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.

I don’t think it’s just about profession. @WanderingFruitWonderer @fiftytontheresa
If you asked most people that I live near, school mums I see every day and the work with (there are loads of them), I’m pretty sure none of them would see me as MC!!

They are pretty much all firmly MC and it’s a very wealthy area. I have quite a prominent role and both live and work in the area, my children go to private school, I’m well educated, but I’m definitely not part of their MC world and don’t think I ever will be, which is not a problem for me.

People are friendly and in many ways I fit in, but I’m certain I’m seen as WC and I certainly feel it. This doesn’t bother me and I don’t think it bothers anyone else either. There are significant differences between me and the actual MC people I live and work with, despite my education being ‘good’ and my job being highly thought of by many people in this area.

That's why understanding of the correct sociological definition of class is so very important.

'Correct' sociological definition? What do you think that is? What are you basing it on? I'd be interested to know.

The occupation class tables are solely based on occupation, don't take other factors into account, and so are more vague.

find this concept most interesting. Is it possible to go down as well as up? Upper class become middle or even working class in one or two generations?

I live in a place where this is a thing. Inherited money has all but run out, and now they are slipping into financial obscurity and can not afford the cultural capital, private schools, stately piles they have always had. What happens then?
Do the children become middle or working class?
Given many slip into mediocre non professional jobs are they still even middle class?

Bold fail^

Agree that it is interesting @Kissingfrogs25

I know of a few impoverished middle classes. It really isn't only about occupation or wealth I agree (if that was you).

Upper class, those with inherited titles, would be less likely to suddenly become working class.

I consider myself ( for the purpose of this thread. I don't go around spouting that I'm middle class in real life, that would be awful) upper lower middle class. I don't think I, or my children, if we became completely impoverished and in lower paid jobs would suddenly become working class, and accent, background, private education, and so on would mean we wouldn't be accepted as working class by those who genuinely were (plenty of threads here over the years about that sort of thing).

I think downward social mobility might be less likely for the established middle classes, whatever their change in fortunes. Easier done for the person, perhaps, who has a working class background to revert back?

Interesting anyway !

I was just talking to my son about this a couple of days ago: it's so hard to define.
My parents were both from very typical northern working class backgrounds (both my grandad's were coal miners) but my dad went to uni after being in the Royal Engineers and qualified as an architect. I was brought up in a large house in an affluent area, my mum was a SAHP and we were never short of money so I have always felt that to call myself working class is an insult to people who have had a working class upbringing.
My dad always insisted he was working class though and very much kept his values although you would never have known his background from meeting him as he managed to cultivate an air of poshness and he definitely had a middle class outlook and tastes.
I think the traditional model was based on occupation so people in a 'profession' were considered middle class while those in more manual jobs were working class but these days someone in a trade could easily earn more than someone in a professional role and therefore have more of the trappings of middle class life.
It's all a bit redundant now really.

That’s an interesting thread!
I technically consider myself working class because I was born from an extremely poor background (think living on food stamps and my mom being black listed at the bank), didn’t get a degree and technically work a job that’s considered working class/low-income though I have now advanced in my career enough that I work in a very nice side of my profession and currently earn 6 figures which I guess technically puts me in the middle class?

But for me the 6 figure salary is only but a number (I do fully understand that it creates a massive difference in abilities to purchase and in financial stress level though which is a massive privilege and non-negligible), it doesn’t define me AT ALL. My working class background has shaped m, and still shape me today, it even shapes how I interact with my current salary (I am still very much the Savy type and will wait months to purchase something I want and could easily purchase that same day because I have a hard time indulging in unnecessary purchases, I don’t do brands and even when it comes to food you will still see me pick the cheapest food and only buy meat every couple weeks as a treat. It’s ingrained in me to save and avoid debt but yet share what I have with others. I could probably have a high mortgage based on my salary but, I am actually looking at the very cheap homes (with lots of work needed), my “dream car” is a Mini Cooper (albeit the convertible one) but I have been postponing buying a car for years because I keep thinking I can walk or just take the bus, I am even reconsidering buying the car I want (which would be several years old and second- hand anyway) for an even cheaper second-hand model as it seems silly to spend extra for something that will equally drive you from A to B.

So while technically I have the purchase power of a middle class family and do not struggle financially the way a lot of the working class do anymore, I still very much feel like a product of the working class and therefore identify more with the working class. The middle class is just that box my salary puts me in but working class is where I come from and how still where my soul belongs in many ways.

Regarding class mobility, there is a ditty (possibly a song, I only ever heard the first few lines of so) that I heard in my family growing up;
The working class
can kiss my arse,
Ive got the foreman’s
job at last!

Which is a cynical take on the cohesiveness of the working class and upward mobility.
As someone who grew up middle middle class but with upper middle class aspirations (parents sent me to private school, tried to make me ride horses, shoot birds etc) I can confirm that people’s perception of other people’s class is very variable; one person’s posh is another person’s pleb. I’m now a tradesman, so I guess middle or lower middle class? but luckily my posh accent is so comically slovenly (Edward Fox on barbiturates) that people often think I’m foreign, which works for me!

I am chuckling at the quiet outrage this must have caused your mother/hyacinth bouquet and no doubt your dp wished they had invested in a second home somewhere exotic instead of wasting their savings on your foreign accent and lack lustre aspirations god forbid!
So glad you were true to yourself and followed your own path, and made yourself homeless in the class system by blocking ‘the markers’ so splendidly!! Good for you - think of all of those pheasants you have saved over the years too.

I’m now a tradesman, so I guess middle or lower middle class?

I don't think a tradesperson, skilled or not, is typically thought of as middle class. Haven't you read Austen 😅

Though your background does sound like it was middle class, which alters things slightly.

Well I suppose it depends on one’s perspective, whether you are looking up or down on the class hierarchy, whether you are looking at it from a perspective of labour ideology. Personally as a self employed tradesman my labour is not commodified/exploited for the profit of an employer, so I’d put myself squarely in the middle, somewhere!

To be fair, first of all my mother is from a solidly labour & union background, so I get a golf clap from that side of my family, but also for that generation, people had a different perspective on class. If you ever watch old black & white films of random people interviewed on the streets of city x or y in the 50s or 60s, you’ll see they almost all put on this ridiculous House of Windsor accent, irrespective of whether they are seamstresses, bus conductors, whatever. People were embarrassed of their class and their accents, sometimes cripplingly so. I believe my father, who is in every way a very sweet thoughtful man, very successful, but of humble origins, was very affected by this.

If you ever watch old black & white films of random people interviewed on the streets of city x or y in the 50s or 60s, you’ll see they almost all put on this ridiculous House of Windsor accent, irrespective of whether they are seamstresses, bus conductors, whatever.

Some did to some extent, but their accents weren't quite the same no matter how much they tried to emulate. The words people use also give away their class, part of the infamous 'rules' people talk about the established middle classes using. I think that still applies today.

@angeIica it does! People do change the register of their speech, including their accents. Ive heard a mum at our school speak to her mum in a pronounced regional accent but to everyone else she speaks in a fairly untraceable accent, and she’s fairly young. Certainly my mother uses one very naice accent in the vast majority of her life, but when she gets pissed with her family she sounds like a Mancunian fish wife.

Sorry for my late response to your question. Well, I must preface my answer by saying that I am not a sociologist, and unlike PPs I don't have a degree in sociology. I myself get very confused by the class system, and generally get upset by our particular version of it in the UK. Society has changed dramatically since Karl Marx, and there are many confusing cases. But I always was taught in my own upbringing that if you have a profession, rather than a manual job or a trade, then you're middle class. It was a surreal conversation a few years ago with a very obviously middle class landlady I had, who told me she identified as working class (bonkers in her case) that I first realised some people see it differently. Whereapon I developed a very amateur interest in the subject, and read as much as I could - from articles to text books. Of course there's a lot of theory regarding class. But the one clear thread throughout pretty much all sociology literature is that top professionals are, without equivocation, middle class. Class isn't a feeling. The point of class awareness is to address inequality and disadvantage etc. Doctors and lawyers and so on have huge social capital. It's impossible to be both a doctor and working class, the one precludes the other. It's nothing to be either proud or ashamed of, it's not the thing that defines a person. But it is also a fact. Re Karl Marx, though the world is much changed, top professionals do have a means of production in some sense, and there's no way they could ever be considered the proletariat in light of his theories.

Re downward social mobility read this -

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/12/british-middle-class-young-people-class-home-ownership-job-security

I think the gilded age of large scale upward mobility is largely gone. Downward mobility is alarmingly on the increase. This article was written in 2020, and with the current state of things and the forthcoming winter of discontent, it'll be vastly worse, and it's very worrying indeed

Feel sorry for English people. All that garbage to deal with all the time. As soon as you open your mouth, you're judged - and judging others.

I hear it on English radio, when they advertise gambling they always use a working class voice. How rude! I know a few people who gambled (and ruined lives) who were definitely not working class!

What if you all just refused to buy into it?

Not if you're privileged, right?!

What if you all just refused to buy into it?

It's pretty hard to re-write the programming of your upbringing, whether you're English or not. You can choose not to act judgmentally when it comes to class, but you can't really unlearn the ability to spot noticeable class-related markers. Social and cultural conditioning isn't specific to the English though, obviously. Other countries might be much less class-ridden than England, but I'm sure there are plenty of other things on which they judge each other.

Also,what do you really mean by buy into it? Most people aren't actively perpetuating the class system by deliberately buying into it. People just are how they are, and it just carries on existing!

@sheenapunk and @Fairislefandango I actually agree with bits of what both of you are saying.
I agree with most of sheenapunk's post, as I do feel sorry for us too! So much of it is nonsense. It causes angst and confusion. Wildly differing interpretations of what defines class too, as this thread demonstrates.
But I also agree with Fairislefandango about not buying into it etc. I actually don't like the class system at all. I live a somewhat alternative life, and have opted out a bit. Different influences in my background, and no clearly defined profession. The subject of class came up (with the former landlady I mentioned before) and I said I felt classless, as I've opted out etc. She told me that was impossible, that you can't be classless! I disagree. But the point is, people won't let you 'not buy into it' try as you might! It's a nightmare!
Which is why I personally feel the only way it makes sense is on profession, education level and economics etc. In terms of policy to make society fairer. All the other stuff is just made-up convention.
I still have no idea what class I should identify as 🤷‍♀️