to own your own home! The new class definitions that splits it into seven sections is a far more accurate way of analysing modern society.

You can most definitely change class, though it may be harder than it should be. My df was definitely born working class, in a council estate in Grimsby to a dockworker and lumberjack with very little money, but he went to grammar school then Oxford (his dad thought he was betraying his roots) and took a professional job. By the time he died he was a broadsheet-reading classical music lover with a second home in Provence and very middle class taste in food and wine. I am "established middle class" according to that bbc test, and although it's a silly test I can't argue with its conclusion.

It's probably difficult to become working class if you start off with middle class privileges and outlooks but I've no doubt you can in the right circumstances.

The reason it matters is because these divisions are quite entrenched and do affect life chances, even life expectancy, as well as a lack of understanding between those in power and those without.

I think some of the answers just show how up their own backsides some people are...Oh we own land fwiw and not about money?! Tally ho! It must be fabulous dahhhhhhhhling! Clearly have no idea about the real world; it is linked to several things, money being one of them most definitely, as well as level of education and occupation. Why bother doing a degree? You can't move classes apparently, even if you lived in poverty and are now in an occupation that requires a degree and is by default a middle class career?

You can most definitely change class, though it may be harder than it should be

Easier now. There are forms at the post office for official class change although I think it can be done online now. I have changed class 3 times now. I tried upper class but hated the stuffy invites, now back to working class just to annoy the neighbours as we live in a naice area.

I know nobody middle class.

Btw I define middle class as anybody visited by the flying spaghetti monster within the past week.

pearly :o

You clearly can change class (even if you don't want to and don't fill in the form at the post office :o )

scarydino did you mean me? I am thinking of certain specific individuals I knew slightly in my teens in a rural area of northern England - my parents are/ were upper middle class (by profession and outlook) and my sisters had horses and were on the fringes of the mixed farming and upper class types who had fox hunting and aspects of land management and possibly other stuff in common.

The people I'm thinking of own castles and manor houses by inheritance, own large amounts of land by inheritance, make their living owning and managing "sporting estates" or multiple farms run by tenant farmers, some are titled or (more often) related to somebody with a title which they don't stand to inherit, some lived full time in the countryside, many others moved between homes in London and the countryside - the younger men especially from that background were generally pretty unpleasant, in my direct experience. They really didn't believe rules on things like drink driving especially applied to them, and had a sneery and entitled attitude to women. They also believed that if the hunt ploughed through and trashed somebody's garden this was the equivalent of the garden being damaged in a storm and absolutely no responsibility of the hunt's, and had the same attitude to damage they did with their vehicles when they could get away with it...

Not everyone is like that I'm sure and of course it is wrong to generalise... Some of the much older (way post retirement age) people appeared not to be like that... Perhaps I just encountered a disproportionate sample of the upper class's arse contingent...

Every time somebody claims to be upper class and writes about breeding and pedigree it reminds me of them though... Some of the least pleasant people I have ever met...