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.

@pigeon999 See I find your lists of WC and MC very interesting. Your MC description is far into UMC and UC territory though in my experience.

DH and I are firmly MC - I was privately educated, DH wasn't due to excellent schools in the area he lived in although his Father was, both hold excellent degrees, both in senior roles in our respective fields in our early to mid 30's with the benefits that arise from such a role (albeit by some indicators, the very fact I am a nurse would make me WC - I'm a Clinical Nurse Specialist in a field I am passionate about, a field that works largely autonomously without Medics. I manage my department and sit in the Senior Management Structure of the business). I would say my upbringing featured quite a few of your MC features, but my DH's firmly didn't.

We live on a development with a mix of WC and MC home owners, and without a shadow of a doubt those of us without a strong regional accent or who have what I would class as a comfortable lifestyle are ostracised and made to feel like we don't belong. There's a deep, proud mining heritage in the area, and so I've been told by colleagues, those of us without strong regional accents are akin to The Baroness Thatcher... I have been told to f off back to where I came from, screamed at in the street for asking someone's child to not repeatedly kick a ball at my front door / use my porch as a goal. It's certainly been a rude awakening about intolerance.

@pigeon999 Your list is (very) upper middle class! We’re MC, live in London with 2 kids in a 2 bed flat. Most of our MC friends round here live in terraced houses. It’s a fairly leafy area and they all send the kids to the local state schools. We have one holiday abroad a year, couldn’t afford skiing though! Our friends all have degrees. DH and I both sing in choirs and actually we do go to see operas - this is definitely unusual! Another friend is into ballet, a couple like theatre, one single friend goes to loads of gigs. But many just do days out with the kids and the occasional restaurant visit when they can get a babysitter.

If you’re working class as defined by your upbringing op, then I don’t know what the fuck I am.

I grew up in social housing, neither parents working, one parent illiterate the other left school at 12 years old. I had FSM, uniform grant. Went on one holiday - ever growing up that was provided by a charity. We sometimes didn’t have enough food and so ate porridge 3 times a day, or ate bread dipped in gravy.

I would say I grew up working class.

I continue to be working class, I’m a sahp, my dp works in an unskilled job, neither have education beyond secondary schooling. We have a household income of circa £35k a year and have 3 children.

We own our own home, drive a newish car, have one uk and one overseas holiday a year. We have multiple laptops, phones, iPads and tablets all of which are owned outright.

One dc in university, our other two will likely access private schooling at secondary level on academic scholarships (dc 10 years currently working 3 years beyond expected level, dc 7 years old working 4 years beyond expected level though has significant delayed in some areas of development due to SN). The children access museums, art galleries, theatre, ballet etc. They are voracious readers of fiction, non fiction, newspapers etc. They are articulate, have a large and varied vocabulary (youngest is autistic and so has some difficulties with social communication), participate in numerous clubs and hobbies (chess club, instruments, book club, young librarian, tennis, language classes) which are either free or discounted for income. We hold bi-weekly dinner time debates. They have recently entered a short story competition.

I’m interested to see where we fit in to your categories?

However, neither my dc or I have regional accents .

Pigeon999 your WC / MC descriptions are pretty much spot on.

MCs are very competitive looking to get ahead. WC are far more helpful to one another. MC people finding a good deal on something very much keep it to themselves. WC would share their info with the town so everyone can benefit from the same deal.
I'd never heard of people making 5 year plans until I started work.

The poster who said footballers on big money can't be working class are missing the point. Money buys you nice things but it doesn't change your experience of growing up within a WC family, or your family still being WC.

Exactly hugeAckmansWife
I only ever see the term 'working class' on MN.
It's not used by the media, academics or policymakers.

The problem you have on this thread is that people are aspirational and fancy themselves MC, and you saying you are not when you are doing well financially/have a degree is making people nervous that they are not!

Way too many people think they are MC. And actually MC has become a bit of a joke / people with fancy car leases that take up loads of their salaries shopping at Waitrose and calling their children Quentin. Should be called “deluded and pretentious class”

@SueEllenMishke tune in to LBC or Radio 4 during the day and you will find the term used rather frequently when education, especially the relative merits of reopening schools during the Covid crisis is being discussed.
Possibly the more comparatively intimate arena of radio broadcasts allows the journos/presenters to feel that they can get away with employing it as a shorthand for economic disdavantage.

@crispysausagerolls

The problem you have on this thread is that people are aspirational and fancy themselves MC, and you saying you are not when you are doing well financially/have a degree is making people nervous that they are not!

Yes I had been detecting an element if this but I had put it down to geography rather than insecurity.
Everybody outside of my county does seem to perceive themselves to be MC on the spurious basis of an undergrad degree, a senior position at work or a healthy(ish) bank balance.
The attitude of having to rush to escape the label WC on the basis of having some degree of educational and/or economic success has been demostrated frequently throughout this thread.

@LunaNorth

Are you Jarvis Cocker, OP?

Was it the bum waving that gave me away?

I'm an education academic and have worked in researched disadvantage and social mobility for close to 20 years.We do not use the term working class. It's meaningless.

I wouldnt class you as working class, solely because of your income. I come from underclass, no parents worked, lived hand to mouth on benefits and had more children than they could really ever afford. I dont consider my self underclass just because that is how i was brought up. Due to me and dh fortunate income (£85k) I wouldnt even consider myself working class. Most of my friends and family are working class, with household incomes of about £15-£25k (and some are underclass as well, no judgement, thats just what they are). That said I dont really consider myself middle class neither as whilst maybe I have the same income, Im surrounded by middle class people in work, and Id be lying if i didnt say that i find some of their views stereotypically middleclass opinions/views just bizzare.

*worked in and researched

@Orangesox

You, to me are the very epitome of lower middle class.
Rest asdured that I would never confuse you with the WC. Not in a million years.

@SueEllenMishke I don't disbelieve you.
However I have only alluded to the media throughout the thread. It was my observations of their employment of the term which provided the impetus for the thread.
Oh the Daily Mail, there's another repeat offender unsurprisingly

Sadly, the acknowledged goal of modern life is to better yourself financially. It is all about career, career, career, looking after yourself and being a winner.
I think we should have better goals.

Its just such lazy journalism to use the term working class to describe disadvantage....not to mention insulting on many levels. I really wouldn't be taking any notice of what's written by lazy journalists who can't comprehend the complex nature of disadvantage.

@SueEllenMishke I don't at all disagree with you. Unfortunately those lazy journos are the very ones who have the eyes and ears of the populace on a daily basis.

You're right op. I've taken a decision to limit what I read at the moment as it started making me angry.....there has been lazy journalism and outright lies. A friend of mine has started making note of ones that directly relate to our sector. She's has over 100 examples of absolute rubbish being written about universities and I imagine that is being replicated across many sectors.

I've definitely heard working class being used as a synonym for disadvantaged in the media.

It's also rife on here. Look at all the posts saying that the OP and others can't possibly be WC due to income, education, housing situation or possessions.

It's also very London/SE centric. While people on even high incomes in London live in flats, in many other areas, even people on much lower incomes live in houses with gardens, there are far fewer flats and they're often not any cheaper anyway, because they tend to be in purpose built city centre blocks so attract higher paid city centre workers who want to be in walking distance from amenities like restaurants and cinema/theatre.

I would love to see the whole class system scrapped completely. I long to live in a country like Sweden or Holland - there isn't huge divides in wealth and culture and everyone is treated equally. There is poverty and problems in every country, but the starting point is equal for everyone. Opportunity is honestly available to everyone.

Some of the transparency in these countries are being envied, you can check what other people were paid for instance.

Having lived at both ends, I can only say that my conviction that this is the best route for us has only deepened. I am not saying I wish the UK to become a communist country or anything like that, but there is so much we can do to make it fairer and more equal that it is now, and still remain a competitive and industrious country.

We are going the right way, but we need to scrap the house of lords for one, we need to streamline and maybe in time remove the royal family sadly as I think this just reinforces the class divide, as much as I admire the Queen. Only when we reach some consensus on this will we see a more united and less fractured country.

*to be

I think there is quite a range of working class...from say hairdressers, bricklayers, care assistants, fork lift truck drivers etc near the bottom, and more professional people near the top, like high end nurses, office workers, professional people in business. I would say people who dont work and claim benefits (not sickness benefits), arent working class, they are a lower class.

Pigeon...the class system is virtually scrapped..its all our perception really, and weve all got different opinions on who sits where, but it doesnt really matter, and people can cross classes quite easily.

@pigeon999 whilst I no less than wholly agree with you, it won't happen.
The British like to have lowly comparators, we like to feel 'better than you.' We're a greviously insecure and individualistic society.
Lots of us can't feel good about ourselves unless we're looking down upon others.

I agree with your vision of utopia but look around, its hardly the direction we're headed in, now is it?

I only ever come across class snobbery on MN.
Lower class FFS 🙄