Such an interesting thread. I’m another one of those class-adrift people who have almost moved up but not quite.
A clear class marker was indicated to me recently. I was out with my mum, sister and nieces in the area where I grew up (I’ve moved away and come back and the area has become hugely gentrified in the last 10 year with a real middle-class, arty-creative type community now. Many of my colleagues live there and think I must have had the most amazing childhood in that area – the reality was that it was a dump with a bad reputation back then). There are two children’s playgrounds in the area. One which has been there since I was a child (I’m 45) and has faded brightly painted metal slides and swings on concrete. Always groups of teenagers hanging out in the corner and the actual equipment doesn’t seem to have been updated since the 80s. About 5 mins from this is a new park, installed in the last 15 years. The play equipment is wooden and comprises rope bridges, pirate ships and tunnels through grassy mounds. The main surface is bark. The DNs wanted to play and so DM and DS headed towards park 1. I suggested that the other one is much nicer but they told me that park 2 is not for the likes of us. It’s where all the posh folk go with their children called Tarquin. I was genuinely stunned that the class system could be so well and alive that it has infiltrated children’s playgrounds, putting kids firmly in their place from an early age. Of course it didn’t help when we later walked past park 2 only to see no less than three families I knew. One of which, when we stopped to chat, wrinkled her nose when I said the DNs had already had a play in the other park “Oh, we never go there” she said.
I know my family struggle with me and I hate to admit how much I struggle with them. This doesn’t mean I don’t love them to bits but I’ve seen DM and DS, mimic and mock the way I speak. They think I’m trying to be posh but the truth is that I’m not trying to be anything. I just am. And what I am is too posh/MC for my family and too WC for work colleagues. It has been made clear to me in professional circles that I’m not one of them, that I betray myself every time I open my mouth. I have, however, clearly picked up a wider vocabulary and a bit of a different dialect over the years. My hobbies, interests and the way I live my life also comes in for scrutiny by my family – they scoff at my visits to museums and galleries and I feel I can never share with them the really interesting things I’ve seen, nor talk about things that are on my mind, so our interactions become superficial.
I don’t even know if I can define my family’s class, tbh. People use lack of holiday abroad as an indication of being WC but we had loads of those. Our fortnight in the sun was as important to mum and dad as basic food and water. Perhaps more so. Dad was a delivery driver for a factory and mum worked p/t in a supermarket. Clothes, toys etc were about 70% hand me downs, not just within the family but from neighbours. A large percentage of the rest came from jumble sales. Money always seemed to be tight (but perhaps wouldn’t have been if we didn’t have those holiday) and a source of stress. Our home was immaculate on the surface but falling apart if you looked too closely. We had an ancient heating system which barely worked – I remember a teenage classmate asking my mum innocently why we didn’t just upgrade to a proper boiler as it all seemed so much hassle. Mum was furious and didn’t allow me to bring friends home again. Dad spent most of his time at the social club, if not working, and would usually come home blind drunk but often with a VCR, TV, microwave or similar which had fallen off the back of a lorry. Most of our stuff came from dad’s connections with petty criminals. We had a succession of cars – all stolen – which we drove for a while then dumped when they got too hot. There were no books in the house and any form of learning for enjoyment was at best an alien concept and at worse a nonsense. My parents worshipped Thatcher.
Yet, I excelled at school and ended up in top streamed classes which is why most of my friends came from very different upbringings. Before I was old enough to fully understand and articulate the differences, I recall being in a modern studies lesson where we were asked to put our hands up to identify with being UC, WC or WC (why would you do this to kids?). I genuinely didn’t know but some of the pointers on the blackboard mentioned holidays abroad and doing well at school, plus all my friends chose MC to I joined them in putting up my hand. The teacher singled me out, asking if I was sure - cue laughter from the rest of the class. Afterwards, at break, some of those friends told me I had been wrong and proceeded to tear apart my identity, telling me I wasn’t like them because their clothes were new whereas mine were hand me downs, their parents wore suits to work, I said things like “I seen” and “I done” rather than “I saw” and “I did”. Nobody had ever told me this was wrong. I still feel the burning shame of that day. Not because I was “outed” as WC and not because I was ashamed to be WC but because I realised that the friends whom I had seen as equals, due to the parity of our academic results, all saw me as different and somehow worse than them.
That BBC calculator has me as Established Middle Class but I agree with others that the real indicator is around safety nets. A few years back, DH and I were in a situation where we needed £20k. The amount of friends who told us to “just” take it out our savings, it’s not that much, was unbelievable. This then led to increasingly embarrassing situations where we had to admit that we didn’t have £20k in savings, to which they reacted in horror, assuming we had frittered away money and we then had to explain we’ve never had that money, which they followed up by questioning the fact that we’ve both lost grandparents so surely we have inheritance?! I’m proud of all I have worked for and all I have achieved but I know that my lifestyle and my acceptance into social circles sits on a knife edge and could be lost due to the lack of safety net. There have been a few redundancy round in my work over the years and I have one close co-worker who, every time, makes a joke about getting her dad primed just in case he needs to support her for a bit. Another friend’s parents bought her house for her as they didn’t want to see her “saddled with a mortgage”. Another friend once says she never relies on parental hand-outs now she’s an adult but then paused and said “well, they did buy me my car – but that doesn’t count because all parents give their kids a few large monetary gifts in their lifetime”. I’ve heard other friends happily claim they have worked for everything they own but I know for a fact that their parent paid for lavish weddings, helped furnish their homes, regularly buy gifts, clothes and toys for their DC. All of these things are taken for granted and there are a huge amount of people out there who will be unable to comprehend the concept of earning every single penny you spend and not expecting so much as a £10 contribution from family. In fact, in my case, I give my parent financial assistance now. And, of course, the more of your own earnings you use, the less you have to save…