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.

Why do people persist in associating social class with money?

The MC assume WC people aspire to be MC. We don't.

@GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal

I was raised "properly" working class. On a council estate, frequently cold and hungry.

When I was on a salary of £30k, warm and well fed - I guarantee I regarded myself as middle class.

My children were raised on a council estate. They were neither cold or hungry.

...i don't think you can tell class from speaking to someone. Surely that's just stereotyping?

Only a MC person would think such a thing

Why do people persist in associating social class with money? I assume because money enables people to participate in more typically MC pursuits?

Being middle class is fucking tedious.
Who wants to be middle class?

Shows how out of touch government is if it assumes all working class children are disadvantaged.

Being middle class is fucking tedious.
Who wants to be middle class?

You are clearly not middle class

If your dad was a copper OP, you were definitely middle class, a whole social strata above my lot.

I get that you are trying to claim the whole, working class, salt of the earth, leftie thing but really that ship has sailed.

DH and I are proper working class made good; our kids’ mate once described us as, “Not posh but very rich”, . We are unashamed champagne socialists. We are probably middle class to the world at large. It doesn’t matter.

OP, it seems to me that when you think of middle classes you are thinking of what are really the upper middle classes. It's interesting to say you always thought WC were the majority, because that hasn't been true for a long time in the UK.

If you have a pension or investments, that puts you pretty firmly in the middle classes.

I think what you are thinking of really is WC culture. Culture is something that can persist even when circumstances have changed - if you grew up WC and became King, you wouldn't be WC any more, but you might still feel connected to it.

On the other

I consider myself working class as I live in a council house just me and my children. I work full time as a ta for £12000 a year and even though none of us have been cold or hungry I am one pay check away from being in trouble.

Neither me or anyone in my family are university educated and we grew up being told degrees are not for people like us. My siblings and parents have great jobs now and all own their houses so I guess they have moved up the social scale but I feel they may still call themselves working class even if they live a middle class lifestyle.

Interestingly enough, I listened to a lecture on the great British class debate a couple of year back. The lectures were given by sociologists (I forget who or where they studied) and they said that amongst the British, there is a very high prevalence of MC people thinking they’re WC. It’s very, very common.
No issue with people thinking this - I always thought I was WC too. It’s a common misconception.

Anyway - the class system once upon a time (pre industrial revolution) was very easily definable. Upper class - the landed gentry etc
Middle Class - your doctors and lawyers etc
Working class - everyone else.

The definitions were changed because the socioeconomic landscape of the UK has changed dramatically since then. There is now, I believe something like:

Elite, middle class, technical middle class, tradition working class and the precariat. The media is referring to the precariat when they talk about disadvantaged backgrounds.

Class is now a measurable thing based on economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. For example, have a degree does not automatically make you MC but if you are MC then you’re more likely to have gone to uni.

The reason it changed and is measured? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not so the population of MN can compete with each other and pay themselves on the back for being in the class they consider to be most desirable... it is - from a social science standpoint - to measure inequality in society. Which is rampant. That we have a class such as the precariat in a society such as this is just not fucking on.
Why are there so many families living in poverty? And needing to access food vouchers and food banks? These families have poorer outcomes in nearly every facet of their life and we need to figure out why and try and level the playing field.
That is why you cannot just abolish the class system. How else would you measure progress?

DH and I are proper working class made good; our kids’ mate once described us as, “Not posh but very rich”, grin. We are unashamed champagne socialists. We are probably middle class to the world at large. It doesn’t matter

I really admire you for saying this. There is no pretence about how you describe yourself

"My children were raised on a council estate. They were neither cold or hungry."

Sorry, @Nickname21, I did not mean to imply that everyone who lives on a council estate was! I know they weren't, most of the people around me were not. But I was, there was rarely enough money for both food and heating, and often not enough for either. Hence why it gets my goat when someone on a very comfortable income, able to run a car and take holidays, claims not to know why people get so concerned about the working classes.

That is why you cannot just abolish the class system. How else would you measure progress?

It doesn't measure progress, as this thread has illustrated. Many view their class as the one they were born into regardless of how much they know earn and the opportunities they had. There are plenty of ways to collate data on particular areas and target regeneration, support, create opportunities and make life better for all. The civil service for example have moved a fair amount of jobs up North to try and make it more accessible to people across the country, taking the opportunities to areas with high levels of depravation instead of being open to just the few who have the chance to move down south for jobs is positive. It's not enough and more needs to be done, but an outdated class system and labels don't really do it for me.

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

^^ This, a thousand times over. Why do so many people who call themselves middle class have so much to say about the working classes that is totally unrecognisable to anyone who is actually working class? Bizarre.

Those saying that a working class family can't have a household income of £50-60k pa, would they say that where one partner was a successful tradesperson like a plumber, carpenter, machine driver, HGV driver etc and the other partner had any sort of low paid job, because I know dozens of people in that situation and that's what their income is, and they're all working class and from working class backgrounds.

The OP sounds very similar to my sister. We're definitely a working class family, our dad was a miner, as was just about every single one of our older male relatives. The women were mostly SAHMs who might also have done pt jobs like evening cleaners, shop assistants, factory work etc etc.

Her DH is a supervisor of a group of manual workers, and he's from a more disadvantaged background than us, but has done well in non graduate skilled technical work, so earns around £40k pa and DSis has a part time unskilled job earning maybe £10-15k pa.

Because we live in traditional northern ex mining villages, housing is cheap so this income provides a good lifestyle with plenty of tech, days out, houses with gardens, driveways, two cars per family and all those things that middle class people in more expensive areas struggling with expensive housing think can't possibly be affordable to people who, on paper, have less money than they do.

There's nothing wrong with being either working class or middle class and neither are a reliable indicator of how much money or disposable income you have or what your interests are or lifestyle is like. A 45 YO tradesperson in Leeds is likely to have far more money after housing costs than a 25 YO doctor or dentist from a middle class background in London.

There's nothing wrong with being either working class or middle class and neither are a reliable indicator of how much money or disposable income you have or what your interests are or lifestyle is like.

What's the point of it then?

Your posts and income scream middle class to me but I get there is something about background that can be hard to shift. My husband has had quite an interesting shift based on income changes that his parents experienced. His early years were probably more akin to a working class background and as his parents progressed and did well, his life changed massively. His teenage years were spent in a private school.

His parents’ lifestyle in retirement is much more akin to the upper middle class but there are things that would mark them out including accent. Our children have a very privileged lifestyle but I think my husband’s experience will have an affect on how we’ll bring them up as he grew up in a deprived place. The interesting thing for me in terms of social mobility is that his parents encouraged him to leave their area for better opportunities.

I think I am WC - I think most people are.

I'm a Test Analyst and DH is a Civil Servant. We have one DC

Your posts and income scream middle class to me

Because you incorrectly believe that working class people cannot have a decent income, write articulately or prioritise their children's education.

BarbaraofSeville No that is not the case at all. Did you read the post I wrote where I’ve quite clearly said my working class in-laws earnt enough money to send their children to private school. I am very aware that working class people can prioritise education etc.

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.

I'm not employed in a traditional profession, my individual income is circa 55k, I haven't any children but I certainly wouldn't consider myself on a private education income, I run one nine year old car, live in a Victorian terrace (with a driveway, but we purposefully moved out a bit to get that).

You got me on the holidays.

But if anything, I'd say the older car and holidaying in UK are markers of both the traditional upper-middle and traditional working class cultures, as is the attitude to education. To a certain extent, I'd include the house, as there's a cultural aversion to new builds in the upper classes, as there is to buying new rather than mending.

My mum accidentally fell in with the local minor nobility when I was young. Old cars, patched clothes, permanent dog smell, privately educated kids, and a sneering aversion to people who bought houses and furniture rather than inherited them.

Sandy
You make a good point and I am inclined to agree with you. However, this topic at a sociology level - where data is collated and studied and perhaps used to inform policy - is a very different one to the topic at the cultural level. Which is what is being discussed here.
I don’t agree with the use of the term ‘elite’ for example. But I can see why the terms ‘middle class’ and ‘working class’ are still in there because they’re familiar.

Ironically, I would argue that the OPs post is conflating the sociologist aspect of class with the cultural one. When the media discusses the disadvantaged, they absolutely are talking about class from a sociological point of view. However, the OP and the many responses here are all assuming they’re talking about it from a cultural POV. Which isn’t the case.

I think it’s ironic that many are referring to the class system from a cultural POV (I.e, what they identify with and not what they actually are) are saying it is outdated and the terms need to be revisited... when they actually have been revisited and are now very different when being discussed from the angle of social science.

My cultural class - as in the one I grew up in and the one I recognise myself in is definitely WC.
However, from a sociological stand point - I am MC.

Sailing So please explain why the OP appears to be middle class from her posts, seeing as it is screamingly obvious to you?

Those saying that a working class family can't have a household income of £50-60k pa, would they say that where one partner was a successful tradesperson like a plumber, carpenter, machine driver, HGV driver etc and the other partner had any sort of low paid job, because I know dozens of people in that situation and that's what their income is, and they're all working class and from working class backgrounds

Take this statement as a good example of how easy it is to mix up two different ways of measuring class.

A social scientist would say that the very fact that a household income is above this level will actually cause social mobility and that you are now, in fact, MC. Because they would use economic capital as a measure of class.

However, culturally - the family would identify as working class as that’s how they recognise themselves.

Both statements are true.

But then if people just identify with what they see themselves as rather than what the indicatiors would describe them as, how is that an accurate measure of anything? How does that drive improving things? I get the concept, I just personally don't see how it's a particularly useful tool.