To have no clue how to refer to "average people" in this country

[missingmiddle]

I'm new to the UK and I am really struggling with understanding what people mean by "middle class" here.

To me it means - an average family, house in the suburbs, commuting to a boring suburban job, maybe accountants or teachers with kids in state schools or maybe a smart kid on a scholarship. Not struggling too hard to pay the bills and not on benefits (aside from perhaps the wide-ranging ones like child tax credits) but they're expecting to take all 30 years to pay off the mortgage. Enjoy going camping, cinema, dinners with friends etc

In the UK it seems to mean - City professionals/lawyers/bankers who shop at Waitrose and go to the opera and take multiple foreign holidays a year. Children at private/public school, skiing and piano lessons... To me this is upper middle class.

I suppose here the first family is called "working class" but then so are families who are really struggling with money? Do British people just not observe the difference?

Class in the UK is not not about material wealth. It's attitudes, upbringing & taste too.

I know someone with an inherited title who went to Eaton & Oxbridge, but can't afford to buy a house. I would call him "upper class".

If you lost your job tomorrow and you couldn’t survive you are working class.
Middle class have private income.

(Meant to type "not only" in previous post)

Median household income after tax was £31,400. So probably less than either of the examples you gave.

@missingmiddle try not to refer to "class" at all. It's an outdated concept that should be binned. There are many more than 3 categories of people, and we do actually have a lot of social mobility in this country, despite claims to the contrary. There is no need for anyone to be defined by their roots.

I would imagine he would as well but it doesn’t make it true.

The public school accent (both parents and children) also signifies upper middle class.
Often upper class have their money tied up in property and don't earn much/ not much disposable income.
Theresa May = middle class, Boris = upper middle.
Upper middle class marry their own so no diversity.

Class exists, people get judged on it and it's complex. Grayson Perry did a really good analysis of the different types of middle class if you can get hold of it.

Grayson Perry

I tend to say 'the man on the street' or 'the person on the street'.

Class pervades everything in the UK, and I hate the way people say don’t talk about it. It’s a massive and subtle driver of inequality and because it’s so difficult to pin down, it’s very difficult to address.

Agree it’s not tied to wealth. In our village we have a family who on the surface are complete chavs. House dirty and unkempt, the wife is a bit screechy etc. So many others in the village look down on them with undisguised snobbery - but actually, they own their house outright, both the parents work and whilst one of the kids has a reasonably serious medical condition, the children are generally well behaved at school and polite. There’s another family where Dad is an officer in the Army, the children have nice middle class names, and they live in a “naice” house. Their kids are complete horrors, the mum is a toxic entitled shitshow but they get a pass because they look like middle class, respectable sort of people.

Unless you can talk about all these pernicious effects and how we can address them, the first family will always have that baggage with them. And as an academic, I can’t remember the last time I heard a working class accent…

This thread demonstrates that there are no longer genuine, clear class definitions and distinctions in the UK, just long lasting individual spite and prejudice, and tribalism. You can be wealthy and have “no class” (not as in being neutral, as in being considered someone with no taste or discernment). You can be poor but “classy.” Middle class professions, and thus the middle classes generally, used to require a relatively high level of academic qualification, also more often than not membership of a professional body, but now so many people go to university and all sorts of extra professional bodies have sprung up over the years in attempts to raise the status of different groups, and there is a far more tenuous link between academic qualifications and earning or any other kind of power, these have become pretty meaningless distinctions. Power bases have shifted, and class was always really about proximity to power and ability to influence, but people still cling to their outdated prejudices, instead of looking at who really has power and the ability to influence those in power these days, and how they achieved it. Many of the old middle class professions with their “professional standards” no longer have the income, nor the assets, to be influential in the ways they used to be, and their tiresome professional standards if anything stymie them still further in a world with little respect for professional standards or accountability for your actions.

We all have a different take on this, but my opinion is:

TLDR:
Wealth does not correlate with class.

Upper class = those born into aristocracy only

Middle class = everyone from teachers to Kate Middleton (it’s an insult to be called MC; often perceived to be dishonest and selfish)

Working class = a proud, hard-working and traditional class (an exclusive identity, and sometimes perceived to hold the most integrity)

Under class = criminals and those with no values and morals

We have the royal family - so it changes the brackets somewhat. If the royals are aristocracy and therefore our most upper-class, those beneath them are middle class and that includes a huge range from some professionals through to Kate Middleton. So you might split it further into ‘upper middle class’ and ‘lower middle class’.

You’re right - middle class is generally not average though - they are usually more wealthy than average.

However, wealth and class don’t always correlate perfectly. I know people who were born into working class families, and have remained working class, despite earning lots of money - it’s not about that.

So, working class is not just those ‘struggling’ financially - the class categories aren’t just about wealth. The working class is a traditional, proud and distinctive class of its own. My father and his family are working class and they would HATE to be referred to as middle class (it is a huge insult, not a compliment and it is most definitely not aspirational!).

He would absolutely not accept that I am working class either, and would be offended should I try and claim to be. Being working class is almost an exclusive title, not a ‘lesser’ category, but a desirable and proud identity of its own, perceived as carrying more integrity, morals and values than any of the other classes. In fact, some working class people consider themselves to have more in common with the aristocratic classes than the middle classes - for they have both been born into a certain identity and ‘know their place’ in the world without trying to change it.

The WC people I know have the most spotless homes I have ever seen, they look after everything and everyone, they are proud to be who they are, they have very strong traditional values, they do not respect politicians or celebrity culture, they have strong relationships with their family and live very close by to each other, they grow and cook ‘honest’ food, they are heavily involved in the community and work full-time, often in physical jobs.

To many, being called ‘middle class’ is not a positive thing at all and is actually a huge insult - it implies one has turned their back on the working class reality that all non-royal people ‘truly’ are, in the hope that they will reach the top of the class system - which they won’t, because a true aristocrat is only ever ‘noble born’. Thus, the middle classes can be disrespected, insulted and mocked by society as selfish, dishonest fools who would ‘sell their own mother’ to get ahead; with a ‘can’t beat them join them’ attitude instead of doing the right thing in standing up against greedy corporations and selfish politicians etc.

I am not saying I agree with this, but I certainly don’t feel positive being associated with or labelled ‘middle class’ - to me it is an insult. But, I certainly wouldn’t have the cheek to try and claim to be ‘working-class’ either. So, I have to resign myself to the fact that I probably am lower middle class.

I also think there is another class, an ‘under class’, made up of criminals and scroungers etc for whom it would be an insult to try and suggest have any working class values. Just because people are poor does NOT make them working class.

Likewise, being ‘nouveau riche’ does not ‘move you up’ the social ladder hence the saying ‘all fur coat and no knickers’.

Working or should I say non working class (living on benefits) and upper class have some similarities. Neither of them are aspirational and happy to live off the state or their trust fund. They don't have much income and live fairly modest lives. Both into drugs but of different kinds. Keep to their own. Former like football, the latter like the Arts.

No, the man on the clapham omnibus was representative of the working man, hence being on a bus

Can't say I've ever had a conversation with someone about classes, or described someone by class. It isn't really terminology we use in Britain anymore.

You can have all the money in the world and still be common as muck. Similarly, you can be as poor as a church mouse and be a lady/gentleman in terms of manners and taste
Money does not buy taste or class - think Dubai, all-inclusive holidays, Burberry, too much jewellery (esp hoop earrings, a ring on each finger, tiffany, grand national)..

I highly recommend the book “Watching the English”. Written by an English anthropologist. Explains class perfectly to us who have not grown up with it, including how class dictates everything from from their curtains and their drink orders,
to the type of weddings, and the squeamishness about discussing class openly (as demonstrated beautifully in this thread), and the euphemisms (as you note, “middle class” doesn’t really mean middle at all and is the most subdivided of them all; people at the top and the bottom know where they stand but the ones in the middle will be very sensitive about minute shifts up and down).

You see OP? the more it's explained by those who 'understand' it, the more confused it becomes. Be glad you're not part of it, it is inexplicable. Don't bring it up in conversation though, it's as triggering as Brexit for many and just as bonkers.

It is a confusing concept and I think is defined differently depending on where you are in the system yourself.
My grandfather worked on the railways and my grandmother was a housewife. They lived in a council house in a rough area of Birmingham.
However, my grandmother had trained as a children's nanny in the 1920s and worked as a nanny for the "upper and upper middle classes" before she married.
Her attitudes towards life, manners, bringing up children etc were very different to those around her.
My mum and her siblings were brought up on a low wage but with the attitudes of a very different "class". They all went on to do "middle class" professions.
Some things I remember that were "normal" for my granny were cloth napkins in napkin rings for mealtimes, good table manners, sitting up and not slouching, and the real importance of washing out the milk bottles properly! One of her catch phrases was "anyone can do it in a slovenly way but not every can do it properly". If I was playing out in the front garden and some local children came by and talked to me, she would call me in and talk about how those children were "common".
Obviously some of this grates now but it was a real reflection of some of the attitudes of the upper middle classes of her era.
I remember my mum discussing this when I was a child. She felt that my grandparents were middle class because of their attitudes and values whereas they staunchly defined themselves as working class, which based on income alone they were of course!

Yes it's bonkers. But it does exist. And it does affect life outcomes. So also pretty bonkers to pretend it doesn't imo.

I’ve heard the term “low socio-economic” to mean poor/er families. Does that help?

Yes this is perfect! I'm getting the message loud and clear not to say the 'C' word in company... So would love to hear more of these!

Are there differences in nuance between these? E.g. I feel "Guardian reader" might have different implications from the "man on the Clapham omnibus"

I always find these conversations so fascinating. I am a Kiwi and when I lived in the UK I distinctly remember a guy I worked with thinking I was posh because I am a lawyer and I was interested in rugby. Everyone in NZ is interested in rugby - you don’t have a choice 😂

I am definitely middle class and so is almost everyone I know but that term encompasses a much broader range of people and professions here than it does in the UK.

Fascinating post @Augend23

My parents were always broke when I was growing up but both were tertiary educated as we had lots of books in the house, so I never doubted that we were comfortably middle class, even if they regularly couldn’t afford to pay the power bill…

It always seems to me there are those on benefits/minimum wage households, then there's the landed gentry/aristocrats and anyone anywhere in between is middle class.