To ask what makes you working class? (Lighthearted)

[MissAlabamaWhitman]

So, the whole 'what makes you middle class' has been done to death hasn't it?

We're all pretty au fair with avocados, elephants sodding breath, the ubiquity of joules et cetera.
And lovely as it is to have such knowledge of the middle classes, none of it applies to me.

I'm working class and I'll explIn to you that which denotes this in just a minute.

Incidentally I heard that there's a few of us about so perhaps we can make our own list of our very own class signifiers.

Who's in?

I shall go first.....

Love of charity shops, this week I picked up a leather Hobbs bag for 3.99 and a couple of Abercrombie & Fitch tops for DD1 1.49 each!

Love of Iceland/Heron foods/Home bargains/B&M. Yes I know I could get everything I need in Sainsbury's but I actually prefer scrabbling around for bargains and topping up at Lidl.

Chardonnay. I love it, tastes fab. I can't be arsed to pretend that I prefer a Beaujolais or Cab Sav. I don't.

One bathroom/toilet in a five bed house.

Regional accent which I take pleasure in.

Children who play football and wear replica kits whilst doing so

Girls who wear pinkI draw the line at bloody Jojo bows though

Getting drunk at barbecues and performing impromptu Karaoke.

Allowing my children to 'play out' in the cul de sac from age seven.

Cleaning my own house.

Holidays at Center Parcs rather than overseas.

Owning a Huskita

Letting my children watch TV and eat crisps in full view of other parents.

Having a 'pop man'

Listening to LBC rather than R4

Not really giving a fuck about trans, one way or the other.

I'm sure there's lots more besides which I'll try to remember.
How about you?
What makes you sit back at the end of a hard day and think 'yep I'm a fully paid up member of the old working classes?'

Oh well that's just odd behaviour isn't it?

Perhaps she had issues surrounding food?

Yes, she has issues. She was poor and working class and never had enough so now she counts it in case someone gets more than her. Isn't that ordinarily working class?

No, I wouldn't say so.

I'm working class and there was always an abundance of food at my house and also when I visited WC families and friends.

Your poor mother in law must have been raised in very dire circumstances indeed. However I'm happy to report that it's not a universal experience for those of us who are WC by any means.

My mum does this. She isn't mean and it isn't to count who gets more than her. It's to let people know there is sufficient for them (because there were many many times in her life when the food put on the table wasn't sufficient) and also to remind herself to take less than the alloted amount and leave more for guests. Which she still does, every time.

Is there a difference between wc/mc city based people compared to people who live in towns and villages, north/south? Or do we all have the same values, aspirations etc? I've always wondered if there was a difference or if it was the same.

Can be the way you've been brought up,wearing cast offs and appreciating everything ever bought for you (including things you actually needed like clothes on your back).I remember making perfume from gorse flowers and trying to sell it for pocket money.Working class means exactly what it is.Grafters coming home and trying their very best to pay their way.

Sorry if that's a stupid question. I'm just curious.

I live in an ex-council house.
Today's activities - by bus, visit NHS dentist, go to Poundland, bulk buy cleaning products and chocolate biscuits. Visit Primark.
Ready meal for tea.
Shop at Asda for food and clothes.
Holiday last year to Blackpool.
I love wearing bright pink tops, jeans and branded trainers.
I love artificial flowers and net curtains, I hate doing the garden.
My furniture was bought from Gumtree.
I am WC.

I don't think so, no. Still the same dirt poverty for my parents - one rural, one urban. One grew up playing around tenements, the other wandering countryside. Neither had enough to eat and both had things like butter and sugar "sandwiches". Neither had appropriate childcare (loose arrangements with neighbours that often broke down, taken into work and placated with sweeties etc). In both cases the fathers earned more than the mothers but everyone worked and no one earned that much really.

Electricity reached the town sooner and there was a shit load of animals wandering around in the country parent's house like bees and chickens etc. Neither had an indoor toilet.

Interestingly (or not) neither will countenance dogs in houses even now. The townie parent just doesn't get animals at all and the country one sees their place as being outside and usually working and definitely not a companion.

I supoose. I've read a lot on here that wc can mean things like having manual jobs, such as plumbers, plasterers, scaffolder, electrians etc. But I've known a few who are good earners. Some of them earning over £50,000 a year.

Whilst at the same time mc is perceived as taking the more academic route and may or may not be earning the same. It's confusing. And by no means I don't think either are more intelligent than the other. Some people just choose a different career path. Maybe it is an aspirational thing? Sorry I'm babbling now I find it interesting.

I think the poster who talked about upper working class had it about right. Certainly I would say in contrast to my grandparents' generation and to an extent my parents' that there is a growing army of white collar workers eg in call centres who earn way less than those with a trade and who are really working class in terms of income but they all have degrees. Education is no longer a sure fire route out of poverty in the way it was for my parents' generation.

DH and me are the cliched first kids in the family to uni, and on full grants. Our parents were manual workers.

We are fairly comfortable and I suppose live a middle class lifestyle. We consider ourselves working class.

We have a newbuild house having both grown up in damp leaky houses. We see open fires as a horrible chore and love our central heating.
We have nice cars; 4x4, cabriolet.
We have a big telly and sky.
Our four kids are always well turned out
Our boys have cool haircuts; DS1 had his ear pierced at 11.
DH and the boys have season tickets for the football and sometimes go away.
Our kids play out.
DH can do proper manly stuff like fixing cars and plumbing if required.
Both of us hate getting someone in to do jobs. I clean my own house. DH does the DIY.
We enjoy a laugh and banter and find many middle class people a bit dry and uptight.
When we go camping we are basically going on holiday but happen to be staying in a tent. Staying in a tent is not the purpose of the exercise.
We are close to our families, happily conduct the odd ruck without any of this passive aggressive low contact malarkey, and even tolerate popping in.
We really dislike the sharp elbowed behaviour of our middle class acquaintances, particularly as regards trying to get their kids ahead.

• my favourite meal is pie, chips and gravy
• in our house we have a shitter and we use shitty paper
• we swear frequently and cheerfully in front of the kids
• we couldn't care less about academic achievement
• we are very close to our extended families (although we don't live nearby)
• whole family loves kfc
• we sort of know most of the above are disgraceful but we don't care

OTOH I used to earn loadsamoney (now a SAHM) and OP still does. Suspect we're WC with money :)

- we couldn't care less about academic achievement

Really?

I don't think I've ever read this on MN before!

happy is that some sort of attempt at ironic piss taking?

The MIL counting food is unlikely to be rudeness, just an ingrained memory of poverty and needing to share out what is available so everyone gets something.

For a long time, people couldn't afford to cook enough food to feed the people at the table three times over - lets be honest, three potatoes, plus meat, trimmings, sauces and vegetables should be enough to fill up most people.

This is the origins of the much derided 'Mumsnet chicken' If you were lucky enough to have a chicken on Sunday (people would probably be more likely to have eaten beef or pork, before mass production chicken was very expensive and a real treat not something that people expected to be relatively cheap and eaten nearly every day) you had your Sunday roast, but didn't eat all the meat, but needed some leftover for another meal like shepherd's pie (assuming people had lamb not chicken) on Monday and then scraps for a soup on another day.

When you can't afford to have an abundance, and enough for leftovers that might be wasted, you also can't deal with someone piling in and taking 'too many' because if they do, there won't be enough for everyone else.

The MIL may have memories of brothers or dads/uncles taking nearly all the food because they took more than their share.

Nothing wrong with being W/C ask David Beckham. The idea that £s changes things and attitudes. Where one holidays is a matter of choice and where one enjoys oneself. I would like to suggest the use of Anglo Saxon expletives was a good bench mark, especially in front of ladies but I fear I am wrong .

Well I was going to say that I find the assertion that WC people don't care about their children's education unbelievable (as in I didn't believe that it happens, nearly everyone wants the best for their DCs) and insulting, but now we have someone who admits that

As a working class person, education has always been very important to me and my peers and my dad in particular was very proud of my achievements. DF and his DF were both very intelligent but unfortunately for them were from families where young men left school at 15 and went down the mines, by necesscity. One of my favourite childhood memories was my dad taking us to local museums.

DP, also from a similar background had music lessons to a high level as a child. Other families did similar things, this was our 'normal' and despite being from an era where everyone just went to the nearest secondary school, a good proportion went to university. These were mostly working class people.

I've thought I was now middle class.

But if I was born WC does that make me still working class lol.

I don't shop in charity shops
Never been to centreparcs
Think rugby is only played by posh kid
Parents in union etc
Dad plumber
Still have a strong regional accent despite living 300 miles away
Etc etc etc

But what are my kids then?

Parents both Uni educated
Live in big detached house
Still go on sun caravan holidays cause the kids love them
2 newish cars

Are they allowed to be middle class. Or are they formerly working class but not middle class lol

Dh's grandad was WC all right (stoker on merchant ships, wife a cleaner, lived on tuppence string and ham bones for years). He was also obsessed with his children's academic success because he wanted more for them. I would say that rich people are the ones who are less likely to care about academic success, hence the stereotype of aristocrats not giving a toss about grades.

Exactly Lucky that sort of set up sounds like a lot of my colleagues, working class background. Some are graduates, but some have learnt on the job.

We are in quite a niche profession but some have world wide expert status and speak at international conferences and live in naice houses in naice areas, near the most favoured schools in the city. But there are plenty that do their own DIY, despite being easily afford to pay someone to do it for them.

Lots of Center Parcs holidays and also lots of outdoorsy types who camp or have UK cottage holidays and hike on holiday with their DCs. Foreign sun holidays seem to be in a minority but there are a few of us who dive who do go abroad quite a lot. We stay in naice places not Magaluf though.

Their DCs go to Russell Group universities to become engineers or doctors. These families certainly 'appear' middle class to me and it's only knowing their background that would suggest that they may not be.

Which is why I think that there isn't such a great divide any more outside the real elite and being the offspring of someone brought up in a council house, or having a manual job, isn't necessarily a barrier to success or education.

The people I describe in this post are the very same people who are often responsible for recruitment and they certainly wouldn't discriminate against someone from any background - we have Cambridge graduates (who incidentally is a working class person) alongside those from ex polytechnics. We also have the occasional person who was privately educated and probably from the upper classes.

I would say that rich people are the ones who are less likely to care about academic success, hence the stereotype of aristocrats not giving a toss about grades.

IHT and the globalisation of Eton, etc has made this a luxury that the upper classes can less easily afford less these days.

Oh I'd agree tiptop it's an out of date stereotype now.

Ha ha Barbara we do our own DIY cause I can't bear the thought of paying somebody to do something I can do myself.
Probably the reason my hall is badly needing done.

I do think we don't really have a class structure in the UK now - well not between the working class and middle class.

I would be happy if my kids were a lawyer or a plumber - both equally good professions and as long as they are happy.

I've read a lot on here that wc can mean things like having manual jobs, such as plumbers, plasterers, scaffolder, electrians etc. But I've known a few who are good earners. Some of them earning over £50,000 a year

Tradesmen can make really good money, often far better than white collar workers, but money has very little to do with class.