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.

@LinemanForTheCounty then why does the media on the whole insist on alluding to disadvantaged children as WC rather than children living in poverty?
Why the insistence on conflating the two?

@LinemanForTheCounty then why does the media on the whole insist on alluding to disadvantaged children as WC rather than children living in poverty?
Why the insistence on conflating the two?

Yes it's possible that op is not actually 'WC' after all

The class system is not fit for purpose but as it stands you are clinging onto your working class roots when you have been socially mobile.

I think some MC people think WC people are really really poor and disadvantaged. Not always true

I dunno. Like I say "poor" seems to be a taboo word. Maybe because of the connotations with helplessness, deserving/undeserving etc. Stupid really because we know what poverty is so using it would prevent misunderstanding.

I think in the past when they have used other terms the tends to become a stigma that becomes more detrimental.

I don't agree that having a decent income and a comfortable existence suddenly makes you MC.
I din't know many people who would allude to themselves as MC.
I haven't been upwardly mobile at all actually, my income is rougly commensurate with what my parents earned in the nineties, allowing for inflation and they were WC in WC professions too.

Who was it who said that perhaps Merseyside runs to its own rules? Because I seem to be getting a bashing here but its pretty much accepted that to be MC in my area you need a five bed detached, two prestige cars and an income of about 80K plus before you dare even think of yourself in those terms.

We're mostly a WC area save for the few.
If other parts of the country are in a rush to join the higher ecelons, we on the whole don't appear to follow suit.

Of course they don't actually mean 'working class' they mean the Precariat. It's children from this SE class that they worry about.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-now-has-7-social-classes-and-working-class-is-a-dwindling-breed-8557894.html%3famp

I don't think the media do tend to refer to WC/MC at all. Or not the media that I consume. There is a lot of talk about "working families" or even "hard working families" and perhaps class is implied or assumed in this. Also, as discussed, "families living in poverty" or "disadvantaged" is referenced but not "working class" families because its outdated and means very little these days.

Yourcomment about regional accents has reminded me of an ex-partner who claimed he was working class because he was Welsh and insisted all Welsh people were by definition working class. Funny.

echelons WC, not illiterate

It’s funny that a lot of these markers your using I see in a completely different way.

We are a high income family. Like most of the other high income families we know we have bought cars for cash and run them for quite a few years. It’s my friends on more average household incomes that seem to have newer cars because they use finance and never actually own their cars outright.

We have a 5+ year old desktop and a maybe 8 year old laptop. We have a very cheap tablet. My phone is a new-ish iPhone but has been smashed to pieces. Should any of these devices actually break I would replace them with something new but they work for now, so I won’t be upgrading.

One of my friends was discussing how difficult it was homeschooling her children (all at private school so on zoom throughout the day) because she has 2 computers and 3 children. Household income, if I had to guess, around the 500k + range. I’m sure she has since bought more devices but prior to homeschooling it hadn’t occurred to her that primary school age children all need their own iPad.

I don’t think it’s undesirable to be working class all the time you’re earning lots of money and going to university and having holidays in Cornwall. I think there’s almost bragging rights to being ‘of the people’ and socially aware. It’s only when you have children and make judgements about certain names, when you’d rather sell a kidney than move onto a council estate, when you screen your children’s friends and move house to get them into the best school, that’s when it’s seen as not quite so much fun.

Well I know its not a prescriptive definition but I am not middle class. Neither I, nor DH is employed in one of the traditional professions. Household income of circa 55-60K. Children not privately educated, run one eight year old car, holiday predominantly in the UK, victorian terrace without a driveway etc.

Our parents were not MC, mine were a policeman and a foster carer, DH was actually a free school meals kid from a disadvantaged area.

It would be difficult to argue that we are anything other than ordinary, WC people.

It really wouldn’t. It’s all relative. To me, you had a middle class upbringing (as a child, I would have considered you to be very posh) and comparing your circumstances to mine, I would still consider you to have a middle class life now. You’re rich, your car is only eight years old, you go on holiday and you’re a homeowner.

I consider myself to be working class. I’m a civil servant now, but you only needed GCSEs to get in, no professional qualifications (unless an RSA in typing counts?) and our joint household income is less than half of yours. We’re comfortable because I grew up in absolute poverty and can stretch a pound a long way, but it would only take two missed paydays before we’d be in trouble. We rent and live on an estate that I very much doubt you’d ever consider living on or letting your kids play on. I was also one of those ‘free school meals kids’. Only the people around us just referred to us as kids and didn’t use such a fucking derogatory term to describe children. It was the posh kids whose dads had jobs and whose mum’s stayed at home through choice who called us that.

I'm working class. I can manage DS's schoolwork because he's only Year 2 but if he was secondary I'd have no chance. School wasn't my thing, I didn't get any qualifications and I don't understand the work.

We have a perfectly happy life otherwise. Working class doesn't mean poor either. I work in a low paid job myself but DS's dad (also working class) earns £50k in a job that requires no formal qualifications.

@SuperMumTum No, its very definitely WC children who have been mentioned via various media sources recently.

If they had been referred to differently I would have had no impetus for the thread.

Its not only my accent which denotes my class, I don't believe that I ever stated that it was. How extraordinary that all Welsh people by WC. An entire country, gosh!

@Boulshired 100% this

You don’t seem WC, OP.

You're not at all unreasonable. Being 'working class' is not synonymous with being ignorant or unlettered. Nor does it automatically mean 'poor'. There are plenty of clever working class people who also earn a decent crust.

Of course they don't actually mean 'working class' they mean the Precariat. It's children from this SE class that they worry about

Oooh! Someone who understands the social science behind the class structure! Yay! You’re like gold dust

Your income and background and living arrangement sounds normally middle class to me. Very similar to me -except we don’t have a car or an iPad etc. I’d say I was MC.

We're mostly a WC area save for the few.
If other parts of the country are in a rush to join the higher ecelons, we on the whole don't appear to follow suit.

Yes, that’s what I figured. The old East End (of London) used to be similar actually.

@Sn0tnose
My best friend lives on a council estate, of course my kids play with hers, of course I visit her. I have aunties who still live on council estates in Liverpool. I don't know why you presumed otherwise.

DH refers to himself as a 'free school meals kid' he hasn't got a chip on his shoulder over it. In fact it helped him get an interview for his civil service role as they screen for diversity during the application process and one of the criteria is social disadvantage.

I 'get' the Precariat but not the SE class.

@Ethelfleda

'You don’t seem WC, OP.'

Really? In what way don't I?

That income puts your household in the top 10% of earners. You both have degrees. You allude to within in professional jobs (nursing, civil service). You’re not by any generally accepted definition WC.

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax