Why do people from poorer backgrounds have low aspirations

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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.

I come from a middle class background. You could split hairs and say we moved up from a lower middle class to upper middle class during my childhood. Half was spent in a working class city struggling with a lack of industry. The other half was spent in a more professional class town with a much higher median income.

My husband comes from a working class background. There was a bit of culture shock when he first met my family.

I went to (and completed) uni. So did my parents. So did all four of my grandparents (the US GI bill helped fund my grandpas' degrees, I think). We talked about when I would "go away to college" back when I was maybe 10 years old. It was an obvious and natural next step after high school. Beauty school was never mentioned. The Army was never mentioned. Dropping out at 16 was not an option or allowed: it was a horrifying prospect and an obvious one-way ticket to poverty and despair.

The high school I went to also had uni being the obvious next step ingrained in its culture.Teachers and guidance counsellors would mention the curriculum having us prepared for uni, chat to us about our applications, about what would look good on our resumes. This kind of conversation was just kind of woven in, many years before college applications were ever printed out and filled in. Some of friends came from families that did forbid certain majors like theatre, unless there was a more practical degree being studied for simultaneously. But my parents encouraged us to pursue the degrees we wanted.

We managed a smidge of social mobility through a combination of:

1. luck (privilege, stable family background, having a uni education to begin with, my dad's good timing getting into a well-paying industry in its early stages)
2. Overwork (80-hour workweeks and constant business travel being the norm for several years in order to advance in salary and role)
3. Channeling intelligence (somehow, my folks figured how how to make their strengths work for them), and cultivating curiosity. We went to the library every week. Museums every few months. The ballet, the theatre, orchestra concerts, rock concerts, art galleries maybe once a year. Sometimes local, sometimes a trip into the big city specifically for those reasons. We subscribed to newspapers and news magazines, and read these rather than watching cable news (couldn't afford cable TV for years anyway). We played instruments and took music lessons. We talked to each other about current events and social issues, sometimes over dinner, sometimes in the car.

My husband comes from a working class background. A lot less confident in school. When he struggled with math, it didn't occur to his parents to approach the teacher for help or investigate getting him a tutor. When he started to drift at the end of his S6 year, his parents sat him down at the table with a newspaper opened to the jobs section and they circled ads he could respond to. His family helped him write a CV. Uni wasn't mentioned. Didn't occur to anyone to be a possibility; uni was for people who got 5 A's on their Highers by age 17. For people from doctor or lawyer or engineer families. DH went from job to job in his youth, eventually finding an opportunity that helped him get his foot into IT, and then learned on the job and worked his way up.

DH's parents had jobs in armed forces/law and order and secretarial/purchase and ledger. His mum was a hard worker at school but was not allowed to attend uni or train as a nurse because her family couldn't afford it. Her mum was a cleaner, her dad worked with horses. DH's dad struggled with school despite being pretty smart, and came from a town where the work was either in the fishing industry or the Army. Uni was not a possibility. The Army gave FIL a chance to see other parts of the world beyond his hometown and broaden his horizons that way. Both FIL and MIL like to read too: novels and the newspaper. They both enjoy a good musical if one is in town. And they like to discuss current events with their adult children and sometimes grandchildren too.

DH probably had the good luck of getting into a middle class IT industry job, despite not having a degree, because he was raised in a city with a high demand for labour. There were lots of entry level positions available when he was in his late teens, and back then, companies were still willing to train young people on the job. He was also raised in a council house located in a middle class neighbourhood, which kept the cost of living reasonable for his parents and probably allowed more opportunities for DH to learn outside the classroom (such as getting his own PC to get stuck into and learn about when he was a teenager).

One thing MIL used to stress to me was how important it was to her that she and her children "spoke properly". She and FIL are very proud of being working class, but also very aware of classism. They discouraged DH and SIL from speaking "broad". Appearances were important too; ironed shirts and clean shoes. Whereas my parents and I will go anywhere in old trainers and expect to to be treated with respect anyway.

I think what our two families may have in common is the cultivation of curiosity. Reading. Staying on top of current events. Discussing what we're learning about with others. Getting out of the house and out of our hometowns sometimes to see what else is out there.

I come from working class parents, one an orphan from poor conditions and the other from working class heritage. What one had from their parents was a desire for their children to have better and do better which was inherited from previous generations. The orphan escaped the jobs that the orphanage would have put them into by going into a very structured employment with high expectations and plenty of opportunity to develop. One of my DH's parents came from the same background of aspiration and expectation (grandfather had gone footman to butler) but the other while aspiring themselves came from a crab bucket family.
I really think that that aspiration and expectation is at the root of the issue. School can be wonderful and yes good educational opportunities are essential, but without that support and positive expectation at home.....well I won't say its impossible but IMO its much much harder.

Lots of people with more privileged backgrounds get help in ways they don’t realise, whether that’s help from parents/grandparents, connections to get into a job, or just not growing up in a stressful environment because of low funds.

Look up the “On a plate” comic.

Lower income people aren’t lazy or disinterested in getting better circumstances, and higher income people aren’t paragons of virtue who just worked harder than everyone else. It’s more complicated than that.

The best we can do is support our kids education and try and raise them in a way that will give them the things we never had.

OP, as a parent there is loads that you can do. I am from a wc family and none of our family friends had 'professional jobs'. All four of my siblings went to university, have successful careers (lawyer, CEO, economist) etc and each of us, I believe earn 6 figures. I found university a culture shock as everyone there had parents who were middle-class - bankers, accountants, lawyers - while my school friends' parents were bus drivers, nurses and farmers.

The difference my parents made was everything. There were two things they did - first, education came first. They read with us every day and we went to the library every week without fail. All of the wc kids I met at Oxford were avid readers as children. My mum sat with my brother and I for 30-60 mins after school every day in primary school to practise writing and reading. It was always expected that we go to university. The time spent at the kitchen table was the best investment in our future.

Second, work ethic. We had to do loads of chores as we had a family business. I resented it at the time, but Harvard research found that chores in childhood was the single best predictor of future academic success.

Don't underestimate how much help other parents give their kids. Look at immigrant kids and how much emphasis there is on doing well at school. If you place the same emphasis with your kids, - and invest the time practising reading, times tables, writing stories etc - then they will have lots of choices. Doing well at school is just like a sport - practice and effort matter most. And the harder you try, the luckier you get.

@BluebellsGreenbells

£30,000 Uni debt is pennies to some rich families, to poor families it’s a house deposit and a car.

It’s about perspective.

University should be free for the brightest kids whatever their background.

But you only pay any of the debt when you are actually earning money - it operates more like a graduate tax - so do you think this would really make a substantial difference? I think free grants for accommodation and living costs would be better as that can be a barrier I think.

@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?

On the aspects of ntelligence, I'd say it's to improve various fields of human endeavours, so it advances society in various fields.

@GrolliffetheDragon

Growing up in a poorish area, near to genuinely deprived areas, and where people had extended family living very close by, as in within a street or two, there was a very insular attitude. School didn't help, as in secondary school, certainly by the start of GCSEs, the majority of children from the poorer area seemed to be written off as just going to end up working in the local factory or supermarket - perhaps the girls could do childcare or a beauty course at the local college - so why bother.

You could tell where someone lived by whether they did A Levels or either left at 16 or did a vocational qualification.

And of course the children themselves were quick to bring anyone down who showed any aspiration.

I very much found this. I was bussed into my awful sink-secondary from a more affluent village three miles away. Nearly all of us bus kids stayed on for A levels, even with retakes for GCSEs for some of them, and most went on to university. Few of the kids who walked in did, even though there were hundreds, and many got the GCSEs to. They just didn’t. And it wasn’t the school - we all went to the same one. We just had different family norms. I was not at all wealthy, or even middle class. Just 3 bed detached and living on semi-skilled wages instead of mid terrace and minimum wages. The difference is objectively not that much in terms of income, but huge in terms of disposable income and prospects. It was a bit of a culture shock, although I couldn’t have put it into words at the time. I barely can now. It was so noticeable that a whole swathe of kids just disappeared between GCSEs and A level. No one knew them outside of school or heard from them, just gone off our radar.

I still consider myself a similar ‘class’ to my parents, even though I have some things they didn’t (pre-pandemic HCP job and degree, 4 bed detached not 3, european holidays not UK) but not THAT different. I’m higher in the band, but still in the same band iyswim.

I’ve been thinking lately about DD and how it’s beneficial for her to have friends from different backgrounds, and how it would be beneficial for me to have friends from different backgrounds. We’re (very, at the moment) cash poor, but have assets so I’d like people to discuss investing with (largely so I’m not so bloody cash poor!) and I don’t know anyone I would feel comfortable discussing six figure investments with. It’s simply tone deaf to mention it to people who are struggling to get to the end of the month, even if you are also struggling. I do know lots of people with less income than me, and lots with more a bit more income (but not dissimilar to my usual income. Covid has been shit for me!), but none with more or even similar assets. And I think it’s a really good thing to mix with people from a range of backgrounds, but there do seem to be some invisible barriers. It’s easy to meet people more or less like me, or people less well off. It seems a bit harder to meet people better off, (possibly because there are fewer of them, or maybe I live in the wrong sort of area and have the wrong hobbies!?) And if I can’t grasp how to get out of my groove socially, how can kids with limited life experience grasp that professions, education and experiences they aren’t seeing in their daily lives are actually attainable for them? If you never knew anyone that went to university, how would you conceive that it was something you could possibly do yourself, even if you knew about it logically? It must seem in the same category as ‘pop star’. You know they exist, and a very lucky very few bands make it but you could never be one.

Also, I’m slightly uncomfortable with this. It feels a bit Hyacinth Bucket, to want to meet wealthier people. And that’s an issue too, isn’t it? Being upwardly mobile is openly mocked, and seen as a looking down on your roots. It’s snobby! I feel really unhappy with putting out there that I want to meet wealthier people, even though it’s because I want to (sometimes) be around people who have similar problems and opportunities to me, and talk about ideas and solutions, without risking offending them, which is a sensible reason to seek out a peer group, and who wouldn’t?

I do recognise there are worse problems to have, and I’m very privileged. And by not wanting to act like a dick, I’m contributing to widening that divide. But I still don’t want to be the wanker that humble brags, AND I still have issues, that I’d like to be able to mull over with people who might have good ideas and insights.

It’s all relative. Surely being aspirational means you want to outdo the achievements of your parents. If your father’s a QC and you’re just a lowly solicitor by the time your career ends then relatively speaking you haven’t done that well. But if, like one of my friends, your mum’s been to prison 16 times and you only go once, use the time for reflection and when you’re released you get a job, then you’ve done very well relatively speaking.

I went to a rough school in a poorer area but I was very academically able. I was encouraged by everyone to go to university which I did and was great and I did a specialist masters and got a job I loved but its not a high paying field no matter how well I do in it.
it’s only looking back that I realise most of the students I went to uni with (very “posh” uni) had been discussing career opportunities, networking and getting lined up for internships and grad jobs to lead to the famous “six figure salary”. I’d never ever considered in my life earning that. I and my family were just happy I had a degree (two) and a salaried graduate job.
I’m happy with my lot and in no way was I “underprivileged” but I do see how much family circumstances shapes the type of ambition children have.

Confidence is a BIG thing for privately educated kids. I have a good friend who works in HR for big, global type company who says she can tell the privately educated candidates from practically the second they walk in the room because they're brimming with it.
In my profession I have also noticed it but often because their self-confidence often outstrips ability and competency. Senior mgrs love it though, who doesn't love an employee who's always ready to jump up and make a speech or nail a presentation. takes the pressure off everyone else.
Look how far Bojo has got...

This thread has really made me think of inequalities. I am first gen uni.. cant help my dc with uni fees, deposit for house etc. Dd at a uni full of other more privilledged dc.. fees all paid, no student dept, post grad, first job , live in london in a relatives spare flat pay a v v small rent ( less than half what one of my dc pays in a provincial town , with student dept) so they can afford to take risks , keep most of their wage and so the priviledge continues.

I think a lot of it could be a pessimism that opportunities are really there to be grasped, or that there's any point trying to take a chance at interviews if you don't exactly match all criteria. It certainly held me back.

@HotSauceCommittee Uni fees are too much for some MC families to afford uni fee loans are given in full regardless of income.

Example 1. Today I met a man of 90 who was knighted a little over 20 years ago. His father left school at 12 and eventually worked his way up to owning a sweet shop. The man I met educated himself and became big in business. He was knighted for services to industry and various good causes.

Example 2. My own father left school at 14 and educated himself by reading and evening classes. He always ensured my sister and I had access to education. When I had to clear his house it was full of Teach Yourself books in every possible subject.

Encouragment from family and school can be important but I know a few people who did well to spite those who had low expectations of them. In more recent times I think too many young people have unrealistic plans around Celeb culture rather than being prepared to work at it. I don't include in this people who want to be, for example, dancers or footballers and are prepared to work for it and don't expect instant results.

Sorry, I'm not really making a point just rambling.

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

I am utterly hopeless at science and maths so no amount of grit would let me succeed in these areas. Perhaps though that is your ‘within reason’ caveat.

It depends on how you judge success and aspiration. If we're talking in terms of material success, I think that there are a few things that make it harder to succeed materially if you come from a poorer background.

First, awareness of opportunities (and the financial rewards they bring). If you are surrounded by high-earning people, you get a feeling for the sorts of jobs in which you earn a lot of money. I remember c contributing to an excellent (if slightly brutal) careers workshop at a local secondary school in which students were asked to imagine what sort of life they wanted for themselves. The workshop leader then costed this out and gave the students a list (usually a very small one) of the career opportunities (and required qualifications) which would allow them to afford the life they wanted. I think lots of students from wealthy backgrounds either choose or are pushed into high earning career paths even if left to themselves they might choose something more socially or intellectually rewarding.

Secondly, 'fit'. It's not a level playing field. Children with exposure to certain privileged environments will fit into those environments to a greater extent than children from poorer backgrounds who lack this expose. This is a problem for two reasons. Firstly, people self-select in their own image. They tend to view those who are like them and come from similar backgrounds as their own as being 'sound'. Others are seen as a bit of a risk or a wildcard. So privileged children are more likely to get those opportunities (for work experience, for jobs) in the first place because those who are offering them are more likely to identify with them, even if it's an unconscious bias. Secondly, unlike their more privileged peers who fit in and know the unwritten rules, poorer children will spend more of their energy running just to stand still - figuring out the rules of the game and the conventions of which they weren't previously aware. This uses up valuable emotional and intellectual resources which they could be using to succeed. So they're already on the back foot and have to work twice as hard. They also may not have the necessary material resources to gain acceptance - for example, buying suits and shirts from the right shops or giving off a particular, expensive appearance. These things are still seen as important in certain careers, unfortunately.

Finally, confidence. If you don't quite fit in for whatever reason, you need more confidence not less. Because you have to succeed on your own merits - because you're different and better, not because you're 'sound' and part of the group. You have to sell yourself to a much greater extent than your more privileged peers. That's a tall order if actually everything in your upbringing has conspired to make you less, not more, confident.

Coming from the other side, my parents are middle class, both born working class and had high aspirations for us.
They paid for courses for qualifications for us as teens. As a result I have never worked for minimum wage. I have certainly had to clean toilets and do customer service and those sort of character building things, but it educated me that minimum wage is a minimum and we can improve ourselves to earn more.
My parents massively prioritised our education. We went to state schools but good ones, especially at 11 and 16 they spent a lot of time involving us in those choices. It was always inconceivable that we might actually fail an exam.
When we expressed an interest in a particular career, they helped us research it. I can take it for granted they will have relevant contacts and career advice.
Yes I know I'm lucky and dj mg best to help others especially young people interested in my own career field.

[quote MyDcAreMarvel]**@HotSauceCommittee* Uni fees are too much for some MC families to afford* uni fee loans are given in full regardless of income.[/quote]
True but there is an expected parental contribution for living costs. This is one of the reasons students from a low socioeconomic background is more likely to choose a university close to home.
The fees aren't a problem. It's the living costs

It’s all relative. Surely being aspirational means you want to outdo the achievements of your parents. If your father’s a QC and you’re just a lowly solicitor by the time your career ends then relatively speaking you haven’t done that well. But if, like one of my friends, your mum’s been to prison 16 times and you only go once, use the time for reflection and when you’re released you get a job, then you’ve done very well relatively speaking.

It's more intricate than that. Yes, someone's dad may be a QC, and being "just" a solicitor may seem like you haven't achieved what you "should" have done. However, what is the relationship like between father and child, between father and spouse? If the child has been abused, if the parents are not happy together, I'd the kid is bullied at school for whatever reason, if the household is very restrictive or unemotional/cold, if any trauma or grief occurs, then all of this singularly or combined can cause a child to suffer with their mental health. Even just parental expectations and trying so hard to do what is expected of you, pushing yourself to burn-out, never feeling good enough for you successful driven parents.

Given any of those situations, I'd say becoming a solicitor means they have done well, relatively, regardless of what career their parents have.

Ultimately, I think if someone is happy with their life, they are doing well.

My cousin recently gave up a mental health job because the stress and anxiety it was causing her was detrimental to her own mental health, and now she's on more meds, at the time she was suicidal with the work. Now she works in a warehouse packing, but guess what? She's happier - she goes inti work, she listens to audiobooks and podcasts while she does her work and she's better for it. That is success, just not the type you are measuring for.

My parents were immigrants, one from a very working class background, one upper middle class (but poor). What they both had, and passed on to me, was the absolute faith that you could change your circumstances by hard work and choices you make. Whether that's entirely true or not is to an extent immaterial. Believing it is very powerful.

@Feelingnotatallok

This thread has really made me think of inequalities. I am first gen uni.. cant help my dc with uni fees, deposit for house etc. Dd at a uni full of other more privilledged dc.. fees all paid, no student dept, post grad, first job , live in london in a relatives spare flat pay a v v small rent ( less than half what one of my dc pays in a provincial town , with student dept) so they can afford to take risks , keep most of their wage and so the priviledge continues.

Yes, to being able to afford to take risks, doing unpaid internships in London also a big advantage.

I live in a ‘deprived’ area. At my older kids’ old primary it was the same handful of parents who did the English and Maths courses, did the Family Learning courses, joined the parents’ group etc. The school was desperate to get more of them joining in without much success. I think a lot of it came down to confidence and a real lack of it. I once did a course with the same group of mums as normal and at the end of it we went for lunch in another town about a twenty minute drive away. I was surprised when about 4 mums said they’d never been before and were nervous about going for lunch there. Not just pleased to be going somewhere new but fearful about it. I wasn’t from the area but had been to this town a few times. I was so surprised that these women, who’d grown up in the area, had never been, and were very nervous about going. And these were the ‘joining in’ mums, so the others probably feel even less confident about doing things - hence why they don’t join in.

I used to take my younger child to a playgroup in a street very close to the school. Lovely little group, cost 50p for a couple of hours including a decent snack. Surrounded by houses in an area with a 2 form entry primary school, so there must have been loads of families with under 5s who could have gone. Most weeks there were about 8 kids there. The same 8 that went every week. And most of them also went to the other local groups. My daughter at 4 is still friends with 3 kids she sometimes saw 5 days a week at various baby groups in the area. But we should have come into contact with so many more local kids that we never did. Where were they while the playgroups were on? Yes some would have been at nursery but there are a lot of families here with non working parents or one working parent and yet you never saw those kids. And I do think it’s mostly a confidence issue. The parents are not confident to take the kids to groups or libraries or clubs or museums, which all help to broaden horizons, and I’m not really sure how to rectify that.

@Flammkuchen

OP, as a parent there is loads that you can do. I am from a wc family and none of our family friends had 'professional jobs'. All four of my siblings went to university, have successful careers (lawyer, CEO, economist) etc and each of us, I believe earn 6 figures. I found university a culture shock as everyone there had parents who were middle-class - bankers, accountants, lawyers - while my school friends' parents were bus drivers, nurses and farmers.

The difference my parents made was everything. There were two things they did - first, education came first. They read with us every day and we went to the library every week without fail. All of the wc kids I met at Oxford were avid readers as children. My mum sat with my brother and I for 30-60 mins after school every day in primary school to practise writing and reading. It was always expected that we go to university. The time spent at the kitchen table was the best investment in our future.

Second, work ethic. We had to do loads of chores as we had a family business. I resented it at the time, but Harvard research found that chores in childhood was the single best predictor of future academic success.

Don't underestimate how much help other parents give their kids. Look at immigrant kids and how much emphasis there is on doing well at school. If you place the same emphasis with your kids, - and invest the time practising reading, times tables, writing stories etc - then they will have lots of choices. Doing well at school is just like a sport - practice and effort matter most. And the harder you try, the luckier you get.

all of this but with a "well done for doing your best" attitude. We were never given exam grade incentives but after exams we always had a family celebration to say well done, you have done your best. The same with at home assistance. It was presented as pleasurable time to spend together rather than an enforced grind.

Some examples:

• My mother begged me not to go to Cambridge when I was eligible and the school was encouraging it, because she felt it would be so posh that she would never be able to visit or feel comfortable with me. So I didn't go.

• On having done my first ever photoshoot and feeling very self-conscious and not at all confident about myself, my mother said 'well I suppose you fancy yourself now, don't you"

• Sitting in a PhD office and a child of about 7 comes in with his academic mum. He sits down and she says 'when you are grown up and do your phd, you'll have an office just like this'. My family didn't even understand what a PhD was or what an academic did. They knew so little about such things that it never even occurred to them to inform me about my options. They did their best. But there were routes that were closed to me because I was never exposed to them, my family didn't understand them and we couldnt afford them anyway. And this kid was brought up his whole life with an example of academic parents and the idea he could achieve that.