Germphobia is a class thing, isn't it?

[tenbob]

Full disclosure: I'm slightly fascinated by the posters here who won't wash their hands on a towel at someone else's house, buy cakes at a school fair or use a public toilet for fear of germs, and admit to being the sort of person who eats stuff past the sell-by date if it passes the sniff test

But I've just spent a couple of days working at a food fair type thing and noticed a definite class divide in germ tolerance

There was no end of stereotypical posh families who would share their ice cream with the Labrador, eat food that had fallen on the floor etc

And the mums (it was always the mums) who were obsessively wet wiping everything were non-posh

Can you prove or debunk my theory?
And if I'm right, why are the upper classes so relaxed about dirt?

I am quintessentially scruffy posh.

Huge old house full of battered stuff, ancient car, second hand clothes, scruffy kids.

And the sheer confidence to not give a damn and to carry it all off which is what it boils down to. We don't care about judging or being judged.

Really interesting thread.
I'm working class, and my older Aunts told me that they were houseproud so that other kids couldn't say their kids smelled bad or were dirty. Being clean was the sign of not being neglected. So their labour was was their way of showing love when they had very little else to give.

I dunno, I've seen just as many Jack Russels & Whippets licking ice creams as I have Labs & Spaniels.

But I do get what you're saying & I wonder if it comes from the whole "must keep the house spic & span in case Mrs Jones comes round" attitude of the working class, whereas the upper class had some other poor sod to worry about the cleaning....

I'm common and my house is currently a tip

HTH

ImperfectTents We have one of those at dd school! She has been in my mind this whole conversation - wish I could find out if she was authentic or a wannabe!

I goes back to times where working class people didn't have much so what they had they took pride in they couldn't help having no money but they could help how they presented themselves and their home.

I've just moved from a deprived working class area to a higher end working class area and I can see the difference.

Definitely agree. Old money, upper class posh people don't worry much about being overly clean. My father's wealthiest customer was never bothered and her amazing diamond ring with diamonds the size of peas was worn casually on an extremely unmanicured, grimy hand - her passion was her garden which was lovely. Her house, however, was grim inside. We're middle of the road here, but certainly not obsessive about cleanliness, always better things to do than boring cleaning! But do like a basic minimum.

You are right.

I’m the sort that spends the morning mucking out horses, then prepares and eats lunch without washing hands and then realises they are literally filthy with grot under nails from scratching fly scabs off the horse!
I don’t get ill though.
A bottle of handwash lasts about 6 months in our house. I don’t own wipes or antibac gel.
My car is also a biohazard, covered in mud, straw, horsehair and moulding things. It doesn’t bother me at all. We have a weekly cleaner at home and do bugger all in between.
House is full of cats and overly friendly chickens, I do at least clean up the chicken shit off the tiles but don’t mop the floor. I realise some people wold be appalled!

I’m from average MC family, DH is “proper posh” though. We are not fazed by bacteria. Close friend is an eminent professor in bacteria, she is also not if the clean hands/house persuasion!

If you’re poor you are likely to be judged on everything you do. If you’re rich you’re not.

From my personal experiences I'd agree!

I'm very working class, come from a family of low skilled workers, none of us are university educated or well off. We're all very houseproud and look after our personal appearances.

I had a friend who I met after leaving school who was upper class and I could not believe her house when I visited. Crap all over the place. There were 3 floors with loads of staircases and there was stuff all over the stairs as well! I always wondered how none of them had an accident tripping over something.

Of course that's just one house though. I don't know any other upper or middle class people as I'm not really in that social circle.

I'm inspired by this thread to go and clean my tip of a house. No... wait... only kidding. It can stay a tip

I think there’s something in the idea of not being able to afford the luxury of looking poor. I have a friend who is tremendously preoccupied with keeping the kids and the house immaculate, because various issues years ago meant there was social services involvement, and one particular Eva Braun (whose son, interestingly, was doing a stretch for armed robbery, so she’d done a bang-up job of parenting, clearly) wrote her up’ for drying pants on the radiator. On the other hand, I knew an Australian woman who used to come into the pub with her six-year-old, stay until closing - by which time she was stocious - and for the intervening three hours let the kid run riot (including riding her bike indoors) and then fall asleep in a sofa. She’d then find a likely bloke to take them home. SS finally got involved, but closed the case pretty quickly. And why? Because her partner was a Lord. And the pub owners didn’t want to upset him, because he dropped thousands in there. It was ever thud, but life is bloody unfair.

Well I'm working class and filthy, but I don't fit many other working class stereotypes either and I don't give a shit what people think.

Class division just isn't what it used to be. People say there isn't any social mobility but there's a hell of a lot more than there was a hundred years ago when middle class people had maids and class did determine your job and income, which it doesn't at all these days.

IMO it’s more of an urban thing and also has it’s roots in the history of housekeeping for the working classes.

The working classes lived in poorer areas generally close to their places of work which were often dirty and polluting works. They also lived together in tightly packed housing where many people burned an awful lot of fuel. And anybody who lived in London pre the 1980s can tell you exactly how dirty that was. The middle and upper classes lived in nicer areas with cleaner air, upwind of the smoke.

Housewives up until the 50s in urban we’re really fighting a daily battle against incredible amounts of dirt and grime which meant they had to clean to obsessive levels which was passed on to their children and grandchildren, who don’t have to deal with that level of dirt, but have still taken the ethic of cleaning hard and often on.

The middle classes with houses in leafy suburbia and the upper classes with country houses just didn’t have to deal with that whether they had servants or not, so it’s not something they culturally do.

It’s less common amongst the rural working classes too.

I know what you mean, definitely. I had a ‘posh’ friend at school (parents were GPs!) and my mum always, always commented on the state of their house.

Of course there will be a wide range of what people consider acceptable across economic/class status. But on the whole I think posh people have less to prove.

And maybe it’s that those who live in country piles and keep horses and dogs etc will have more exposure to animals, rural life and all the germs they can bring, and be more relaxed about them than people who live in high rise flats in cities and whose closest contact with animals is dodging dog turds and avoiding pigeons!

I’d rather let a friendly old Labrador lick my ice cream than an urban fox!

People say there isn't any social mobility but there's a hell of a lot more than there was a hundred years ago when middle class people had maids and class did determine your job and income, which it doesn't at all these days.

It doesn't absolutely determine it, but I think it's going far too far to say that class doesn't determine job and income at all now. It's hard to walk into barristers' chambers - or indeed my own workplace, a humanities department in a Russell group university - and think 'ah yes, these people are all here as the result of a fully egalitarian process'.

wrote her up’ for drying pants on the radiator

I’m very surprised to read this. I work in CP and all that would mean to me is that the heating’s on and laundry is being done. I wonder if there were other issues you weren’t made aware of.

That's a really interesting idea about germs and illness. I guess the working classes would have traditionally (and probably currently) suffered more from not being able to work due to illness, so would take greater steps to make sure they don't get ill?
And those attitudes get passed on from generation so things like home-baked cakes are viewed as a risk and not a treat?

Thinking about it, my Indian grandparents, who had obviously seen extreme poverty and illness, would never ever let us share cups or glasses 'because of germs' where as my posh relaxed side of the family would try each other's food using the same fork, share an ice cream etc
Clearly they weren't as scared of being ill...

Am thinking about DM as she is working class, or was I'm not sure if you can move 🙄. She absolutely took pride in her house being clean. Mainly down to utter fucking boredom. She was at home with two dc in the 60s she was clever, they didn't have loads of money, so she made the best home she could. And I'm sure she went slightly mad.

Standards dipped when she went back to work to normal clean levels.

Yes, I think partly because poorer people have always lived much closer to a line, across which is destitution, not keeping your family together and, historically at least, rampant infectious diseases and death.

Cramped accommodation and close-packed working conditions, in factories, mines etc. contributed to the spread of disease. Good hygeine helped combat this. So there's a practical angle and an associated one of visibility and pride - when being seen to be dirty actually meant people thought they'd catch parasites and infectious diseases from you.

Reading about the 'working poor' in the 1900s, the thing that made the most difference to infant and child mortality was how cramped and airless the housing was. Cramped, damp spaces allowed disease to flourish. Bigger, airier ones didn't.

So, if you lived in a nice big, drafty house, you wouldn't have had to worry so much about cleaning your fingernails or boiling your clothes.

Also ppl in private rented accommodation get fined or amounts taken from their deposit if they even so much as make a mark on the walls.

I grew up with a Mum who'd come from money and a Dad who'd grown up in a tenement in a coal mining town where everyone had almost nothing. My Mum was a bit of a slattern and did the absolute bare minimum around the house, while my Dad was always doing something to perk the place up or keep it lovely.

They're divorced now and my Dad's house in all the years I've been visiting (including when he had major surgery so couldn't cook/clean for himself) is perpetually spotless. My Mum's house is a rambling huge place with cobwebs and dust and clutter and piles of newspapers from 1998. I've always wondered about the differences in their housekeeping and this thread does explain it.

MIL is an odd one because she's very wealthy and outwardly quite prim and proper but her house is an absolute warren of tat and shite and furniture and junk and antiques nobody would ever want to keep. I find it odd to be so particular about how people perceive you but be able to sleep when your house is in such disarray.

Not just more scared of being ill- more likely to be ill. Overcrowding, crap sanitation - it was a constant struggle. A daily depressing grind to maintain even basic hygiene.

And poor people are judged by much harsher standards than rich ones.

It’s like charity shops. If you’ve got enough money not to need them, then they are fun, a hobby, environmentally friendly and it’s great to talk about bargains with your friends. If you haven’t got enough money, it’s a depressing round of trying to find something that will do, because you can’t just say “Oh well. No luck today, I’ll just pop to Zara”

Anecdotally my DM is posher than my DF and is pretty scruffy while he is what I would call fussy. I am somewhere in the middle.

I'm a charity shop volunteer and it happens in our shop in a similar way. People who are comfortably well-off are secure to come into the shop, buy a bargain, wear a coat someone else has worn before.

Less well off people don't come in because they'd rather prove to everyone that tehy can afford to buy new.