To wonder if middle class children appear more ‘scruffy’

[Workingclass]

Went to a Childs party today for an old school friends DD (they are incredibly middle class) and her group of mum friends (who are equally as middle class)

I admit I don’t usually socialise in many middle class circles but I couldn’t help but notice that all of the children looked... scruffy, for want of a better word.

None of them had brushed their hair, they were all in mismatched clothes with muck on their faces. Didn’t look bathed..

I feel awful saying it, but I notice this also with the MC children at the DC school, has anyone else noticed it? I’m just curious as to why this seems to be a thing? Does my dds plaits and dresses ‘out’ her as having a working class family?

Is it more of a privilege thing? We don’t have much money so am weary of being judged as lazy by not doing her hair, I also make an effort to dress her nicely so she doesn’t look like ‘the poor kid’ is it that if your middle class you don’t have that fear?

Absolutely happy to be told IABU and judgemental but I am genuinely curious on the subject.

Genuine question to the why-are-your-kids-so-scruffy brigade ... Why do you care what my kids look like? Why does this matter to you?

... And it's nothing to do with what the people around me are doing.

AlaskanOilBaron

But according to Mumsnet/British people Michelle would be working class. She is American therefore has an accent which is not posh/British accent. I recall one particular interview with Oprah she mentioned the financial struggles and racial severe problems her parents encountered. I am not British - I have an accent, my parents are both doctors (and so we're my grandparents) but somehow I fall into some sort of inferior class where all immigrants belong. No offense but that's the reality. I even stopped going to a baby group when I was on maternity leave. I find this class thing a Jurassic way of thinking to say the least.

Flossie you don't really just wake up and 'decide' which class you will be categorised as, nor do likes and dislikes define it. Yes, in theory you can 'fall' down the social strata if your circumstances drastically change and you find yourself cut off from family ect. Social mobility functions both ways.
I'm a tough one to place as I'm part foreign/foreign educated/prestigious university/professional job/middle class cultural reference points/come from privileged background/live in a predominantly working class area/identity strongly with working classes/have been on benefits/have multiple children by different fathers/fit certain stereotypes on paper.

So a working class child who grows up to become a doctor is still working class?

Yes. But their children won’t be.

I do not understand this at all. To you, class is not to do with profession/job, hobbies, lifestyle, fashion or wealth. What is it to do with then? Why would the children be of a different class?

I don't think foreign accent = not middle class at all.

longestlurkerever

What do you mean?

I cannot understand how people are still categorised according a particular "class" anyway.

Basically there are people with lots of money and people with very very little money and most of us fall somewhere in between that.

I find the notion of class categorisation weirdly anachronistic.

A couple of people upthread said they couldn't be middle class because they had a foreign accent. The British do sometimes struggle to pigeonhole those who grew up overseas but I think this generally works in favour of being classed as middle class.

This has been a very interesting read and it’s nice to see so many people engaging honestly and not arguing!

I come from a working class family. My parents didn’t have money to dress us in nice clothes though. Perhaps that’s the difference between working class and deprived. My mum DID however make sure we were clean and tidy, she felt judged a lot of the time by my friend’s parents. Funnily enough, they all earnt less than my mum but had nicer things (credit cards I suppose). Lots of cream sofas and cream carpets and fake nails.

I think when we did that BBC class quiz we were now “Affluent working class” which I guess is lower middle class. I am still paranoid what people think of us though and so make an effort with my daughter’s clothes. I struggle to shrug off the feeling of being judged from my childhood.

I have one very middle class friend who is just classic. Her daughter is dressed in boy’s hand me downs, all faded etc. She is a hippy kind of mother and dresses in charity shop gear but is also a tiger mother when it comes to education.

All very interesting and I think there is something in it for so many posters to have had similar experiences.

Thank you longestlurkerever

It would be really odd to have someone well educated and wealthy from overseas being categorised into "insert inferior category here" class. Although I still believe racism and xenophobia plays a role in everyday life but that's a different matter.

@RiddleyW you've miss-read the comments - posters were saying that MC families felt confident in letting their children dress scruffily because they felt secure in themselves- not that they are insecure- the opposite

@SpongeBobJudgeyPants I'm not sure that the OP is trying to be goady. I think this is definitely a thing and most others are agreeing too.

SoundsExciting I think that Mrs. Obama would tick many middle-class boxes, even by British standards, as I understand it she came from a very solid family that prized reading, education, cultural pursuits, etc.

Even the most orthodox class delineations could accommodate a foreign accent as middle-class (I am a foreign middle-class British person, I suspect).

Re: race - in my experience, the gulf between the classes far exceeds the gulf between the races. My own children are sort of headed for the upper-middle classes by dint of their education (although that's a modern interpretation) - they have very little experience of class diversity, but have as many (more?) Chinese/Nigerian/Russian friends as white.

Well we humans socialise and if 1 day I walked into a room and everyone was in hippy gear or all had unkempt hair I would probably not mAke a great attempt to mix, more likely clear off in my staid but clean clothes. It's not that I give s monkeys about these people but would assume not to have much in common with them and go on my way.
If my small DS brought home a friend with tousled unkempt hair I would assume the friend had ishoos over hair brushing/ washing and/ or the DM had aspirations of upper middle class unkemptedness. But I wouldn't care what the boy had to put up with (assuming he seemed well fed etc).

Festive- because the child of the doctor would grow up with a middle class childhood and get their social cues from this. The doctor grew up in a working class household so therefore is working class. It is traditionally based on the parents education and vocation.

flossietoot you have obviously been very successful at blending into the working class. I would say I am middle class whereas somebody non middle class would be likely to say "I myself am .....".

So you never look beyond appearance?

You can’t change social class but you can change it for the next generation. Kate Middleton is an example. Mother working class, she is middle and her children are now obviously upper.

Sorry, that was to Silkie

Oh the roses- snobbery is nothing to be proud of.

Reductive preconceptions seem to be everywhere on this thread though - it's really depressing!

Scruffy and grubby. Supposedly because the parents ‘dont care’ what others think and place little importance on appearance.

That is until one of those children grows up and decides they want a tattoo. The parents care greatly what others think then

My kids are never anything but scruffy no matter how hard I try. I'm probably middle-middle class

Depends what it says! 😁