To ask what makes you middle class?

[Wantobeareader]

I am not from the UK so not very familiar with these class definitions (which personally I cannot stand) but I am curious to understand what people mean with MC. I thought it was a term referred to the fairly wealthy but apparently lots of people and incomes seem to fall into that categories.
So, how would you define Middle Class? Feel free to type a description of a typical MC person you can think of :)

Generally a salary is a fixed annual amount, a wage is an hourly rate, or possibly a day, there are exceptions like the self employed or consultants.

but if you think in broad terms someone who works in retail or hospitality is likely to be paid by the hour, where as someone like a teacher is paid a salary.

there are exceptions clearly, too many variances to have one rule fits all. You need to contextualise it with is it skilled work that required further education or is it unskilled or semi skilled that did not.

I think we are back to money. You can pay freelancers anything from minimum wage upwards.

My middle class children complain when I buy Kettle chips, Tyrrells are much better apparently.

there's economic middle class (nice clothes, car, house with a mortgage or paid off, holidays abroad) and educated middle class (has a degree, values education, wants to encourage kids in education and going to University, has cultural interests and pursuits, likes reading, understands politics, has a wide range of views on many different things)

There are some fascinating cases, where it'd be really difficult to say, even in the days when the class system was much stronger and more clearly defined.
I heard a story on the radio once, about an early 20th century girl from an aristocratic upper class background. As a teenager she fell in love with a working class boy and ran off with him. Her family disinherited her, and I don't think she saw them again. But she was fully accepted into the northern working class community of her husband's humble birth. She ended up working in the local biscuit factory and brought up their children in the area, and lived out her days there. The question is - had she become working class? She definitely wasn't middle class. Upper class birth, but working class life from about 16 years of age. Obviously it was an especially unusual situation.

@parkinghere

I think it is odd to be in that between place where you don't quite fit in anywhere fully, not even with the "nouveau riche". On paper class is about income and education but in reality if you aren't brought up middle class its apparent to others who were and they will look down on you for it, sorry to those who would deny this but I've experienced it far too many times even from friends and know for a fact it happens.

So do you think Carol Middleton was looked down upon at the school gates? Not by William's lot who teased Kate about her mum being an air hostess but the middle class people they grew up with at their prep school and Marlborough.

Wow I am amazed by the number of comments this thread has received. Some of the definitions in here make me laugh. Asking people to take off their shoes is WC/MC for some, type of crisps bpugh etc.
I find this whole class system really depressing tbh and sorry people still feel so strongly about all this.
Someone above said being French also makes me MC, we do have blue collar workers in France too, we are not all wealthy in professional
jobs so not sure that the pp meant with that?!

nonsense. all that does it propagate the notion that the working classes are thick, vulgar and trashy.

i prefer a country pub over a wetherspoons. i know how to eat with proper cutlery and proper etiquette, i have a good vocabulary and don't use the local vernacular, none of my boys have ever had gel in their hair, in fact eldest sons is past his shoulders. They also eat "normal" foods the same as us, except the eldest who has feeding issues but genetic anomalies know no class boundaries. I go to the theatre to see ballet and opera, eldest comes along to anything i'll let him and has sat through The Magic Flute to declare he loved the music. We're all well read. I have a degree. I feel perfectly comfortable talking to people in positions of authority. None of that makes me any less working class.

Nothing classy about looking down on someone - shows a lack of manners and good breeding but isn't it funny how it seems that the middle classes are seen to have good manners but on this thread - it all seems a bit on the surface. You're all fighting over scraps to feel more important - what a waste of a precious life. I'm better than him because I read books and go to the opera - what a load of guff!

If anyone in your household HAS to work, you’re working class. You can wear Boden and buy National Trust membership, watch ITV or watch BBC, drive a banger, read lots of books, have swishy hair in a ponytail, drinks pints of bitter etc. It makes no difference. You’re either a worker or a land owner.

I for one am a high earning worker, as is my DH. We can afford for one of us to lose our jobs but not both. Therefore we live in a working class household.

That doesn’t work either - we don’t have to work, (we do though) because we’ve saved enough to retire comfortably but having achieved that goal doesn’t change our class.

They definitely are lol.

This is nonsense. If this definition stood there would be no middle class, or very little, it would be made up of the very wealthy or retired, or those solely on benefits.

I respectfully disagree. The vast majority of households couldn't afford to have everyone out of work. That includes teachers, doctors and even lawyers, all of which are middle class professions. Historically the only people who could afford to be ladies and gentlemen of leisure were the upper classes.

I think people are just deciding for themselves what it means to be middle class. But in strict sociological terms, if you're a trained professional, on a salary, you're middle-class.

So a self employed plumber isn't but a plumber working for a building company is middle class ?

Yes, and that's professions only - teaching, law medicine.

So, teaching assistant = middle class, marketing manager = lower middle class if you actually have line management responsibility/working class if you don't. Debt advisor = middle class, financial consultant = working class. Estate agent = underclass.

Plumber who owns a business paying lots of other plumbers sone of whom have line manager responsibilities for other plumbers in their patch ?

They are all a trained professional after all

And probably earning a lot more than the teacher

That's kind of the point. The only difference between what a lot of people are calling middle class and working class is judgment. This job is "better" than that job. This type of school is "better" than that type of school. This accent is "better" than that accent. This brand of food is "better" than that brand of food. Etc. By better, they mean £££.

Has no-one yet mentionef that MC is also subdivided into Lower MC/Middle MC/Upper MC. Just stating you are big standard MC is generally not perceived to be refined enough 😁

My point is that if PW lost all of his money tomorrow he would not suddenly become working class. David Beckham is a wealthy working class man.
Money is only a small part of what we think of as class.

Class all comes down to the privilege money brings and in that way, it is all about money - old money. But it's money all the same.

Tbf they’re right. Kettle chips are too hard

@Dogfisher if PW had never had money then he could have been a homeless person? Same as Beckham. I think maybe middle class as a concept has become way more fluid, like everyone would class themselves as some shade of middle class.

Plumbers aren't counted as professionals, they are highly skilled manual workers, same with electricians etc. Professional means working in one of the traditional professions such as medicine, dentistry, the law, accountancy, teaching, or people who are degree and higher educated who have done further qualifications.
Undoubtedly some plumbers do earn more than teachers but income alone isn't a class indicator.