To hate being born between social classes?

[gorseclay]

Name changed for this one.

Is it U to dislike being born to parents of differing social classes?

My father is v traditional upper middle class whereas my mum is very working class. Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to have two perspectives on everything and seeing two sides to every history.

I just feel I lack a sense of “belonging” to one specific group of people. I love the friendliness and close knitness of working class people in my area but feel I don’t “fit”. Maybe this is my fault and all in my head, but they tend to view me ad a bit “posh”. Whereas the other group the other.

I constantly feel as if I’m picking sides!

Is this all you have to worry about

Just be yourself OP. Decent people won't worry if you don't fit exactly into their "class". You are fine as you are!

Not only were mine two different classes, they were two different religions too.
Children very quickly get used to having different rules in one place than another, e.g. school and home, this is no different.
Just carve out your own way and traditions for your family- I think this is far more common nowadays.

Does anyone still think like this these days? I am shocked if so.

Just be natural.

After all, your parents managed to make their marriage work.

Your background should make you a well-rounded person.

I agree Averyyounggrandmaofsix It's thinking like this that just perpetuates the class system which should be dead and buried now.

Both my parents are working class but I suppose I was brought up more middle class.

I get sneered at by my mums side of the family for being “posh”. I get it.

But day to day, what impact does this have on you?

Oh god have you hit a nerve here!!

Definitely got this - one parent has fancy background, we were raised with no money and what you might call a scary abusive childhood. Really not good stuff, I actually only ever mention it on MN!

I always think that to the fancy parent they’re deluded- maybe all a bit “Common People” and they don’t realise this is it, they have no money, they can never go back to how their parents lived etc. They have nothing and really screwed themselves over, had kids with a terrible person and then betrayed their kids repeatedly. So financials are only one aspect.

Hated hearing about fancy ancestors when I was a kid, made me feel like a failure for just being me! And was so removed from my “childhood”, I hated it. Also remember thinking “those ancestors wouldn’t talk to me if they were alive now, and I wasn’t their grandchild”. They all looked and sounded so well off, and grand, but as if they’d ever have given a toss about me.

One parent makes a show of basically trashing the other’s background a lot, is bitter and abusive. Wrecks the antiques we had (we lived in run down bloody shack, seriously we barely had electricity... I am in my 30s, this is not too long ago!). Im being left one very special antique that is sort of still intact - but where could I ever put it, I live in shabby rented accommodation! But I can’t sell it, ever... the shame! And I’d feel I failed the family somehow. But I could never afford to insure it... bugger

Even now, when I talk about anyone I’m dating my parents are both keen to know what type of man I’m seeing, my siblings too. They’ve tended to fall into one camp, hard. They see me as different and I don’t know why. It means that even as a family we have no strong identity or bond tbh (other reasons for that too).

Also means I don’t strongly relate to any one group in society. And if anyone finds out about my ancestry they think differently of me, and my own achievements. I’ve come from near foster care and an abusive home with a family living on less than 6k a year... to going to uni, being a professional and living in a city away from where I grew up. People assume you somehow had some help? Erm I had abusive parents who left me to starve a LOT. Also people either get excited about it, like oh you must know “people” (they mean important people). I do not! I don’t want to. I don’t like people fetishising my background.

I’m still struggling to “make it” though and feel my immediate family make judgements on my aspirations. I don’t want to be one thing or the other... but I don’t have many other examples of how to live. Basically I need to figure out what lower middle class is and be that!

Sorry for the long post.. basically you have to take into account peoples reactions a lot. Then people don’t know how to place you. It’s not exactly the hardest thing in life but is inconvenient! Also means your nuclear family sometimes doesn’t have as strong an identity

How did those social classes collide, I wonder?

Imagine one parent is a Country Life girls in pearls, and the other is the Angela’s Ashes dad.... so I’m not the best example here!

I wonder why people seem to get so angry when anyone posts a thread about what class they are? (Cue a thousand " I don't believe in any outdated class system and never notice these things" posts).
I can feel odd not quite fitting in anywhere OP but to look at it another way you sort of fit in everywhere! People exposed to a wide range of social groups have a great advantage of being able to relate to many types of people. I wish more politicians had that ability!

I get it op

If you've grown up with it then I'm surprised it's not natural.

I have a Catholic mother and a Church of Ireland father and it was very useful to me! Not a problem at all. No use now as nobody cares and it doesn't matter.

I was raised to identify (I guess, vaguely, in a half-hearted Irish way, different to the British way) with being middle-class and when I went to the UK people asked me if my father was a builder. Did I have ten siblings? So I slipped down a class.

Now I feel exempt from classification. That is what I identify with. Exempt from class bullshit. I also wonder how classes collide? I think insecure people will zone in on anything that other people do differently if it makes their way feel under criticism, so if you present yourself as being open to other people's ways then nobody feels and threatened and nobody makes digs. I have found.

I don't fit in anywhere either. I was raised UMC so have the education however have been in WC environment ever since and have lost the UMC accent. On the one hand its a disadvantage because I never belong anywhere. On the other it's wonderful as I can mix with so many types of people. I feel I have a broader view of life.

Mine as my mum had been abused by another man for years, thought my dad was a shiny lovely new chilled out working class guy and assumed he would help her escape. He’s actually really, deeply abusive and violent. But her parents were fairly stiff upper lip and didn’t even know what was happening in her life.

This is also an abusive background so not totally on point re the question.

One way it did affect me was people didn’t ever come to help. Everyone in our area knew he was abusive, no one intervened. Another family had a similar thing - and same thing, that family weren’t from the area either. But both the mum and dad were working class and I feel maybe my mum seeming posh meant people kept away, didn’t feel they could approach her about it.

Also got picked on at school for having a posh mum, when we had the least money and I had a man abusive dad. Sucked that people would assume things based on the class of a parent.

Interestingly a friend works in SS and one really out of hand case they had was a posh family, cos no one thinks rape etc will happen in the fancy Manor House.

I’d much rather be one set class and be done with it. I only don’t feel working/middle class when someone finds out about my background, and that only happens when a sibling goes yappig to someone about it

ifNot, I do agree with that. Class and where you fall is a massive preoccupation for the British. People are very classist. Look at the vitriol directed at the middletons. In Ireland that would be admired. ie, made a fortune and spent it on fancy bricks and mortar and posh educations for their children. There wouldn't be anything admirable about making a fortune and not wanting your children to access the best educations/lives/opportunities.

The whole ''know your place'' is so palpable in the UK.

In other countries you're judged more on the here and now. You're a doctor who mixes in a privileged social circle? Well done. EVEN MORE SO if you're parents were unemployed and played bingo for fun.

Class is a shorthand way of being able to place people, some people seem obsessed about it, wish we could chuck it for good :(

I get it bit also agree with jai and if not. Think I can mix and fit in with more people, but feel slightly an outsider. Lots of people are quite déclassé now, but attitudes, and financial realities(!) still matter.

I don't think anybody thinks that abuse doesn't happen in middle class professional homes.

Educated, successful, privileged men can be very, very entitled.

I do think though that when my own marriage was in tatters I was more invested in to the facade (sorry can't do a cedilla) because at that time before I was ready to leave, the misery was preferable to the pity. Nothing so intolerable as pity. And I wonder now if that was me being a product of my upbringing. If other women with parents who expected less success from their children might have fled sooner, admitted it was shit sooner.

Well, good thing we all get wiser as we chalk up experiences.

YANBU OP

A lot of people will say "Oh I don't care about class, I mix with people of all backgrounds, we don't even notice it!"

That might mean that they are middle-middle class and they mix with some people lower middle class people and some "respectable" working class people.

The way our class system is evolving.. theres actually quite a lot of class mobility around the middle but very little at the top and the bottom. So if you are around the middle you may feel that everything is very open and fluid. But at the extremes people do still keep very much to their own kind and often have little experiance of people outside of their own background. Actually more so as inequality widens

"Very Traditional Upper Middle" and "very working class" is not only a significant social distance but might also be cultures that define themselves on in group/out group type dynamics and ideas about "people like us"

OP has to not only feel caught between worlds but also witness relatives experiancing and valuing a closeness of community that she lacks.

The one thing that annoys me is that people seem to have a fear of being labelled 'posh' - why? I think it's good to have aspirations to better oneself.

Oh! I know what you mean.

I am Northern, working class. DH more Midlands also working class.

I have a degree, had a profession moved South. Imagine how my still Northern family see me?

We still feel working class, we have to work, but we do have middle class trappings, own our home (finally, in our 50s), car each, pension pot and all the supposedly essential MC stuff.

So I am between geographies as well as classes. People I like either think I am a snob, totally divorced from the realities of life's financial hardships; others that I am a tad crass, lacking in social graces.

Happily I gave up feeling responsible for how people see me and can just think "Fuck it" and move on!

That's all you can do! Be you and enjoy it!

I get where you are coming from, OP. Not quite the same, but my DDs have a mother from a very working class background and a father from the upper middle classes. Fortunately it's worked out OK for us, and daughters have grown up accepting the differences as an amusing fact of life, i.e. Nanny smoked and swore like a trooper whilst Granny "spoke like the Queen" (their words) - both grandparents are now dead.

I am just pleased that through being born in the late 1950s, I managed to gain a free university education which enabled me to make my way in the world on my own terms - meritocracy in action.

I think it shows how far society has come, to some degree, when my daughters have one set of great-grandparents who attended the wedding of George VI, and another set of great-grandparents who at that time were bringing up 13 largely barefoot children in Wapping, in a slum. A massive social shift over a relatively short period of time.