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.

It does actually matter. People who are now middle class who tell themselves they're working class have a degree of privilege bias. If they think of themselves wrongly as working class - they will not have appreciation for the struggles that face real working class people (as the OP's dude did). There is a really interesting BBC Thinking Allowed episode on this if you're interested.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zdv1

I'm working class and I have no issue with people who were brought up working class calling themselves that. I don't think you can change what class you are.

Best comment ever!
IRL I think we would be friends !

Just out of interest, if a very highly qualified and once well-off and professional person fell on hard times, perhaps through addiction or very sad circumstances, and ended up living on benefits in social housing, what would their class be? Precariat? 'Precariat with letters after name'? I think that 'moving down' may be more complex and difficult than 'moving up' - people can't unacquire education and interests that they may have developed when younger, and in a more stimulating or creative environment. They're hardly going to start knocking round the bookies or going to bingo.

He had a working class childhood, but that's where it ends. He is presumably now at a point in his life where the majority of his life has been lived MC (including his time at Med skill which is fair from WC), when he's 80 and has lived 75% of his life working in medicine/ retired on a surgeons pension will he still be claiming to be WC then?

I think he can celebrate his WC roots but he is firmly MC now.

One of my friends is a direct descendent of Russian aristocrasy, his Grandad was a baby when he was smuggled out hidden in furniture on a horse and cart. He grew up as a WC londoner, his kids and grankids (my friend) were the same, I'm pretty sure none of them ever see themselves moving in royal circles with their distant cousins or would ever consider themselves aristocracy now.

Why do you think that? He's the privately educated son of a banker and a social worker. Is it because he's northern?

My dad always maintained that anyone who had to work for a living was working class. He saw only two classes, working and landed gentry. I think there are so many shades of grey between working class and middle class it's often difficult to see where the line between the two is. I went to a comp, neither parents or grandparents went to university, but they did go to grammar school and they did earn a comfortable amount of money - my upbringing was less privileged than some, more than others, I find it impossible to know if I'm MC or WC.

I don't have an issue either from a personal perspective and I was brought up in a lower socio-economic environment and now am middle class.

The point I was badly trying to make (and is made very well in the radio show I linked to) is that people who are middle class who believe themselves to be working class have little empathy for the difficulties and struggles facing the real working class, and thus this has an adverse impact.

Of course he isn’t, irrelevant of his parents class, social mobility, upward mobility and inter generational mobility is a fact, pretending no such thing exists and we all stay the same class as our mums and dads is an Ill informed comment, just take sone time to read up on it and educate yourself

Your class certainly used to be officially defined by the job you do. White collar - middle class, blue collar - working class. I imagine it's more fluid these days. But I do not agree at all that this man is working class. He's got a WC background and may share working class morals and ideals, but he is most definitely middle class now.

Please be my friend 😂😂😂

This reminded me of an embarrassing episode at school, a private all-girls one, got a bursary, and it was no better than any other. I was ten, and the class was asked to statecwhich class we belonged to...I had no concept of class whatsoever and thought working class meant you worked. My mother was a teacher, father in the Merchant Navy, all grandparents farmers. I shot up my hand and said Working Class. Certainly not, shock horror, you are middle class! Was no wiser, but learned not to put up my hand! Such nonsense!

I'm a paramedic, the last healthcare profession to go down the degree route, but now that it has they are rapidly pushing people into Masters level. So there are many of us who started on the old in house training system, but then topped up with uni, so have degrees or diplomas, and now have, or are studying for, our Masters, to put us working at the level of a mid grade doctor as Advanced Practitioners. Where the hell does that place us in the class brackets?

Add to that I already had a unrelated degree before joining the ambulance service (like many of my colleagues) and my Dad was university educated in the 60s/70s and briefly an RAF officer, but I went to the local Comp. So am I MC or WC or what?!

I disagree. If you grow up in hardship you never forget. Just because I don't have to choose between food and utilities now, doesn't mean I don't know exactly what that feels like. It actually makes me hyper aware of my fortunate circumstances and how different they are from families like the one I was raised in.
The only time I find this to be the case is with those insufferable 'ex WC' people who point to their own rags to riches story as an example to 'prove' that anything is possible if you work hard enough and people who are still poor didn't try hard enough.

Can I be your friend @Relocatiorelocation? you sound mint

Talk of class is so utterly meaningless and tedious. What really matters at the end of the day is what you earn.
If you area low earner, you'll struggle. Middle income, will tighten their belts, really wealthy will do just fine or down size / sell off an asset.

What made up British class construct you are supposed to belong to will have no bearing on how you will survive the environmental disasters, a war, cost of living crisis or a health scare or whatever life throws at you. Only money will help you survive more comfortably.

So those saying imperiously that class not wealth is an indicator. Why does knowing your 'etiquette' trump having the money to actually improve your life?

He is right though, lots of working class people will be absolutely fine. Electricians, plumbers, bricklayers. A family member is a property developer, he said they make more money in a recession that they do when everything is running smoothly.

Too some people 'working class' represents their cultural background to others it is a social category. Sounds like the two of you don't agree what exactly you are talking about and he was being a bit twatty, bit rude of you too though.

This.

I can't stand the class system. It's horrible! I also get very confused!

My parents were really hard up. Split when I was 5 and I lived with mum and 3 brothers in single parent family. Mum did several jobs - cleaning, nursing, ironing.to earn money for us. She considered herself middle class as she went to private school as a kid and her mum was a teacher. Mum went to uni and got her degree when I was about 10 or 11, so not sure if that counts and at what point in my journey this meant I moved from working class to middle class (as apparently having a parent that went to uni makes you middle class?).

Dad lives on a council estate from when he split with mum til he died. His partners kids were all in care. He smoked weed and didn't work. However he apparently went to Oxford before his life went tits up mid 20s. So does his contribution make me middle or working class??

So.. growing up I had no idea what the flipping class I was from. Mum would have said middle class. But we had no money, lived in a tiny 2 bed bungalow and mum slept on a camp bed in the kitchen!

i now have a PhD and earn a good wage in a good job. Have a nice biggish house. We live in a very middle class town and our children are v middle class.

I think now I'm middle class, but I wouldnt say that was my roots. It's all very much squeezing people into boxes isn't it?

I will have a listen to that radio programme tonight @MissFranKubelik. Sounds interesting.

I don't think you can clearly define what class he is because class is about more than money. A better descriptor would be that l

Arrgghhh

A better descriptor could be that lower earners are going to struggle.

I think what you can be sure of though, is that he is a bit of a tosser...

You would be surprised. I would say that 90% of the time when I get to know someone I can take a pretty good stab at their background regardless of what their current lifestyle trappings are.

Surely most people are a mix?

He sounds like a dick though.

Don't get the MN obsession with class though I always read the thread! 😆