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.

PGtips I think I want to move to your friends house. How much fun would it be to leap off the sofa, zip up the climbing frame, vault over the horse and then return to the sofa

It's having a disposable income, but also upbringing for sure. I think we have less disposable income than my parents did while I was growing up, but I had a really happy childhood and want the same for my DC so am following the 'model' my parents set. But a lot of things we do are free (for instance museums), or cost little (to us) like the £9 a month we spend on NT membership. Also having friends over or going to stay with people is the norm in our circles - often cheaper than going out as a group to a restaurant. We don't spend a lot of money on 'flashy items' and prefer to spend our spare case on travel. But we don't employ a cleaner or outsource any other household tasks so I would disagree with the pp who said people can do such things as they employ people like the OP as cleaners!

Money of course makes the difference but I could fill my weekends full of activities and events (and even arrange the odd weekend away - on the cheap though!) but I can't be arsed.

My kids are young and come Friday they are tired, they need to rest and have a bit of down time.

We do a lot more in the summer and we are lucky as we have so much on our doorstep so doing something seemingly MC [museums, galleries, theatre] is pretty easy for us... if that is what we want to do!

So for me it's not so much class and money but energy levels and what we can be arsed to do on any given weekend!

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

Most of the MC people I know have both - they live on the most desirable road in our small town, have two children at private school (family A) or have retired early to travel (family B), have two cars, go away for weekends or on many short holidays. They both have large houses, detached houses which cost around 700k when they rarely come on to the market. I don't understand how they can afford it, two of them work for local government and the other two are retired teachers.

Villanomme one of the most disorganised but welcoming home ever

Middle class introvert here. My teens have much busier social lives than me, I'm mostly happy to chill with family at weekends, and maybe go for a walk/ run/ bike ride, read a book, catch up with the housework, do some baking. We both work full time so need time to chill, I couldn't cope with being away every weekend.

Those who think it's purely about money are missing the point. It's also about cultural capital. I grew up WC and impoverished. Yet we were living in a historically-rich city about ten minutes' walk from a whole load of free concerts, classes, exhibitions etc taking place via the library, university, museum, art gallery.

My parents had no idea this stuff was going on, or, if they did, they thought it 'wasn't for the likes of us.' They both had impoverished upbringings and it simply wasn't on their radar. When I asked whether I could go to university when I was about ten, my mother said 'Oh, no, that's only for rich people' -- yet this was at a time of full grants. Their lives were far smaller than they needed to be because nothing in their upbringings/adult mindset had allowed them to see what was in front of them.

DS, on the other hand, has grown up going to exhibitions and libraries and museums and matches and the theatre, and meeting lots of different kinds of people and travelling that's his 'normal'. Some of that is money, definitely we have room in the house to accommodate people, for instance, and a theatre ticket isn't going to involve budget rejigging for the month but some of it is just a recognition that these are things which are there and enjoyable. We've just moved to a new city, and are enjoying figuring out what's on. This weekend, DH is away with work and DS and I are going to check out free children's art classes at a local gallery, a farmer's market, and a lion/dragon dance for Chinese New Year, and if the weather is reasonable, take the bus to the nearest beach. The total cost of that minus any food we buy at the market -- will be the cost of my bus fare.

Bring middle class isn’t anything to do with visiting cultural places! Lots of working class people do too!

A lot of the wealthier parents from my DC's junior school always seemed to have something going on socially at the weekends - parties, weekends away visiting friends or even abroad.

But they all seemed to be very extrovert, competitive, high-energy people (hence their success IMO). I think people like that just NEED to be doing stuff with other people at all times, whereas slightly lower income people tend to be a bit more laid back and actually more easily satisfied so I wouldn't feel envy.

I love doing exciting new things but as I'm getting older I'm getting lazier, so the things we do do now are more exciting and more expensive. I wouldn't take a packed lunch now for example, but would have done without a second thought when the kids were younger. The accommodation was cheaper and cheerful. Now I want a nicer standard. Fortunately our income has increased to facilitate this but we could do even more if we did what we used to.

I guess what I'm saying is that there is a comfort zone of how much socialising/exploring you want to do and this doesn't change that much despite your income. If you are the type for seeking adventure then you'll do it anyway, just in a cheaper format.

It also depends on if you have an organiser in your friendship group. Ours emigrated in one of my groups and whilst we still do go out, it's not as frequent. We all bemoan that we want to do more but we don't get round to organising so much stuff. I miss that friend 😢

Having friends costs money. I feel like we are constantly making excuses not to join in with friends on things. We can't keep up with it all.

For us it's money to do things. A lot of our weekend is taken up by eating out, parties, panto etc. I'v actually never been to centre parcs, always seemed expensive to sit in a cabin in the UK. Much prefer renting a house out.

So for me it's not so much class and money but energy levels and what we can be arsed to do on any given weekend!

That's also true. I have a (MC) friend who is exactly my age, and exactly the same job, both of us in good health, both married with young children, and until recently living in much the same area.

Yet he and his family ever appear to leave the house unless they have to for work/school, and if you ask him what they got up to at the weekend, he says 'Oh, you know, recovering from the week', which apparently means lying in a slanket on the sofa watching TV while the children are on screens.

I conclude that he and his wife simply have very low energy levels. Which is their own affair, obviously, but it seems like not a great thing to me that a ten and eight year old are growing up thinking that leaving the house at weekends is a huge and unnatural imposition.

Katewhinesalot I'm so glad I'm not the only one getting lazier with age

I think that's normal, @Villanomme. I want to take DS interrailing, but I could no more do it the way we did it in our late teens now than I could fly. We had virtually no money after buying the ticket, and we busked, but were so crap we were practically starving half the time I think I was a stone lighter when we came home and relying on Hare Krishnas and people for food handouts, and sleeping in parks if we weren't on an overnight train, black with dirt. It was utterly brilliant, but God, the discomfort.

@PGtipsplease surely your friend is upper class or upper middle (culturally upper but without blue blood). Upper middle class people are quite different to lower and middle middle (who are the ones obsessed with menus and neatness etc). The upper classes do what they want.

I’m middle class, two kids, single parent (no contact with their father), I work full time in a decent job. I don’t have a huge amount of spare cash, so have to plan days out carefully most of the time. I can afford to do the occasional spontaneous thing with dc though. I’d love to do weekends away and so on but I haven’t always got the cash, and -a big thing- sometimes I can’t be arsed!! The dc have regular things on a Saturday morning, but most of my spare time is routine stuff as it has to be done and there’s no one else to do it.

Every three years or so I might wind myself up to the task of taking the dc abroad (I mean come to terms with paying for a holiday!), but other than that we do things like three-day road trips around different parts of the UK, that sort of thing (in the hols).

They’ve been to more places than I went to as a child, had more diverse experiences. But that’s because my dad bought a holiday home in Cornwall when we were kids so I had that massive privilege.

@Sleeveen

Whilst we don't spend the whole weekend in front of the TV under a blanket, we often don't make plans. If we want to do something, it is all on our doorstep. If we want to stay more low key then we do but mine are still too little to appreciate the beauty of a weekend under a Slanket

Often we do end up doing things (last weekend we went the local adventure playground, weekend before was trampolining, weekend before was 3 parties over one weekend!) but I don't make rigid plans and I don't make promises to the kids.

I just appreciate that kids benefit from down time. They need a break too.

They go to school, they do a few after school clubs, they go to grandparents at least one afternoon / evening per week, they have swimming lessons every Sunday. They need time to be lazy as well.

Oh, and I’ve just remembered, my WC friends up in Yorkshire where I used to live are manic go-outers and holiday-makers. They are the most socially lively and friendly people I’ve ever known. They are never in and often go away with groups of pals here and there. They are pretty comfortably off now, after a thin start 30 years ago. They were exactly the same then though, in their attitude, they just wouldn’t go away so much or spend so much money, but they have always been the life and soul.

Not sure what to conclude from that !!

Reginabambina maybe. You could have a point especially regarding my friend.

Plenty of Mrs Buckets on here today though

Butlins anyone ?

@crunchymum it sounds like you have a similar parenting style for activities to me. I live the freedom to be flexible or lazy :)

Money. I was WC ( still am really) and my parents only went to family stuff or to neighbours hses for parties. No hols, no theatre, no cinema etc. cos we had no money. Happy childhood though! They were there a lot for us...
I now have a MC lifestyle and we go out to dinner, activities, takes the kids out a lot, go on hols.My kids do stuff I never got to do but we do try to not buy them 'stuff' and spend time with them instead...

I think money and keeping up with each other. My MC friends all have loads of other MC friends which whom the socialise...

I find it sounds exhausting. I quite like my quieter life. Weekend is doing some cleaning, swimming with the kids, netflixing.

Sounds tiring being MC whenever I speak to my friends. No envy here.

maddiemookins16mum oh please find me someone with those name for their kids!you made me laugh today,thankyou.

but yes its choice.when i here people say money isnt everything.no its isnt but in today world it is bloody something.whether you are at your top or your very lowest their is still choices and directions that money brings.