To think its not undesirable to be working class?

[HotSince82]

And that actually you can live a perfectly nice life and be quite content, with no aspirations towards upwards social mobility?

I have been noticing in the news at present that WC children are being termed 'disadvantaged' with regards to homeschooling.
Presumably this is in relation to a supposed lack of laptops/ipads etc to aid online learning and/or lack of parental engagement/education level.
From personal experience I don't believe this to be the case. My children and their peers almost without exception have access to these things and parents are motivated and educated sufficiently to support their children's learning.
I am however in no way denying the very real experiences of the children who are living in economically and socially disadvantaged circumstances. I fundamentally believe that every possible scrap of governmental/educational support and assistance available should be provided to them throughout the covid crisis and beyond. I simply don't believe that such disadvantage is a reality within the very vast majority of WC households.

Surely WC isn't synonymous with disadvantage? I feel as though my family has a perfectly nice lifestyle as do those of my acquaintances who are all, broadly speaking very much WC.

I would go so far as to say that I would be content if any of my children replicated a standard of living which is similar to how they have been brought up. Yes, if they become extremely high earners that would I'm certain be rather lovely, but it is in no way a prerequisite to an enjoyable, contented life.

I'm pretty sure that I am correct in this assumption but if I'm missing anything I know that you will all point me in the right direction.

Because people who discuss class from a cultural aspect are not collating data that could be used to inform government policy. They’re discussing the old English class tradition, if you will (we are a funny bunch smile) that is ingrained in to our culture.

The cultural tradition also comes out of the economic realities of the period, though. It's just that class mobility used to be a lot more difficult.

It's not that unusual, and hasn't been for some time, for people to move class designation. Even in that old tradition when people did make a leap they were considered to have moved class. I have a branch of my family that moved from being butchers, to wealthy butchers and moneylenders, to bankers and MPs in three succeeding generations. No one would have considered the latter group to be working class though they might have whispered a bit about their grandfather.

I get told a lot that I’m not working class.

Because I went to Oxbridge, I got a profession. And we’re now very wealthy.

But my dad was a miner and I grew up on a council estate on Moss Side. So not convinced I can ever be MC. Nor would I want to be TBH.

I wonder if some of us who grew up in one class and became another can feel like we don’t necessarily ‘fit in’ as well.
I grew up in a WC house. My mom didn’t work, dad was a firefighter. It was never an option for me to go to Uni because it wasn’t for people like me. Culturally, we were definitely WC.

Now, I work in a hi where pretty much everyone is MC and I feel out of my depth all the time. Constant imposter syndrome and I feel like I don’t belong. It’s funny!

There is nothing wrong with being working class. Me and dp are working class together we earn about £24k a year combined. We cant afford holidays or our own home but we can live comfortably and i am trying to look into seld employment although i have no idea what i want to do! Im also looking into new jobs but i count myself lucky compared to richer people with massive debts. I however hate the whole martyrdom from some people with working class. The thing about class is you can change social class with work and earnings and who you know but there seems to be a trend of people who were once working class who become rich who try and cling onto the working class title. Footballers are notorious for this. Earning millions and talking about being working class. Dp has this hang up as well he sees it as a badge of honour whereas i aspire to just get out of life what i want and not dwelling on what class i am.

I think the class thing sticks in my craw because ive never thought of myself as working class but now as an adult struggling with money and i see people who have high paying jobs jetting off on holidays then returning to their big mortgage houses to polish their degrees then turning to me and saying hey im working class too. No your fucking not. Just because you were raised working class does not mean you stay wc for life.

MC/WC are differences in culture, not income (per se).

But the culture is part of the income. When you change income you have access to things you couldnt afford or experience when wc so your culture also changes. It seems quite rare to go through life trying to remain exactly the same just so you can claim to be wc forever. Its not a badge of honour.

Yeah, sorry OP if you went to uni you're not working class. You might come from a working class background, but you've made the jump up.

I have a degree. From the days of the full grant. I earn less than the national average. I haven't "jumped up" anywhere. I consider myself working class.

Middle class is a subset of working class. If you need to work to earn money you're working class.

I am not sure how the class system works anymore, I thought it was broadly: working class: most people. Non working class: people using welfare system. I am not there is a whole class of people that are so fabulously wealthy they no longer work at all, there may be a few thousand but not many, and certainly not enough to consider them a whole class (and they seem to come from a vast array of backgrounds) Those that still go by the UC, MC and WC structures are living in yesterdays world. Most of what is left of the aristocracy are virtually bankrupt in this country largely due to the death duties.

Anyway, I grew up in a WC home and am now in a very comfortable place financially and the word disadvantaged really grates. I did not feel disadvantaged at all!! The true benefits in my experience of growing up in a WC home were:

Real community spirit
Everyones knows everyone else
People are less competitive and nicer because of it
I have noticed people with less money share more, not less
There is more honesty and frankness
There are greater bonds between friends highlighted maybe by more adversity
There is a sense of being in it together you will not find in MC homes
You can be yourself, and you will be accepted anyway
More tolerance
Domestic violence is far harder to hide, everyone can hear and see everything
Comforting to have people around you ( I now live in splendid isolation and it is not so splendid)
More sociable

I know some of this will come across as rose tinted, many I am sure will be quick to point out I am wrong etc, but that was my experience and I miss my wc life very much, more than I ever thought I would.

**Sure

But I've never seen or heard the term working class used in mainstream media in recent years. The BBC reporter doesn't say 'in this working class area, 70% of kids are struggling or on FSM' . They say' an area of high unemployment' or 'largely disadvantaged area'.

@MLMsuperfan

MC/WC are differences in culture, not income (per se).

This I think is true, it’s really hard to fake MC is you’re WC with money.

I understand what WC culture is as I grew up in it and it strongly reflects pigeon999s post with some Royle Family thrown in!

But I’m not sure what MC culture is, other than what I see on TV? Maybe some thing like the Brockmans on Outnumbered? Could someone do a MC list?!

@Fairyliz that was a rather rude thing to say. Incorrect too incidentally.

She wasn’t agreeing with it. That’s why she said it was a misnomer.

Are you Jarvis Cocker, OP?

@SomeoneElseEntirelyNow its accepted that a regional accent will mark you out as WC.

If a WC person met me down the pub they would accept me as of the same social class as them, broadly speaking. A MC persin simply would not.

This is the thread that keeps on giving. And I’m only on page 3.

In my experience MC life is:

Ponies for the kids
Piano lessons and other musical interests encouraged
Fine arts and museum visits
Ballet and opera
Travelling extensively
Competitive parenting is very common
Private schooling
Opaque friendship codes
Dinner parties
Skiing
Second homes in the summer
Little or no sharing of information to do with schools, tutoring etc
Meaningful friendships are thin on the ground, many are based on being part of certain networks and access
Bigger houses and more land tends to separate rather than integrate you with others surrounding your property
An expectation you will be attending Badminton, the races etc

There are advantages and disadvantages to both, it may all sound very nice but really what can be missing is warmth, kinship.

@pigeon999 a lot of those things I would put with UC, I’m very class confused

@SomeoneElseEntirelyNowits accepted that a regional accent will mark you out as WC.

I don't have a regional accent. But I am still working class.

@pigeon999

That’s really not middle class ...Upper upper middle I’d say.

My children are in a private school and yes there’s a general leaning towards those features... and I’d agree that warmth can be missing. Everything is about resilient and bootstraps and getting on with it which gets tiring.

We are middle class as they come, probably upper MC and nowhere near going to badminton or owning ponies

Also totally agree with you on the bigger house separating you. There is a lack of community from that alone I think. Everything hidden behind huge hedges (not for us I add!)

MC doesn't always mean loaded, what the OP describes sounds lower MC to me. The list someone posted above is upper MC.

Maybe the broader definition is the attitudes/cultural capital and the subclasses relate to financial/ capital?

So what’s UC? I think of it as Downton Abbey, but is it just aristocracy or is UC broader now?

In my mind it’s everything is inherited, you don’t actually have much choice in where you live and what you do. You have your families “seat” and you’re expected to carry on tradition. But I may be influenced by far too many Julian Fellows novels

It's such an outdated expression, as most people work for wages which is what it really means. I guess they mean people at the absolute minimum wage, ie totally unable to afford laptops etc. Or those on benefits. The sooner the class system gets relegated to the history books, the better!