To ask, if your Grandparents or their grandparents lived in poverty, do you feel that affected you?

[AjasLipstick]

I do.

One set of my grandparents came from very, very poor backgrounds.

Granddad was born in 1910 in a workhouse and my Gran was born in Liverpool to a docker and a cleaner and both lived in extreme poverty and led hard lives.

My Gran told me terrible stories of growing up in Liverpool...born also in 1910, she lived through some shocking family tragedies and illnesses...

They thankfully improved their lives once married as my Granddad got a good job and they had a nice council house for years. To them, this house would have been wonderful I'm sure as it was semi-rural but not completely impossible to visit Liverpool and their relatives.

I grew up on a council estate near to theirs...a nice one with a good family ...we were not "poor" but managed fine...I was well dressed and fed and we had a holiday every year....but I still fear poverty and have a seemingly inbuilt mistrust of institutions.

I feel very uncomfortable in any council type buildings, hospitals, large educational facilities...and certain architecture makes me feel anxious.

My worst nightmare would be homelessness or no support from family.

Is this what they call "generational trauma" or just a vivid imagination?

"I feel very uncomfortable in any council type buildings, hospitals, large educational facilities...and certain architecture makes me feel anxious."

In what way?

My grandparents were poor farmers, practically no education (4 years primary education), grandma was a war orphan. They raised 4 children who all went to uni and did well for themselves. I was proud of my grandparents and what they've achieved and their poverty is in no way haunting me. I'd guess my parents' way of life during my childhood played a much bigger role in the way I see the world.

I lived with my grandparents growing up so saw how their upbringing had affected them. My grandad had a stereotypical bleak northern upbringing, think Every Sperm Is Sacred. My grandad wants the best of everything he can afford in terms of food eg branded cans but scrimps elsewhere. Even now he tries to give me money (which I split with my grandma if I occasionally accept it ) because he was always afraid I would or will shoplift to keep up with my friends. My grandma taught me to be frugal. My general living costs are pretty low and I like to cook from scratch/clean with soda crystals/hoard tins but have inherited saving for what you want when you want it but otherwise I spend the bulk of my money on socialising student so its fine
However, the joy when my grandma had finally paid off her catalogue debts and her credit card so could cut them up will stay with me, I don't anticipate I could ever buy anything on tick or get myself into debt, student loan aside, if it was unnecessary.
Their biggest influence was being politically engaged, and the betrayal they both felt when some of their siblings who became marginally more successful financially suddenly began to vote Conservative and spout offensive views about the types of people they had come from.

My grandma grew up in extreme poverty, as did her 17 children and as did I and my siblings.
This made me determined to not live like this!
I was dirty and hungry as a child.
Often kept of school because I had no shoes or no clothes that fit.
I was never given sanpro so I didn't go to school when I was on my period.
My friends mum would often feed me and give me a bath and wash my hair,( i am so grateful to her for this)
I left Home as soon as I could and I have Worked so hard to make sure I never go back to that.
Due to missing so much education, I have never had a especially well paid job,but I've been able to buy my own little house.
My children who are now adults had a good childhood and went to university.

My grandmother (1910) fell into poverty when her father left the family. They lost their small business and she had to start working in a factory age 11. Her husband (1898) was the youngest of 10. His parents were farmers and shop keepers. He was the most educated of his family, leaving school at 14. He had a modest career in border control. (All of this not in the UK). They put the very little they had spare into their children’s education and I was born into an upper middle class background.

I don’t intimidate easily if at all. I think part of this is from being from an immigrant background and from a family that has always valued hard work more than background.

Brighton It's not something I even realised about myself until quite recently....it sort of "landed" in my mind that all my life (I'm 45) I've been quite determined to avoid anything "official"..if possible and the places connected with officialdom.

My grandparents grew up in poverty. Especially my granddaughter who was orphaned at a very young age and forced to fend for himself.

I'm not sure if I'm influenced by this but I'm extremely frugal. I have very few living costs and my parents are also very frugal. I do it as instinct and without even thinking about it.

I'm comfortably off but it's a lifestyle that I don't think I'll ever be able to change. I don't notice it on a daily basis.

Yes and No.

On my Mum's side, my Great, Great Grandfather was a navvy. The family grew up on transient navvy camps. It was hard life, violent and poverty stricken. I think that had a trickle down effect over subsequent generations. I personally don't feel affected but I can see it in the 3 generations that followed, down to my Mum.

On my Dad's side, my Great Gran was in the workhouse (or rather, an Industrial School) for a few years while her parents couldn't afford to keep her. Weirdly, no-one knew until recently when I did the family tree. I don't think my Nan knew about it. I can't say I noticed a particular affect on subsequent generations but I don't doubt it profoundly affected Great Gran herself.

i'm not influenced by my grandparents poverty - I don't think so anyway.

I actually struggle to get my head round how terrible my grandmother's life was compared to my own sometimes. i'm very grateful for my education, for contraception, for washing machines, for the right to equal pay even if it still doesn't pan out, that rape within marriage is recognised as a crime, that food is plentiful, for heating, hot water and flushing toilets, that some economic things like credit, mortgages etc exist for women without a man to sign them off.

In that it affected my parents and the choices they made and points of view they passed on to me, yes.
And I think that knowing their stories hugely influences my priorities and politics. I'll only ever vote for people who recognise that without an NHS and welfare state the horrors endured by my grandparents as children will become the norm again.

My grandparents grew up in the slums in Glasgow. I haven't been affected one bit by their poverty. My Grandpa got a first in civil engineering at uni (first person in his family to ever complete school nevermind a degree), got on a boat to Canada with my gran, built up his career and never looked back. He was my hero!

In that it affected my parents and the choices they made and points of view they passed on to me, yes.

Yes - me too. One of my parents in particular lives in terror of poverty, and although he's actually done very well financially he still makes decisions as if he's not going to have enough to eat the day before payday. This made him quite difficult to live with.

My grandparents were coal miners in the south welsh valleys so not rolling in it. One of my granddads dies of coal dust related emphysema and my nan got some posthumas compensation. My nan's house still had a privy at the bottom of the garden.
My husbands grandparents are farmers. My husbands mother and aunts are mostly illiterate and the older girls left school at 12 to look after younger siblings (10 kids altogether).

My Dad had a professional job and my mum was a teacher and I have a degree and a highly paid professional consultancy role. I have a lot of respect for the hard lives of my grandparents and the hard childhoods my parents had (not enough food was a common problem when they were small). However this doesn't really impact my life except perhaps to give me a little more empathy towards those struggling.

My husband is a degree closer in that his parents struggled for money when he was a kid. He sometimes feels bitter about some of the opportunities I had that he didn't (I can sail and ride a horse and went on foreign holidays). However we both work hard to give our child those opportunities

Both my grannies grew up in what we would classify as poverty nowadays.

They were both one of 13 children and grew up in small terraced 2 bedroom houses. Neither of them had indoor toilets and one granny could remember the excitement of the indoor cold water tap being plumbed in and when they got electricity (which meant one electric socket in the downstairs parlour!). Both of them had siblings who didn't make it to adulthood and had at least one family member who died of TB or the complications of very treatable illnesses nowadays. Whilst neither of them ever starved, food was limited and one of them said she remembered as a child never quite feeling that she'd had enough and didn't experience the sensation of fullness until she was an adult. Their are one or two family photographs and by modern standards they all look a bit pinched and thin.

However, whilst they lived in what we would consider abject poverty today, they didn't feel poor themselves at the time and maybe that's what makes the difference. They both "married well" and had secure middle class married lives, where their living conditions continuously improved throughout their lives, so that by the time they died, they not only had indoor bathrooms with hot and cold water, they also had a microwave, washing machine, electric kettle, electric oven, a bed all to themselves, radio, dishwasher, colour TV, free healthcare, a pension, telephone and one of them even had a video recorder!

They were both very different women but in their ways had a really positive outlook and thought that their lives had only got better with improvements in living conditions and technology, so no, their poor backgrounds doesn't impact on me negatively. I just think how incredibly lucky I am.

Both sets of grandparents lived in real poverty
My parents did a little better but not much. DF had an industrial accident which left him unable to work and DM was disabled. Benefits were crap then so they weren't starving but it was a struggle
I am fearful of ending up the same and am very risk averse.

Both sets of grandparents went through periods of being very poor. My father's mother was widowed when my father was 12. He had to leave grammar school and go back to the village school until he could leave at 14 to get a job. My grandmother remembered scrubbing carrots in the hope that might make them more attractive in the market and still not selling any during the depression in the 1930's. This adversity made my father very determined to improve his lot, eventually he set up his own business and did well. I was able to go to university and qualify as a solicitor. His determination not to give up and to make something of his life gave me opportunities I might not have recognised if he had had an easier ride.

My father came from a large family and he was a menopause baby. He can remember coming home and finding his mum ( my gran) talking to another woman. He didn't interrupt ( As would have had a clout around the ear) but asked who that was once the woman had left. He was told it was one of his older sisters ! Once they had got to a certain age expected to leave and make own way in life. They were very poor and hardly had shoes to wear to school (born in early 1930s). My mum (born in 1934) can remember also having to put cardboard in shoes to go to school. Her father was away as a home guard near the coast and my nan was having fun with men from the local army barracks. She can remember coming home from school to find my nan drunk and beating carpets hanging on the line whilst a woman was with her, being sent to bed early and hearing her mum crying in the night . She told me in hindsight she thinks it was probably an attempt at a home abortion . Poverty was rife at that time and people desperate.

I think it’s made me conscious of where I came from and also appreciative of how hard my parents worked to be so socially mobile. My maternal grandparents were typical working class (granny was a housewife and pop did factory work). My paternal grandparents though never really worked, lived in social housing (my dad grew up part of his life in proper tenements), grandad had serious mental health problems and was institutionalised for a time. My parents though were very socially mobile, neither went to uni but my mum did have some qualifications from college. Both just got lucky getting really good jobs with little education in the 70s when that was possible. Mum worked in finance and dad as a laboratory technician for a scientific manufacturer. With very few qualifications, my mum made by the time she retired significantly more than I make today...and I have a PhD! They were able to get on the housing ladder and were very financially comfortable (before they got divorced), could put me in private school, etc. So though it makes me appreciate how different of a life they built for me, I don’t think it affected me directly really because they made such a vast leap at a time when times were good and it was possible to do that even when they initially had very little social and cultural capital themselves.

My mother was born in a ghetto in the war, so poverty doesn’t go near it. Because all my grandma’s possessions were taken from her, I noticed when I was old enough that she was never able to throw away old/rotten food, or anything for that matter.

My mum in turn has the same traits, she’s a mega hoarder and has to finish everything on her plate. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that what happened to my grandparents influences my life today.

My grandfather grew up in extreme poverty in St Helens. His grandparents left Ireland in the potato famine. Grandad was born in 1901. Aged 15 he walked up to County Durham to work in the mines. I WW1 his lungs were too weak to fight so he continued down the pit and married at 21. Then he had a market stall with my grandma for the rest of his life. I grew up being taught that education was the route out of poverty. I have never felt ‘poor’ though I grew up in a Council house in a pit village. I am very very proud of my grandparents.

Both sets of grandparents grew up poor. One particular grandparent was seriously deprived.

One of my parents was brought up in poverty.

It hasn’t impacted my life other than my family places a huge emphasis on the importance of getting a good education and we’re mostly all workaholics.

My dm was the daughter of an Irish/Russian immigrant without a penny to his name (gambling issues) who died when she was 3. My grandmother was left with 3 children ranging from less than a year old to 4 and no money. She managed somehow. My dm says she wouldn't go for lunch at school as children who got free lunches had to sit at a separate table so everyone knew. Moonlight flits figured as did the rent man offering to sleep with my Gran in lieu of rent payments. DM went to a Grammar school and ended up a Civil Servant.

I've spent most of my working life to date working as a Civil Servant or for the Local Authority. Oh and married someone whose Grandmother was born in her family's Castle.

I know how lucky I am but I also know that authority in most cases comes down to luck too thus it doesn't phase me in the slightest.

Anyone who calls themselves Middle Class obviously isn't!

My grandfather on one side grew up in poverty in the 1930 Depression era. He died young (had a chronic illness), but his younger sister lived to 94 and I loved to listen to her stories - from going to bed hungry to her adventures in WW2 (she was an amazing woman!). After WW2 he and my grandmother (from a better off working class family) were able to train as teachers under the post-war special arrangements, that plus the NHS being there for his health issues made a huge difference.

My mother went to grammar school and University. She is a bit of a hoarder - but think 'war baby grew up with rationing' rather than surviving a ghetto. I am a bit of a compulsive declutterer as a result, generally cook from scratch, don't value lots of possessions (except books!).

But the biggest legacy is valuing the NHS, good state education, and the welfare safety net. I've never needed it, but can understand all too easily how it is possible for your life to fall apart, to need to leave school early and get a job, to go untreated because you can't afford the Dr and the medicine.

Coal miners, NE England etc etc. My grandmother was widowed with a 4 month only baby within the first 2 years of being married (as was her own mother who married again and had 9 more children) - husband died in an accident at work - he fell from a great height.

I think it does affect how you are if you know how your ancestors suffered.