Why do middle class people have busier social lives?

[swimmingpoolshower]

Feel I may get flamed here but...
I'm WC, maybe a bit MC cos I went to uni. I am also a part time cleaner for MC families and have lots of MC friends. Why do MC people always have so much going on?

Is it money to be able to do things?
Boredom of doing the same things?
Letting off steam from stressful jobs?

No judgement at all but every weekend is house warming, birthday meals, theatre, trips to museums, and that's when you're not 'away for the weekend.' Centre parcs, Rome, Cotswolds, Air BnB in the city. It's January, everywhere is going to be cold.

I think I'm a bit jealous tbh.

Money, which buys time and opportunity.

I would say it's probably more money. My kids are little and we have quiet weekends and visits to beaches and woodlands. I'm happy with that (although a few weekends away here and there would be lovely)

I have not read all the posts so apologies if this has already been said. For me I feel a lot of it is personality type. I am an introvert and love spending time at home, that's how I relax. Others get their energy from going out, socialising etc Each to their own, focus on what makes you happy.

A good friend of mine is typically middle class and now lives in London earning very good money as a lawyer. He’s out at least 4/7 nights a week socialising or networking, on the other 3/7, he’s at the gym or away somewhere!

I think money does play a huge factor into it as they have the finances there to just do as they like, alongside careers where they have to generally network or its to just blow off steam from shite days at work!

I’ve always been WC but I was earning quite a good wage a couple of years ago and seemingly was out all of the time either with or without my daughter; had my second last year and money is tight and I rarely go out these days. Due a career change in the near future so money will be tight but certainly better than it is now, but I’ll be sacrificing the last of my free time!

Money. If I had more money I would not be at home.

The money to do things that others don’t. Acting classses, pottery classes, too end escape rooms, fine dining that takes hours at 750 per head without the wine

I'm well-off middle class and I rarely socialise at the weekends at all, we could afford to, but choose not to. I have a busy job and I go out once or twice in the week with friends but Friday eve to Sunday morning I just like to be with my husband. We go for walks, for a drive on a Sunday, then watch the BBC4 Scandi noir in front of a log fire. Bliss, in my view. I just want to spend time with him and not be bothered with hordes of people. Also he had cancer and can't eat properly now so lots of socialising is a bit fraught for him these days. I used to have dinner parties etc but even before he was ill it was very tiring and a bit socially competitive. But if I worked in a less people-y job or didn't work I might feel different. Also, we are middle aged - when I was younger I was much more into social activities with friends. Don't compare yourself with others, each to their own.

The theory goes that organised leisure was invented by the emerging Victorian middle classes as displacement activity to fill the hours of the day when they weren’t being doctors or teachers or working in offices in a way that was “moral”. In other words keeping busy going to museums and

the seaside so you don’t end up drunk, betting on dog fights or visiting bawdy houses.

People who have to work 6-7 days a week, multiple jobs and or split shifts to make ends meet have no time for leisure and even when they do, are too knackered to do much with it.

A lot of the middle class people I know are so desperate to show everyone how much money they have that they spend all their money on trinkets to show off to people... thus leaving them with no money.
There is an irony in there

I know it’s already been said, but I do think personality is a huge factor here. I’m an introvert; I’m exhausted just thinking what some people on here do on a weekend! I look forward to Friday night, a G&T, and curling up in bed with a good book. Long lie in on a Saturday. Time with a craft project in front of the TV. Church on a Sunday morning. These are the things that bring joy to my weekends. I don’t think that would change if I suddenly had more (or less) disposable income.

Definitely a combo of money, stressful jobs and keeping with the Jones's.

I'm WC on a MC income and since the majority of kids moved out and bills are less I'm definitely enjoying a busy social life and I bloody love it but it took 22 years to get to this stage.

Small comfort but your time will come.

It's cause they have more money.

me too, me too, me too!
I found the same when I had money I spent it on the most nonsense ideas and wasted a lot. Now I have less money but understand the value of what I have and need so much more - style is everything and even those without a bean can do it. My lovely sister is one of those people with virtually no money is able to paint everything she has been given cream and tie the old jar with a ribbon and make everything thing look amazing in her home - some people just has the knack.

this sounds perfectly lovely to me.

Middle Classes tend to value education. Museums, galleries, theatre etc are considered educational. Driving around France camping with your kids is a middle class thing to do. It's far cheaper than two weeks in Benidorm. Museums and galleries tend to be free in the UK. Pack a picnic and go to a park, play rounders, camp at the beach etc would be considered a middle class thing to do.

Batch cooking from scratch is middle class. Spending a fortune on KFC isn't. It's not really about money, it's about values. Most middle class people I know now and when I was growing up, didn't have particularly 'fancy' homes.

What they had were music lessons, weekends hiking, a nice but sensible run around, good quality clothes. Nothing flash, pricey or designer. They might all take off travelling around Morocco or Spain on holiday visiting historical places of interest. It was assumed their children would go to university.

Does going to Uni make somebody middle class?

‘Valuing education’ is not a tendency of the middle classes only.
For a lot of wc people education is everything - either intrinsically, for itself, or because it is a pathway to a better job/life.
The mcs often ‘value it’ because they can afford to in a particular way (private education/degrees for the sake of it/ pure interest/subjects without obvious vocational utility etc).

It's a mixture of money and attitude.

Some of our students are very middle class and they seem to always be ferried back and forward to various clubs, relatives etc and they don't really get space to breathe. It sounds quite overwhelming. Nobody would doubt the parents have good intentions and want to give loads of experiences, but part of me questions why those experiences have to be lots of clubs and activities. Then again, does that go hand in hand with the adults who pride themselves on being up early, out to the gym before work, long days at work, pick kids up, ferry then to activities, eat on the go, get in late, start again. If there's someone doing the laundry and a cleaner coming in and a dog walker coming in then there's time to fill.

I do wonder if there is a cult of being busy. Some people think being busy is a badge of honour, though i wouldn't know it that's a class thing.

My dad (wc,) read more than anyone I have ever known and was interested in art and languages and history. Camping in france might be more MC (not sure it's really cheaper..) but learning does not belong to the MC. I'm sorry but I have known a lot of MC people who were supposedly educated and thick as a brick.
As for things being free, the special exhibitions that you really want to see are always pricey. My friend took me to an exhibition of very famous painter and it was about £30 ! I can't justify that kind of money on a regular basis and neither can most people.

Most middle class people I know now and when I was growing up, didn't have particularly 'fancy' homes

This is right and wrong. Yes MC homes tend to be more unkept but a scuffy 800k victorian terrace full of John Lewis items on a nice street in the right part of London, still trumps an immaculate (decked out in Dunelm) 300k semi on the other side of London.
There was an epic thread a few months ago about how MC children look more scruffy- and it's true.

My brother is in his last year at Uni and my parents aren’t MC, my daughter has just applied for Uni on Monday and she isn’t MC either...Uni is becoming far more popular now that it was when I was 17-20 at the end of the 90s.

As for things being free, the special exhibitions that you really want to see are always pricey.

Surely that depends on what you 'really want to see', though? I don't tend to go to those big blockbuster exhibitions a great deal unless I happen to have a membership, as they can be so overcrowded as well as overpriced. If you go more often, it can work out far cheaper to become a member of the gallery/museum -- I think I paid £70 for Tate membership and that was free to all exhibitions at all four Tates, and up to six under-16s accompanying (something like that). It definitely made financial sense given how often I would go.

I took my DC to the science museum. We live in suburban London...train fares came to nearly £20. The kids interactive part of the museum cost us £6 each to enter so that was £18. We had lunch...£25. I let them each spend £5 at the gift shop so another £10. The whole day cost about £70. I'm aware a lot of the things we did were optional...but the £20 train fare wasn't and I really wanted my DC to have a good day out.

Thingaling definitely some truth in this.

A lot of the MC attitude to "leisure" goes hand in hand with a puritanical attitude that rebels against leisure for its own sake: its seen as hedonism if it isn't self-improving in some way.

I really struggle with this - hangover from a pushy and upwardly mobile mum -- I feel horribly guilty all the time when watching TV as if there was always something more productive I could be doing. I work really hard so its not like I'm sitting around in my pants most of the time and I know its irrational but old habits die really hard. My ex, who was from a wc background, had no compunction whatsoever about sitting around in his pants. He did hard manual work six days a week and was perfectly content to spent his free time in front of the TV.

Its quite hard to unpick how much is snobbery/puritanism from how much is genuinely about self-improvement. And there's definitely something in the "cult of busyness".

But a lot of this is actually a mixture of guilt and Victorian work ethic. Those MC people rushing around ferrying their kids from one club to the next may be sharp-elbowed but they might also just be terrified their kids are going to go to hell or end up on skid row if they don't do every club going.

Guilty as charged.

I really struggle with this - hangover from a pushy and upwardly mobile mum -- I feel horribly guilty all the time when watching TV as if there was always something more productive I could be doing. I work really hard so its not like I'm sitting around in my pants most of the time and I know its irrational but old habits die really hard. My ex, who was from a wc background, had no compunction whatsoever about sitting around in his pants. He did hard manual work six days a week and was perfectly content to spent his free time in front of the TV.

I think it can work the other way round, too. I'm from a very WC family, where both my parents had tough manual jobs hospital cleaner and bin man and both parents thought that a child 'sitting around reading' was 'lazy'. I'm not sure either of them has ever entirely come to terms with the fact that I went to university and ended up reading and writing for a living.