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.

I disagree with your premise OP. My family are very MC. My parents very seldom went out or had people over. Their circle of friends was very small and they preferred spending time with one another to socialising. When they did socialise it would be quite a big deal with formal dining, dry sherry before dinner. It was about fulfilling obligations not pleasure. I should also add they were MC but not highly paid, they lived frugally.

OTOH my DHs family are WC and socialised a lot. DFIL visited the local pub very weekday night for his two pints and had a wide circle of friends there. Rarely a day went by when DMIL didn’t pop round to a neighbour for a cuppa and a chat or have people popping over to her. Even shopping or school pick ups would become social in a way my professional, car driving mother would never have experienced or wanted. Weekends would be spent visiting or being visited by family members for more cups of tea and pints at the local. There was no pressure to impress by dishing up 3 course meals and alcohol in the house was reserved to a port or brandy for the ladies at Christmas. They would have felt isolated living as my parents did. They also had a lot more money than my parents because being a builder was much better paid than my fathers academic role.

I think DH and I now qualify as MC by terms of education, occupation and income and we are more like his parents but to me it still seems like a more WC way of living because it’s not what I’m used to.

We tend to “do things” at the weekend, this month we have had
A family get together- free. (Take turns with hosting)
A 21st birthday party - cost €50
An anniversary dinner- cost €100
A catch up with old friends- day out cost probably €60
A spa day- cost €free as I had a voucher

Not all days out/weekends away are extortionate.

February is fairly quiet so far but we may be visiting the uk we just haven’t booked yet...and I have a few lunch dates with friends booked.

I haven’t got a cleaner though...🤣

I know a couple like you describe. They go abroad twice a year - exclusive Ibiza clubs where celebrities go (not my thing but you know, £££££) have 2 BMWs and a motorcycle, new kitchen, bathroom (as well as the 2 holidays) last year. Both dropped out of uni. They're always out at events, parties, nights out, meals out, weddings, dinner parties, theme parks with the kids, kids always in designer clothes etc etc.

He works as a care assistant as is "as and when" and she's in a call centre for a very small unknown business. They describe themselves as MC.

I don't think it is just money actually, I think money is way down on the reasons, (with the exception of Center Parcs trips). It's an education and cultural thing. Some families don't see the value in taking their kids to places they don't immediately find the idea of 'fun'. This isn't an assumption but from a conversation with a relative when I was surprised their children had never been to the forest behind their house. 'You find that kind of thing fun, but we'd rather chill out and watch movies/football at the weekend'.

It also depends on the age or your children. When mine were all under 7, we were up and out everyday at the weekend by 10 at the latest, we’d go to parks, museums, theatre, cinema, anywhere really. Not because I was winning at parenthood but by 10am I’d already been up for 5 hrs, and needed to tire them out before the house was turned to carnage with every you bring out and everyone squabbling.

Now they are teenagers no one even surfaces until mid day. No one really wants to go anywhere (unless for food) so we tend to hang about the house more.

That should read with every toy in the house out

Theatre, museums etc isn’t socialising, it’s just something to do, no different to watching a football game or something.

As for the rest I would imagine some people are just very sociable but others are networking rather than socialising. The majority of our ‘socialising’ is either stuff we can’t get out of like weddings etc. or it’s done for the purpose of networking. When the people you’d ordinarily socialise with have money and business contacts you there’s an added incentive.

Raised WC, now MC.

It’s definitely more money.

I don't think it is a class thing? I think some people are just more into doing things all the time and others prefer to stay home!

I don't like to describe myself at being part of a class - but I suppose technically you'd say I was middle class - we don't have a lot of spare cash at the moment as we are saving like mad to get our house deposit together - i'm literally trying to make 160£ last me another 3 weeks til payday!!

But DH & I are always out at various things - you don't have to have loadsa money - we do nights at friends houses, cheap cinema nights on a Tuesday for £4, find free local events at the weekends, get out to the beach in the summer, hikes all year round, camping as much weekends as possible!

we prioritise travel, music festivals, gigs etc rather than wasting money on clothes & nights out in the pub

Never just sit in the house though - there is always something going on - I feel like i'm wasting my life if I'm at home watching tv every evening & weekend - i love being out and about!

I also clean for mostly MC families and they always seem to have so much going on. They have massive calendars in their house, so you can't avoid 'seeing' what they are up to.
It is all to do with money. At weekends I have to catch up with my own housework and the shopping.
During the week it's cleaning houses and ferrying around the kids.
DH thinks I'm lazy because after cooking for the family I want to sit on the sofa.
Don't have the money to go out for a meal.
I'd love to just book somewhere on a whim. I have ridiculous fantasies of going to the airport and flying off for the weekend to somewhere warm .

Money is a significant factor but it’s not the whole story.

A lot of it is down to your upbringing and what you value: ie nice home vs experiences.

I think personality types are a big factor too. I get bored really easily and hate my mind being idle. So while the odd duvet weekend is a beautiful thing, I would go round the bend if all my weekends consisted of tv and shopping.

My ex hated doing anything at weekends and would deliberately cry off any attempt to plan anything in order to watch loads of tv. It made me want to stick pins in my eyes.

By contrast my current bf (who is from a very wc background and was very hard up as a child) is open to doing stuff to get new experiences and try things: that’s one of the reasons we work so much better.

"It’s the need and want to “see and be seen” as middle class/wealthy , therefore doing lots of middle class things."
There's an element of truth to this. I bring my toddler to a class at 9am in Saturdays and some parents there go to many more classes afterwards and do like to loudly proclaim about how busy they are.
I'm not English and find the obsession with social class pretty amusing. Some weekends we do lots of things, meet friends and sometimes we just vegetate at home. We're laid back types. Each to their own :)

Money mainly. If you have money you have a car for one thing, and you can get to places. When dc were younger I used to take them out to the countryside on the bus, or get a train to to the seaside sometimes, with a pack up, often huddled somewhere in the rain haha. Generally though I was too broke to do anything much, and even the cheap days out would end up costing more than I could really afford.
If you have money and a car and a cleaner etc you can have a proper day out somewhere lovely, buy lunch out if it rains. You have a bigger nicer house and a big table for dinner parties etc.
Also maybe growing up with certain experiences. I used to scratch my head reading MN thinking what is a NT property?? WTF is Geocaching?? (I know now!) Those kind of things were not part of my experience growing up, although living near amazing countryside we did go walking and camping.
We try and do more stuff now but don't get much time as a family because of working patterns, however one thing my dc are great about is being happy with kicking a ball about outside, or a walk by the canal, or going into town for a mooch.They spent hardly any time in paid for activities and know how to have fun on the cheap.

In my experience it is largely because MC are less sexist than WC.

With all my WC friends and relatives, there is a greater emphasis on family being the main social hub. For women. Weekends are at home and sister down the road would visit or go to parents for Sunday lunch. Women don’t work as much.

WC men playing football with their kids, out with mates down the pub.

Going to a gallery or day out in the country would be belittled and laughed at and seen as a bit pretentious and unnecessary.

Money x

Couldn’t go to the cinema for anywhere near £4 where I live. Cinema is one thing I’ve been priced out of.

I think it’s way less to do with money.

We were really poor. Poorer than most of the WC people in our area. But MC and were marched off on long walks at the weekend, and loads of dinner parties and visits to friends of my parents. Didn’t have a car for ages, but we still had to go out a lot.

It’s just different priorities in life.

Oh and for those sneering about how it's such a British thing to notice social class-my family is not British and my DP is not British. Other countries ABSOLUTELY have social divides and social classes! Purlease!

Social capital is also about being aware of what's going on and feeling welcome to do it - so I go to lots of free events because i search them out and feel confident walking into a new space.

One pressure i feel now is to buy coffee, cake or lunch when out - i can afford to do so much because it's free, i can't afford to eat out too. This will be easy to negotiate in summer, bit harder in bad weather or if visiting euth friends. I will just have to get confident about it and stick to my guns.

I think there is also something about having kids later so you have quite a developed individual life that you want to continue with your child. So you're old enough to like walking and galleries, whereas i used to like dancing, gigs, pubs.

Plus affording a cleaner!

I don't agree that working class people in general belittle interest in art or culture. That has never been my experience. My cousin (lots of kids, council house, fairly poor) managed to take her children on holiday for the first time to Greece and she was raving to me about the ancient places they visited. She enjoys history and many other people in my family enjoy art and music, and nature. I do know some people that think the only things worth doing are shopping and watching sports but definitely not every working class person is like that at all.

Dh and I both grew up in middle class families, it was very much dance and music lessons, visiting national trust places, museums, galleries and generally getting out in nature. There was also a lot of socialising with my parents friends for dinner.

When the children were younger they had the same experiences but now they've grown and were in our 50's we just can't be bothered with it all anymore. We both work full time, have a cleaner but we don't have a packed weekend of socialising, we're just too tired and lazy to be gallivanting about. We love to just hang around the house slobbed out on the sofa and enjoy the downtime before it all starts again on Monday morning.

I don't think it's just money. It's cultural and goes back hundreds of years. It's about being part of a social scene.

@Blakes77 this is what is ridiculous about the WC versus MC descriptors and this is what makes me sneer about them. Of course WC people enjoy culture too.

Snowfalling not sure this is sexism per se but there does seem to be more of a wc expectation that your family underpins your social life and you don’t really need much more. Great if you like your family, not so much if you don’t.

MC people tend to be more likely to choose their friends more based on interests/demographics.

It is mainly about money, plus time consumed to make that money. DH very occasionally does some consulting work in addition to his PAYE job and when he does it’s 1k a day. I paid my last cleaner £14ph which in the area up North I live in is a decent rate but the time consumed to earn that 1k is loads.