To wonder if rudeness/lack of basic manners is now a middle/upper class norm?

[Rumineverything]

Hi,

So firstly, I understand that anyone from anywhere can be rude and actually I don't like grouping people into a catagory. ..However, a good friend of mine has fairly recently moved to a very posh, Conservative, middle class area and I've noticed she has become more abrupt and to me, just rude over the past couple of years. Her dc are lovely and I'm very close to them, but they're also now quite rude and dare I say, entitled. Not intentionally so, but hardly any please and thank yous, lots of "I want"s instead of "can I have?". Thing is, all the families I've interacted with in this area are all the same. It's just the norm, but I find it really irritating. There's always this cold sense of smugness and self satisfaction around.

I'm finding my irritation harder to hide in my face recently. I can feel it. I still love my friend and I know deep down she is the same person really, but on the surface she seems to have changed so much, so quickly.

Does anyone understand where I'm coming from?

[Hardbackwriter]

My grandfather, a working-class man, used to make my little brother step off the pavement when a woman approached! And if we went to another kid's house to play, we'd have to say "thankyou for having me."

I wouldn't make a male child step into the road for an adult woman, and would be a bit horrified if someone else did - and there's a whole debate about whether that kind of 'chivalry' is in fact polite or whether it's sexist and patronising. But I make my four year old say 'thank you for having us' if we go to someone else's house, and so has the parent of every child we've ever had round, so that one hasn't died out!

[Momicrone]

I think it's personality rather than so called class, I have met rude people from all walks of life

[palygold]

No! I find that the middle upwards are more polite. Some people might mistake it for being nice but it's just a veneer, but super-polite is just a default for me and others, too, I think.

If that makes sense

Your friend just sounds rude and abrupt. Different thing.

[VestaTilley]

Your friend is being an idiot. On the basis of job/income DH and I are upper middle class and manners still count for a lot around here! Some of the most courteous people I’ve ever met have been very posh indeed.

Attitudes have definitely changed re the way some children are allowed to speak to adults. You only need to watch Peppa Pig 🤬 to see that. But that can easily be dealt with by saying “please don’t speak to me like that, it’s rude” or reminding them to say please and thank you constantly. That’s what we do with DS.

[Tillsforthrills]

Sitting in a cafê with a few friends in a very wealthy neighbourhood this weekend, we witnessed shocking behaviour from toddlers.
Relentless screaming, shouting out demands, tantrums, some even hitting their parents - parents completely fawning over them and trying to appease them. No correction, no authority at all.

I’ve always been known as a walkover with my young children but this was just ridiculous.

We commented on how they’d grow up believing it’s okay to behave awfully and how entitled they’d be.

[Sortilege]

It’s try hard syndrome. In some places it manifests as rudeness. In other places it shows itself in other ways.

[5128gap]

There seems an increasing trend to conflate bad manners with 'assertiveness'.
I see it a lot on here, where people are advised to address issues with anyone from neighbour to MIL (especially MIL!) in the most blunt uncompromising manner (that ridiculous cliché 'no is a complete sentence') and compete to think up the 'wittiest' put down to anyone who causes them the mildest inconvenience.
Not sure if it's a class thing, but if MN is a barometer of the MC, maybe, as certainly I experience it a lot less in my (WC) RL. I'm incluned to think (hope) though that a lot of it is online posturing and bluster, and people don't really act as they urge others to.

[idonthavetimeorhis]

We definitely do not live in a middle class area, and we have experienced not just a decline in manners, but an increase in low level nastiness in our area

Some examples include: an older man telling my husband to 'F* off' at a petrol station (husband still does not know what he did). Kids shouting abuse at husband because he was wearing a bucket hat (again, we still don't know what the problem was, but husband is in his sixties, so perhaps it is that). Eggs smashed in husband's car. Someone muttering out loud 'God, look at the state of that!' when I walked past them (one of those occasions when an appropriate reply eluded me until the moment had passed).

I must state that we are not the only ones who experience this. It is just a general trend toward abusiveness that seems to have emerged in our area over a year or so.

[sst1234]

How odd that if you see a change in someone’s behaviour, you automatically attribute it to them moving to a ‘posh’ area. It could be any one of a vast array of reasons. I think you may have hang ups about class yourself.

[Momicrone]

Agree, class is nothing to do with

[Momicrone]

It!

[TabithaTittlemouse]

I think it’s the opposite.

[JudgeJ]

I think what counts as good manners changes over time. My great grandma found it bizarre that children/young people called older people by their first name rather than Mrs or Mr X. Apparently when she was young this was the height of rudeness

I am old enough to agree with this, I said it about 30+ years ago and was mocked, it came as quite a surprise to find that my children's friends all referred to adults around them by their first name. Thinking back to my own childhood I never referred to the neighbours by their first name, don't think I even knew their first names, I don't remember even my mother doing it other than a couple of particular friends. As an adult I still said Mrs/Mr if I was talking to Mum's neighbours.
It may seem a trivial thing and I know that many are snorting with contempt but it is a part of this break down.
The word 'entitlement' is one of the worst words of the 21st century, everyone things they're 'entitled', no-one things they're responsible.

[5128gap]

@JudgeJ

I think what counts as good manners changes over time. My great grandma found it bizarre that children/young people called older people by their first name rather than Mrs or Mr X. Apparently when she was young this was the height of rudeness

I am old enough to agree with this, I said it about 30+ years ago and was mocked, it came as quite a surprise to find that my children's friends all referred to adults around them by their first name. Thinking back to my own childhood I never referred to the neighbours by their first name, don't think I even knew their first names, I don't remember even my mother doing it other than a couple of particular friends. As an adult I still said Mrs/Mr if I was talking to Mum's neighbours.
It may seem a trivial thing and I know that many are snorting with contempt but it is a part of this break down.
The word 'entitlement' is one of the worst words of the 21st century, everyone things they're 'entitled', no-one things they're responsible.

As a child (70s) I would never have been allowed to use first names for adults. I had to call known adults auntie and uncle. My neighbours were called 'Auntie Next Door' and 'Auntie Ken' (Ken being Auntie Ken's husband. Not sure why he got a first name!)
My mum called older women Mrs, so I also had an Auntie Mrs Brown.

[lemonmintice]

How odd to think that because one friend has been rude to you, that a whole community must be the same - a whole "class" no less. Very strange logic.

[Just10moreminutesplease]

@JudgeJ

I think what counts as good manners changes over time. My great grandma found it bizarre that children/young people called older people by their first name rather than Mrs or Mr X. Apparently when she was young this was the height of rudeness

I am old enough to agree with this, I said it about 30+ years ago and was mocked, it came as quite a surprise to find that my children's friends all referred to adults around them by their first name. Thinking back to my own childhood I never referred to the neighbours by their first name, don't think I even knew their first names, I don't remember even my mother doing it other than a couple of particular friends. As an adult I still said Mrs/Mr if I was talking to Mum's neighbours.
It may seem a trivial thing and I know that many are snorting with contempt but it is a part of this break down.
The word 'entitlement' is one of the worst words of the 21st century, everyone things they're 'entitled', no-one things they're responsible.

For me, it would feel rude not to tell someone to call me by my first name. If someone introduced themselves as Mrs or Mr I would respect that, but I’d privately think they were a little self important (unless very elderly).

I don’t think the move towards first names is entitlement, I think it’s a move towards treating everyone (even children) as equals and wanting them to feel comfortable.

[Hardbackwriter]

Yes, I would say that using first or surnames as the default is a custom, not a question of manners. Personally I really dislike not being called by my first name, mostly because I don't have a title that I feel comfortable with. I'd rather people called me by my first name, which is what I'd always introduce myself with. In general I think the polite thing to do is to address people as they introduce themselves rather than follow any standard 'rule'.

[Fizbosshoes]

I sound like such a grumpy old woman but I've been surprised at the lack of manners from my DCs friends when they have been to our house for tea, particularly the boys. No please or thank you and non-existent table manners, throwing food at the table, getting on the floor, answering back or not accepting an answer that i give. (We live in quite a "nice" area, if that makes any difference!)

[Thighdentitycrisis]

On the whole I agree with @Kris02
I was born in the sixties and knew my neighbours and most other people in the village as Mr or Mrs so and so, because that’s what I heard them called by my dad. There was one very old chap who was definitely a country man with a local accent who we called by his first name only. I can only imagine that was because he introduced himself as that to my MC parents

[Pippinbird]

😆

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10942595/Mother-sparks-debate-online-asking-upper-class-people-ruder-others.html#article-10942595

[ElephantsFart]

A lot of middle class families have moved from London and the Home Counties to the area I’m in. Most of the children seem to have been brought up with a huge sense of entitlement. The parents never discipline them and only care about hothousing them. They are little shits in the main and are so different to local children, who in general have more manners.

[Mojoj]

Too many parents not instilling manners in their children leads to rude, entitled adults. It's so unusual now that any child displaying good manners gets commented on.

[NeedWineNow]

@JellyBellyNelly

Do you also blow your own trumpet in the school band.

And this sums up exactly what the OP is saying. Rude, unnecessary comment.

for what it's worth OP I totally agree with you. I was brought up to treat people as I would like to be treated but the sense of entitlement and, frankly, 'fuck you I'll do/say what I like ' attitudes nowadays are appalling. And it's not just class, political leaning, areas that colour this, it's happening everywhere.