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?

Like another PP, I often get called 'posh' and I haven't even had the riding lessons, etc. My family on both sides are solidly working class and ordinary. Both parents went to uni, but a northern ex-poly, and my mum dropped out. Nobody else in the family had been to uni before that.

I think it comes from being well spoken, dressing 'well' (not designer, just not tacky cheap clothes), speaking several languages and having a 'posh' name that's actually a normal name in Spain, where one of my parents is from. I find upper middle class people who went to posh schools often assume I did, too, and working class people always think I'm posh. I'm not. No private school, no gifted deposit, no riding lessons, no skiing. Goes to show how silly it all is, really.

It annoys me that you feel you need to know this.
Is this how the rest of the world sees us?
I've lived here 53 years, I've never felt the need to use class descriptors, why would anyone need to do so.
Maybe booking a GP appointment? "Hello, my name is Alexandra Elizabeth Grosvenor-Cantwell-Thorpe, I'm upper middle class and I have suspected tonsilitis".
It's not relevant and we need to move away from such ridiculous nonsense.

I do find it a bit weird when ‘middle class’ is used on MN to imply the wealthy elite - kids at private schools, several foreign holidays a year etc. About 7% of kids are privately educated, so there’s no ‘middle’ about that.
I think any sensible definition of middle class would be lot broader, but as others have pointed out, it’s fuzzy and with multiple contradictory definitions!

an aside, but does anyone else get the same vibe from people who say “I’ve never thought about/noticed someone’s class” as people who say “I don’t see colour”?

We are much more the first group, but i do shop in Waitrose as well as Tesco etc. Children had music lessons but never skied and we’re not city professionals!
i’d say we were very m/c, but not upper m/c by any stretch of the imagination!!

In my mind, the upper class are the top 1% or fraction of a %. The middle class are the next 9%. Then around 60% are working class and the bottom 30% working poor/unemployed poor/disabled. The middle class isn’t really a large segment of the population.

This is different from the US where to them “middle class” includes the working class and so most people there self identify as middle class. But the US doesn’t have a real class system per se like we do in the U.K.

The middle class are the next 9%

i thought it was much bigger than that

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

Completely agree

MN is obsessed by class in a way the real world never is. I don't think I've had discussions about social class in the same way since I sat my A Level Sociology in 1985.

It all depends on the definition used. For example it used to be a Uni degree was a definite marker that you were middle class. This is no longer the case due to qualification inflation such that more and more working class jobs that never used to require a degree now do require a degree. Nurses and police are two examples.

Reports saying the middle class has grown are based on now outdated definitions like “uni degree” and “above average wage” imho.

The middle class has always been a socially privileged and wealthy class sitting directly below and interacting with the upper class. They don’t include school teachers or engineers or even video game designers. They are more the specialist consultant doctors, the justices/judges, and high ranking politicians/military/civil service.

It's interesting - over the years I've been on MN - threads about class are one of a handful of topics that will guarantee your thread reaching 1000+ posts even with the ebb and flow of the news cycle. It's fail proof.

No one class is better or worse than another but they are quite distinct.

It would take a couple of generations to move from one class to another in either direction.

The middle class has always been a socially privileged and wealthy class sitting directly below and interacting with the upper class. They don’t include school teachers or engineers or even video game designers. They are more the specialist consultant doctors, the justices/judges, and high ranking politicians/military/civil service.

Your explanation leaves me confused @Discovereads. I know a pair of siblings, one a teacher, the other a judge. Are you saying they belong to different classes? Because I don't think they do.

I'd definitely say teaching is a MC occupation. That might not be reflected in the pay and conditions but it definitely doesn't fit with WC blue collar workers.

Teachers are definitely a step up from the janitor and the cleaners.

I don’t think you can rely on an occupation to align with class either

So you’ll get a range of backgrounds in many professions - although admittedly some occupations aren’t that disparate say a judge v plumber

Quite possibly they are same or different class. Social mobility up or down 1 class can happen in a single lifetime.

Occupation is only one factor though, so I did oversimplify things there. Would have to know whole person to really know which class they each sit in.

Yes. While I'd agree that general ideas of class markers definitely exist, they are nowhere near as well defined or obvious to an onlooker as MN seems to claim they are. I have a very "posh" accent, am university educated, and work in one of the approved middle class roles listed on the thread. I also grew up in social housing with a mum who didn't have a single O-level. Despite claims that class is about as quantifiable and observable as height or weight, people generally assume I come from a far more affluent background than I actually do.

I don't feel particularly hard done by. I had a happy childhood, went to a decent comprehensive and was encouraged to work hard - even if it was more out of the sentiment of "anything worth doing is worth doing well" then a pressure to be uber academic. If pushed to answer, I'd say I have a working class background but would call myself middle class now. Not out of wannabe social climbing or wanting to claim I've overcome particular adversity but just because it feels disingenuous to say otherwise.

Not all working class is “blue collar”. Blue collar simply refers to working class + manual labour. Since the 1980s it’s been recognised that there are numerous white collar jobs that are working class jobs: Customer service, IT support, retail, office admin, low level civil service, etc.

Hilarious how snobby the WC & MC are about the others.

The WC have "spotless homes"
MC "anyone can be slovenly, but we have standards"
WC & MC about UC : "Those useless toffs!"

My limited-experience appraisal is that the more upper class someone is, the less snobby they are.

Working class is the largest demographic so of course there differences within it. School teacher is working class not middle class imho. Of course the myth that all working class is blue collar is a bit of propaganda used to make people feel higher class or better off than they really are. But objectively, a plumber is just as skilled in his/her own way as an Early Years teacher and has a higher income.

This is just like people who say they 'don't see colour'. Pointless self aggrandising tripe.

The class system permeates just about everything in this country. Claiming it's irrelevant is ridiculous.

The wealthy elite certainly don't make up 7% of the population. They are the 1%. I'd say probably even less than that - more like the .1%.

Going to a private day school and on several foreign holidays a year doesn't make someone 'elite'. That's what I'd consider solidly middle class. Both parents with good professional jobs, comfortable, nice house, EasyJet flights out to a second home in France or Italy, but could lose it all if the parents became ill and unable to work.

The wealthy elite are people like the landed gentry. Generations of almost unimaginable wealth handed down, huge country estates, children at public school. Or oligarchs - homes in somewhere like Kensington with underground swimming pools, holidays on superyachts in the Med, private jet (or at least first class flights) to Dubai or the Maldives, live-in chefs, cleaners and nannies. These groups are the wealthy elite, not a couple of doctors sending their kid to private school and going on holiday to Lake Garda.

The question from the op doesn’t make much sense as it’s mixing two separate things - economics of cost of living crisis and social strata

However that doesn’t mean those different sections of society aren’t there - usually called class system

I don’t think every profession can be tied to somewhere in the class system but some tend towards one section

As someone who didn’t grow up here the main signifier to me seems to be accent, we don’t really have that difference to the same extent

The class definitions aren't clear cut. You can have a family that appears well-off, nice brand new car, biggish house, but are living paypacket to paypacket. On the other hand you can have a family that lives in a tiny rabbit hutch with an old banger of a car and be earning well above the average salary. It's mostly about appearances.

I've only read the comments up to page 4 but surely the North/South divide is key to this discussion. I'm from a lovely market town in the countryside, daughter of a University graduate and lived in a detached bungalow - Posh! Nope - I'm from the North! So a beautiful "thick as fuck" accent (although I'm not) and considered lower middle at best.

Husband was properly rich - new car on the drive on his 17th birthday! But he's Welsh so he's common too 😏

My understanding of class went in the bin after I met some Southerners 😉

(Being a little tongue in cheek but my point is serious)