You're not working class!

[Womeninthesequel]

Ridiculous conversation with an NCT acquaintance - we as a group were discussing the cost of living crisis and it was mentioned that working class families are really going to struggle. He scoffed and said "not all working class families, we're going to be fine." To which I goggled, and said "you're not working class!" He looked cross and said "of course I am, I grew up on a council estate, my dad was a binman."

This is true, he definitely is from a working class background, but he went to university, then med school, is now a senior surgeon doing mainly private practice, he makes six figures (which he'll tell anyone who walks past him) and his house is currently on the market for £1.2mil! He's not working class! This was pointed out to him (not by me) and he was vastly offended. He seems to genuinely believe that his upbringing means he'll always be working class, but that's not right, right? Class isn't innate, is it?

He's a bit of a dick in general, but this has raised a wider conversation at home. DH is from a working class background and is now uni educated and a professional and feels he's now middle class, so is confused by the idea that he's not.

He’s hardly MC going to NCT in the first place 😆

I would say WC is who you socialise with, influenced by (socially), work, income, education, it’s not just a mindset or “where you come from” and that’s you for the rest of your life or ‘smoking a fag outside Wetherspoons” with the rest of ‘us’ like someone put earlier 🙄 A night out at Wetherspoons is because it’s all we can afford, it’s definitely not a choice 😆

Footballers from undeveloped parts of the world earning millions a year can’t say they’re relatable to their previous villagers, only that they relate to being in the position once for a small fraction of their lives and are now in a privileged situation and socially climbed so to speak.

Staying WC is hard, it’s a burden and sometimes embarrassing, we work hard, yet skint and live pay check to pay check, we have no ‘surgeon’ friends as we have no opportunity to meet one socially, we have corned beef hash and do all our own painting and decorating 😆 Uni wasn’t an option to me and my DH (we both had to move out and start working to pay for that privilege from late teens) but I do hope it’s an option for our DC.

According to Marx, you either own the means of production or you do not. If you don't you are a worker / working class, and stratification is a capitalist ploy to divide people who have more in common with each other than they do with capitalists.

Marx wasn’t British!

Typical socialists living a capitalist lifestyle ha ha ha

He's middle class but identifies as working class.

Look at how she was portrayed on that comedy ‘The Windsors’- a comedy but like many jokes a germ of truth….

Oh I loved that programme!

Working class- the social group consisting primarily of people who are employed in unskilled or semi-skilled manual or industrial work.
More accurate to describe yourself as coming from the working class if your parents were so employed but you hold a degree

Haven’t read all the replies but here is my take:

Class is not innate. It would be more accurate to say that he’s middle class from a working class background. Whilst he was raised on a council estate, he can’t conceivably suggest that he truly understands the struggles that working class folk face in this COLC, given that he earns 6 figures and lives in a £1.2M house. He may have empathy, he may have memories of his childhood, but he’s never lived that experience as an adult! To be honest, I find it the height of condescension to continue to claim you’re working class when you’re living a very middle (dare I say upper-middle) class existence. It belittles the struggles and true definition of working class!

He can consider himself ‘working class’ lots of people who’ve done well for themselves do…but sounds like he’s an idiot who wants to be awkward…I’m sure, as such an educated fellow he can interpret what you meant and knows he doesn’t come under the category of people you were referring to 🙄

I think working class to some people means lower income families, where people are doing jobs like cleaning, bin man, post man etc. I would probably call him middle class with working class parents.

I think class is a lot more complex than occupation or income level. It's more about values .

...maybe education too.

I think of it more as being about belonging and community user29. If you grew up in one social class, for want of a better word to describe these social categories, will you ever feel truly accepted and like you belong with another social class, and if you do, will that make spending time with your family of origin and maybe your old friends more awkward?

I think changing your mindset on what class you are can be quite a struggle so although he’s a bit tactless to voice it I kind of understand. My dad is definitely middle class - from the job he had, lifestyle he lives, friends he has etc but he’s also from a fairly poor working class background and he still sees himself as a working class boy that happened to do well in work.

I can see it in my DH too - I’d say I’m solidly MC, he came from a WC background but we live a MC life - I can see he struggles to relate to the lifestyle our children have sometimes compared to his childhood and often says how lucky he feels with everything whereas I just see it as “normal”.

Nah, I'll always be working class no matter how my circumstances change. It's in your bones.

I just spoke to my DH about it - he says the difference for him between me being born MC and him not is things like it means he permanently feels a bit of a fraud at our kids (private) school parties etc!

I feel that in a situation like this — someone grew up working class and is now a wealthy professional — it would be crass to insist that they're middle class if they think of themselves as working class because of their background and who they are, but equally crass to insist that they will always be working class if they think of themselves as having become middle class.

Like the hypothetical Iranian-born man becoming a British citizen as an adult that I talked about earlier — if he thinks of himself as at heart Iranian, it would be rude to tell him no, you're not Iranian, you're British, and if he thinks of himself as at heart British it would be rude to tell him that he's not British, he's Iranian. As I said before, not an exact analogy, I know, but there are parallels in terms of culture and belonging and feeling that something is who you really are, which might be different from what outside indicators would suggest.

Class and wealth are not synonymous. He's working class. His children may be middle class.
At the other end of the scale I know a woman who is an "Honourable" but is as poor as a church mouse. That being said, walk into her tiny cottage and her upbringing is immediately obvious.

The Beckhams are working class if you go by their parents and upbringings

You sat around discussing class? I thought that only happened on Mumsnet .

He is middle class now! It's not to do with wealth (Liam gallagher is still definitely working class!), it's more to do with the world you are in, and a surgeon's world just IS middle class.

If he does a day's surgeoning and then goes home to check on his bet365 accumulators, opens himself a tinnie, and lays back on a diamanté silver velour cushion from Dunelm then OK, I'll accept the working class claim.

@Relocatiorelocation

You sound incredibly smug as well

Why are you telling DH he’s not middle class then? Because he’s not a doctor

My parents are working class, as is my brother. I am not. I have a university education and subsequent professional job. They do not. They have, and still do, work as hard as i could ever do, but at a level society seems 'other'. They are not less than me, but in societal terms are considered different. The term Working Class is not what it used to be, and neither should people see it as a badge of honour. Class shouldn't matter, but it clearly still does. Saying your dad was a bus driver should mean nothing other than that's what your dad did because he worked hard to help you succeed, saying he was because the ones you're trying to impress don't understand what it means is a betrayal of that.