Why do people from poorer backgrounds have low aspirations

[suggestedlogin]

I may not be explaining myself well here so please bear with me!

I've seen on here a few times where it's been mentioned that people from poorer backgrounds / deprived areas don't have higher aspirations. It seems they can do better but don't.

Just wondering why this is and what would help to change it.

Reason I'm asking is I'm from a por background and I still am. I don't want this for my kids but don't know how or what to do to change it.

What became apparent to me was how many of the people with 'normal' 'dead-end' jobs were satisfied, had very low stress levels and lovely families. A lot had managed to buy their own small house but some rented. They didn't have anything fancy but enough to have what they needed. But their satisfaction levels were the highest... taught me a lot.

This.

Personally, when I was younger I had ambitions to get multiple degrees and a good career, I had it all planned out. But then, mental health happened and it all went to shit. And you know what? I'm OK with that. The only thing that bothers me is other people judging and looking down on you, or my parents being disappointed in me because they thought I'd be the first one of us to go to uni.

I don't want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a psychiatrist, a nurse, a police officer, a social worker... I want a job that I can do, finish and erase from my mind, so I can go home and chill and not be stressed because I'm busy thinking about my suicidal client, the woman dying of cancer who had her children visit that day, the teen who lost a leg, how I'm ever going to defend client X successfully, how I have to give someone bad news at their next appointment, how I have so many appointments and I'm overstretched, about the kid whose mum is on skag.

@SpinsForGin

Am I the only person who doesn't agree?

There is a significant amount of research on this particular subject. It is an issue.

Culture can play a big part too. So coming from a culture where it's the norm for people from poor backgrounds to aspire to bigger things then with will be ingrained in you from birth. It will be cultural norm.

It's not the cultural norm for poor, white working class communities.

Yes, research rife with classism. It boils my blood to see statements like working class are under-represented at universities due to “low aspirations” and “low parental involvement in education”. It’s just a nice way to say lazy and uncaring. Any other group within diversity (ethnicity, religion, sex, etc) that we stated this about to explain under representation we’d be roundly criticised.

@suggestedlogin

I do encourage my kids and tell them that they can literally do any job within reason and get into any field they wanted tobeith hard work and grit but I'm not sure that enough.

Do schools play a big part?

What do you mean when you say within reason?

Isn’t that part of the problem. You are placing restrictions on your children even if you don’t realise it.

Books. Fill the house with them. Not in a showy way that some people do, where they remain unread. Actually read them.
Talk to your children about the things you are reading about and why you find it interesting. Encourage them to do the same.

Ask them what they are learning about in school. Show a real interest.

There are obviously many factors that contribute to the situation you describe, but these solutions are the ones that I have seen have the biggest impact.

Lots of reasons.
Peer pressure to conform to the norm
Lack of actual support. It's not enough to say you can be anything you want to be' to a child. You and they need to find out what that might be by exploring widely.

I went to a meeting about encouraging children from deprived areas to apply to Oxbridge and one thing the charity discovered was that the children were far more likely to apply and succeed if they had been taken on a visit to Oxford or Cambridge while they were at primary school, not secondary. At primary they still believe anything is possible, so the foundation of that belief can be seeded early. By secondary/GCSE, however bright they are, it's harder to persuade them that they belong. (Getting better.)

If I was in a deprived area and wanted my child to thrive despite their predicted chances, I'd take them to the library every week (if there's still one open nearby!) and choose at least one book a week to read, encouraging them to read widely and then discuss the books. I'd do the same with any local free exhibitions, galleries, museums, talks, concerts etc. Not to shove culture down their throats, but just so they had what a PP describes as 'Cultural Capital.' This enables them to feel more at ease when faced with privately educated children who have been given a broad cultural grounding.

Most of all, I'd encourage them to think critically and be curious and learn to speak with confidence about what they think. And, as far as possible , to hang out with like-minded people of high aspiration.

"I fully intend to hothouse my children - it definitely works"

'Works" how? Hothousing them to be what? They'll be a lot happier if you support them, encourage them and help them when they need it rather than hothousing them.
I know/work with many people who went to boarding school, private schools and who'd families had a very specific idea around what 'success' looked like. They aren't what I call 'happy' for the most part. Some of them - mainly the boarding school lot- are borderline dysfunctional when it comes to personal relationships.

@lovelteers DH has perfect pitch as did his father who was the church organist. Your experience is exactly why DH has a charitable trust with a primary school to ensure children have access to music.lessons and instruments.

DD is extremely musical. Voice for her. We said we would fund the conservatoire/rada route but she had to do teaching or nursing so she could always earn a living. She independently switched to applying for an academic degree in 6th form and is now happily working in an sen school and will be supported to do teacher training on the job. Alongside that she sings in a choir and an amateur operatic company. I think eventually she will move towards speech or music therapy. She is a lucky girl to have those choices.

My apologies for digressing.

“midsomermurderess

Maybe Mumsnet could create a 'Class' board. All this passive aggressive sniping about the great unwashed, they are so fat and lazy, have ugly things in their houses, vulgar Christmas decorations, eat horrible chocolate and can't organise childrens' parties without it descending into an episode of Shameless could be coralled there. It would be even busier than AIBU.“

I haven’t read the full thread but from what I have that has not been the sort of thinking on here.

It’s you who are making presumptions about backgrounds and class.

I came from a low income family, older siblings that got into trouble of all sorts and never made it to university. Teachers who looked down on me because of those reasons and more not mentioned.
I had friends with low aspirations.
But I was a dreamer as a child. A wild imagination. I went to a Uni my friends didn’t go to, I left my home town, I worked hard when I got my first very shitty job, used that to pivot to other better industries.
I said when I was 18 I would warn at least 100k by the time I was 30. Done.
I refused to settle for anything less… I broke away. But it was determination. My siblings haven’t still.
The song by Kelly Clarkson “Breakaway” resonates with me.
I put it down to being a dreamer, knowing there was something better out there.
Not everyone realises there is.

@midsomermurderess

Maybe Mumsnet could create a 'Class' board. All this passive aggressive sniping about the great unwashed, they are so fat and lazy, have ugly things in their houses, vulgar Christmas decorations, eat horrible chocolate and can't organise childrens' parties without it descending into an episode of Shameless could be coralled there. It would be even busier than AIBU.

Holy smokes, any breakdown of your individual points to explain your arguments better please ?

I'm very anti 'hothousing' - I work in Education, and yes you can hothouse or train a child to be 'successful or pass exams well ( that's the whole private school system essentially - buying grades) but the stress and pressure it puts on them can cause lifelong damage. And to what end?

It’s about the parents. Always the parents that make the biggest difference. It a very common trait in first generation immigrants from less affluent countries. They push their children, there is an expectation to achieve and also time and energy ploughed into it. Just telling your kids they can anything they want isn’t enough. It sounds nice but isn’t enough

Yes, research rife with classism. It boils my blood to see statements like working class are under-represented at universities due to “low aspirations” and “low parental involvement in education”. It’s just a nice way to say lazy and uncaring. Any other group within diversity (ethnicity, religion, sex, etc) that we stated this about to explain under representation we’d be roundly criticised.

While there are a number of structural barriers which result in particular groups being underrepresented at university, particularly elite universities, low aspirations and parental involvement in education are part of the reason. It would be remiss to ignore them.

This isn't me suggesting that working class parents are lazy or uncaring because we to need to unpick these further. In my experience lack of parental engagement is more to do with parents having had a poor experience of education themselves or parents not understanding the system because it's either something they didn't experience or it's changed significantly.
University is a prime example of this. Parents who haven't experienced the HE system themselves often feel overwhelmed and helpless . They are very supportive of their children going to university but they can't help on a practical level.

@Lovelteers

I'm very anti 'hothousing' - I work in Education, and yes you can hothouse or train a child to be 'successful or pass exams well ( that's the whole private school system essentially - buying grades) but the stress and pressure it puts on them can cause lifelong damage. And to what end?

Far less damage than being as poor as your parents.

My take on it comes from my own childhood experiences coming from an immigrant family from one of the most deprived areas of the country. No benefits. No f/t or even p/t jobs on offer (except for cleaning work) and extended families all under one roof working as one to earn enough to put food on the table and pay rent etc doing what ever work they could pick up and eventually saving enough to buy a house that was bigger and bigger until there was enough to buy each family their own house.
Staying in the area was never an option it was just too awful.

Otoh there were families who had just enough to make their lives ok. They were still poor but they had nice food on the table. They always had a couple of sacks of coal for the fire, gas fires in the bedrooms to warm them up before bed time.
Eiderdowns on the bed and just generally an ok life.

They were the ones who never seemed to move on or away.

I think to some extent it isn’t about being poor it is about if you have enough money for your needs then there isn’t the fire to do something to get more or a different life as the life you have is ok so why change it.

I think headteachers in schools make a huge difference to education and achievement.
My dc went to the same school but have a 7 year gap.
Ds did OK but his headteacher was coasting ready to retire.
New headteacher began a year after dd started and was like an academic whirlwind.
Tbf it was in a mostly middle class area anyway so
the pupils and parents were very receptive .

I remember the admissions officer at one uni being very unimpressed that other than being a great student and have great grades the 'only' other thing I'd done during my A Levels was be a young carer and work 20 hours a week in various part-time jobs trying to help my family make ends meet. No sports achievements, no music achievements, no volunteering in Africa, no charity work...not very 'rounded' apparently

That’s depressing to read. You would hope admission’s officers had a better understanding of how the world works and why some people present with less padding than others. You would hope universities were able to give opportunities across the board. Apparently not.

We are doing OK now. But u grew up with not a lot. We weren't deprived but we didn't have an extravagant lifestyle. Council House, single disabled mum. I literally new nothing about different careers until a levels and I still didn't have much clue. We didn't have a great careers advisor. And I literally had no idea about all the different jobs there where. Sounds stupid now. But we didn't have reams of information online at our finger tips then!

It may be lack of role models for what we consider 'aspirational'. But also they may have different role models such as owning their own business or being a self employed plumber etc. Some of them just value having 'money' so may get a part time job in their teens, and then choose to continue in lower paid employment rather than risk it for running up 'debt' doing F.E.

Some of those life choices may be perfectly valid, even if it perpetuates the statistics showing certain demographics don't go to uni or end up in the very top jobs. I work in a school in a disadvantaged area, and it can be hard to argue with some of their viewpoints.

Obviously there are some very academic children who will miss out on opportunities because their family don't support the idea of further education. Schools do try their best to encourage such children and their families, and we do have some amazing success stories. However, it's not uncommon to hear of people these days who get mediocre degrees and then don't go on to get amazing top jobs, so you can understand that some families are nervous about those years spent not earning. Also, if money is tight, the wider benefits of broadening their horizons and developing life skills etc, are probably harder to sell.

It's a complex issue - but if as a parent you are open to all the options, then I'm sure your children will achieve whatever they want to achieve.

@Yetanotherchange21

For myself I have learning difficulties I did not go to a mainstream school. Most things academic go over my head . It just does not go in. If there are a mix of words and numbers its even worse. Reality is I'm only likely ever going to be in low paid jobs. Alot of people make assumptions that we all have the same education/opportunities. Or that we should have tried harder . But don't take into account people with Learning difficulties or simlar.

For 2 of my children 1 is simlar to me although a bit better than me academically but she does have mental health issues so that works probably impact on her work .

Ds has done better and done A levels. He did not want to go to university. But is joining the police so he has done really well.

There will always be people who are poorer back grounds. Its just how life is.

I think that’s a really important point. The whole structure of society is held up by people in essential, manual or service jobs, many of which are minimum wage. Those people need a lot more respect than society usually affords them. The pandemic really should have brought this home to everyone. We shouldn’t be letting cleaners, porters, shop staff struggle to pay for basics. They should be able to afford the basics and more without stress. Out economy is fucked op in that respect.

At the same time, economic circumstances shouldn’t hold back any talented child who wants to do something they don’t see modelled around them.

@RosesAndHellebores '
@lovelteers DH has perfect pitch as did his father who was the church organist. Your experience is exactly why DH has a charitable trust with a primary school to ensure children have access to music.lessons and instruments'

That's so lovely to hear! I think now kids do have better access to instruments and lessons than in my day. I have colleagues ( I'm now in Education) who just can't believe that my family couldn't afford to get even a 2nd hand instrument or find some way to get me lessons but that's just the reality for so many children. We just didn't have a spare penny, but singing is free! I still can't read music properly but can sing any piece I hear through once.

And even if you get to uni, you're still not quite there.
My massive chip didn't allow me to apply to oxbridge, even though the head of 6th thought I should. I was too angsty to realise that I'd be better placed to fight the system inside it rather than outside it.

Even in my Russell group uni, I remember our philosophy tutor asking us in a seminar what schools we'd been to. And all of them knowing each others' schools, because of their names.i found it bizarre, as round here, you only tended to know kids who went to other schools locally.

'I remember the admissions officer at one uni being very unimpressed that other than being a great student and have great grades the 'only' other thing I'd done during my A Levels was be a young carer and work 20 hours a week in various part-time jobs trying to help my family make ends meet. No sports achievements, no music achievements, no volunteering in Africa, no charity work...not very 'rounded' apparently

That’s depressing to read. You would hope admission’s officers had a better understanding of how the world works and why some people present with less padding than others. You would hope universities were able to give opportunities across the board. Apparently not.'

God, no. Not in the 90s and not much better now either. I was told they might overlook my lack of resume as an exception as i was from a particular unrepresented demographic and region at Oxbridge but I said thanks, but no thanks to the posh Uni and went off to one that actually wanted me on the back of my academics and didn't give a stuff that couldn't sail, play the flute or had been in the fecking Girl Guides...

Interesting topic and thread OP.

Opportunities- often just paying bills is hard enough to do, parents struggle to give support to get ahead.
Enrichment- extra curricular, holidays, theatre, cultural, sport, all expand social skills/knowledge- only available to those with money
Confidence- The above inspire confidence
Educational support- schools expectations, you have a doctors DC and a unemployed 'underclass' child in a class- subconcious bias will favour doctors DC
Financial support- DC may have to work to help support themselves from 14 up (paper round etc) by 16 working evenings/weekends
Networking- If your network is only others in your social circle in the same position you wont make the 'right' contacts.

There will always be outliers who defy their start off status and get through by their own efforts but the majority won't.

God, no. Not in the 90s and not much better now either. I was told they might overlook my lack of resume as an exception as i was from a particular unrepresented demographic and region at Oxbridge but I said thanks, but no thanks to the posh Uni and went off to one that actually wanted me on the back of my academics and didn't give a stuff that couldn't sail, play the flute or had been in the fecking Girl Guides...

It is much better now, thank goodness.