Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

What makes you working class?

270 replies

Greenbluestar · 22/01/2022 01:20

I noticed the thread on what makes you middle class. So how about what makes you working class? I’ll go first..

  • achievement achieved through merit and seldom by privilege
  • keen to work and hard working

Any more?

OP posts:
Cuddlemequick · 22/01/2022 10:58

No family money to rely on

MadameHeisenberg · 22/01/2022 11:06

@sweetbellyhigh

What a horrible, sneering, superior post, that says more about you than any of the working classes.

junglejane66 · 22/01/2022 11:09

Darts, beer and kebabs

MadameHeisenberg · 22/01/2022 11:13

And it’s largely inaccurate, too. Aside from the negative personality attributes that you listed which are see in people across the social strata, most working class people these days will not live on council estates. They’ll either be owner-occupiers or in privately rented accommodation. Many (most) council accommodation is occupied by people on benefits, who by very definition, are not working class.

Snowiscold · 22/01/2022 11:17

Many (most) council accommodation is occupied by people on benefits, who by very definition, are not working class.

That is not true. Most people on benefits also work.

MintyGreenDream · 22/01/2022 11:18

Meals in front of the TV.
Calling hot drinks cuppas and brews .
Think vienetta is posh 😄

MintyGreenDream · 22/01/2022 11:20

@sweetbellyhigh that's not WC that's chavs.There is a massive difference

Rubyglitter · 22/01/2022 11:21

Working class is having to work hard for your money because you cannot rely on parental help.

  1. Coming from a family where university is not the norm. One or both parents work.
  2. Dad didn’t go to work in a suit.
  3. You have to pay for things rather than relying on mummy and daddy eg. Driving lessons, car, deposit for a house etc.
Rubyglitter · 22/01/2022 11:22

Also, working class means having to work for money. Those who do not work are not working class.

Andtheyalllookjustthesame · 22/01/2022 11:28

I don't think that it's true that you can only be working class only if you are working. Because there are working class people with disabilities that mean they can't work.

Sarcobaleno · 22/01/2022 11:40

Not sure why a strong work ethic is deemed a working class thing. I know people across the economic/ class spectrum and there are extremely hard workers and lazy fuckers spread pretty evenly.

Tullig · 22/01/2022 11:49

@Mellowyellow222

I really do t think the class system can apply now.

Yes we can see what used to be the upper class, those with so much generational wealth they don’t have to work.

But the lines have blurred so much (thankfully) between middle class and working class.

People often use working class as an insult. Appalling snobbery.

Then you have the under class - don’t work, survive on benefits.

Take the class test in the bbc for a bit of fun - much more relevant to today’s society. And it will show you how subtle it all can be

I do think that test is ‘subtle’ at all. It privileges some factors and ignores others.

I come out as ‘elite’ on it, because of our current household income, house value, and the fact that I know academics, artists and CEOs as well as lorry drivers and call centre workers, and go to the opera and art exhibitions, but my parents are retired unskilled manual workers (dad was a bin man) who left school at 12 and struggle with literacy, we grew up in extremely poor, overcrowded conditions, there was frequently a bare minimum of food, and I had never met anyone other than my teachers who’d been to university until I went myself, having researched scholarships and grants — my parents tried to dissuade me.

That upbringing and the worldview I learnt growing up has been every bit as formative of me in terms of a place on the class ladder as our current income and our friends’ jobs. Fundamentally, I do not trust anyone who has never known what it is like to be able to tell how far we are from the last payday by the amount and type of food on the table. That person has a very different worldview to mine.

Does this make me WC? Probably not.

But it’s a pretty unsubtle test that lumps people like me into ‘elite’ with the public-school-educated offspring of QCs by ignoring things like parental education, income and job.

cafedesreves · 22/01/2022 11:50

It doesn't really work as people are individuals, and in London ethnic diversity means people have very different lifestyles.

Working in a trade
Often SAHM as childcare more expensive than earnings
Strong regional accent (especially in London)
Children dressed more "gendered" than MC kids
Big TV on wall of small living room
University not the norm
Focus on traditional or convenience foods rather than "world foods"
Strong sense of family

MadameHeisenberg · 22/01/2022 11:52

@Sarcobaleno

I think it’s linked to the idea that if the working classes want/have things, they need to work to get them. As opposed to being given things without working for them, like house deposits, skiing lessons or extravagant weddings, for e.g.

That said, there are indeed grafters and lazy fuckers across the whole social spectrum.

Norgie · 22/01/2022 11:52

If you have to get out of bed to earn money to live, then you're working class as far as I'm concerned, irrespective of your job title or earnings.
Of course, plenty would disagree with that.

MargotEmin · 22/01/2022 11:55

Having a Dad who really grafts for a living, in a skilled trade. And as others have said, an immaculate home and well turned out kids.

Tullig · 22/01/2022 12:02

@Norgie

If you have to get out of bed to earn money to live, then you're working class as far as I'm concerned, irrespective of your job title or earnings. Of course, plenty would disagree with that.
Well, yes, because you’ve just made up your own personal definition of WC.
mrsnw · 22/01/2022 12:08

I'm working class and my hubby middle class. It still astonishes me that we get a Christmas card from the box. I always buy cards with names on eg. Mum and Dad, sister etc. This is very working class, apparently!

Ikeptgoing · 22/01/2022 12:17

An interesting thread

So usually working class means practical manual job and not going to university nor coming from a professional family where people went to university

It is literally means a workforce that don't have professional uni trained jobs. No less or no more.

I have working class parents. My dSis and I are (lower) middle class as we went to uni and got professional jobs based on our uni qualifications. We were the first in the family to do so.
We come from humble backgrounds throughout our childhood and my parents' childhoods where money was tight. And nothing was easy.

I have the utmost of respect for working class people and middle class people. My children still come from a non affluent family as I'm a single parent but they know they are middle class as mum and (absent) dad have a degree and worked in related fields to our degrees.

Ikeptgoing · 22/01/2022 12:21

We have no generational money nor spare money. I'm low income as disabled and also work at a very good job but part time as was left with my children unable to afford childcare in my own when their dad disappeared.

I still would say I'm (lower) middle class even if I have less money than other people do. Because I earn more per hour in a professional job (where I can sign for passports id as a recognised profession) than I would as a working class job without my degree.

PlanetNormal · 22/01/2022 12:28

I grew up on a shithole council estate in a depressed dump of an ex-mining town in Derbyshire. We were a single parent family, my mum worked in a garment factory. We had free school meals and we couldn’t afford a phone, never mind a car. The electricity was on prepayment coin meters, I remember searching round the house for coppers to take to the shop & swap for a 50p for the meter. The council house was actually a step up from the rented house we lived in before which had an outside toilet. This was the 1980s, not the 1950s.

I was always reasonably bright and I earned a place at a good university despite the inadequacies of my schooling. It was a massive eye opener. I was stunned by the sheltered, privileged lives of so many of the people I met there, and their complete lack of understanding of the extent of that privilege.

When I go back to my home town now it feels like a different world. I now live an objectively middle class lifestyle, but I will never really fit in among people who were born into that class. I fit in nowhere.

QueBarbaridad · 22/01/2022 12:34

@Namaste6

Strong, self-driven work ethic. Internal confidence, with no outward cockiness.
Unless you’re from London.
mids2019 · 22/01/2022 13:17

@PlanetNormal

I do not think you are the only one who feels they fit in no where. I think a working class background has a life long impact mentally and you continually view wealth with a certain insecure perspective. Only those that have experienced poverty really can authentically describe it.

Vampirethriller · 22/01/2022 13:25

My parents are middle class, but drank and neglected us, which nobody believed because they were both university lecturers and had nice cars and a big fancy house. So we didn't get the middle class upbringing that they did, or any financial help etc.
Now after being homeless I live on a council estate and I'm a single parent. I don't know where I would fit in the class system at all tbh.

VestaTilley · 22/01/2022 13:30

A spotlessly clean house, and well turned out children with neatly cut hair.

Still cooking traditional regional dishes, like Scouse.

Not taking any bullshit.

Being very generous with hospitality and gifts.

Swipe left for the next trending thread