What makes you middle class?

[Singlemum90]

So a comment from my mother a few years ago has stuck with me ever since then really. When I was no longer a single mum, and found myself a little less skint, she said 'oh it's so good now you're just a nice middle class mum, I'm so proud of you'

Aside from her clearly looking down at me before this, and deciding class was what defined how she felt about me- I have often wondered what made her decide I was middle class at this point.

How do you define it? (I feel it's very subjective) Is it what family you are born into? Your income?(And what income makes the 'classes'? Is it a specific job type? The way you stick your finger out when you drink tea?
Or is it just a shitty way to divide people and how they feel about themselves?

I know what you mean.
The British, or more particularly English, class system seems pretty far removed from Karl Marx.
I think he believed the bourgeoisie were simply those who had means of production. Obviously society and industry has changed enormously. But, there are modern-day equivalents. I agree with you about landlords - to me that's the ultimate means of production, in our current climate with housing, especially rent, so expensive.

If your financial position is secure, you can be happy in any financial zone. The art is in not wanting more than you have. I no longer care.

Hello! That quiz places me as elite. I’m not. V WC.

I know many ‘upper class’ people through marriage and literally the only people I know that use the word common are on my side.

My husband and all his public school friends watch love island, football etc.

Huh. I'm middle class.

I once drove about 11 hours with husband, his brother and his brother's wife. Husband drove the first half, I sat in the front, other couple in the back.
Then husband and brother swapped and BIL drove, with his wife next to him, DH and I in the back.

I’d always heard it was whether you read a broadsheet newspaper (middle/
upper) or a red top (working).

I think that means you are a swinger.

This thread is getting into the realms of Carry on Films now! Which is great as they were fab and I love that it's making me properly snort with laughter!

Class is such a weird and wonderful thing - the way it brings people like the LovelyTheresa out of the woodwork.

I'm honestly still sniggering at someone, who claims to be a millennial ( born after 1980) asserting their superiority in 2024 by saying they "had the classics read to them at a young age" 🤣

Fuck knows what this makes me (other than a pedant clearly), but surely someone who was (puts on best plummy voice) so 'properly educated', would have been informed by their governess, while she was imparting the classics, that none is singular.

@LovelyTheresa
"God knows. None of you are really middle class, I suspect."

None of you IS middle class I think you mean Tessy 🤣🤣🤣

The class calculator is actually a load of nonsense. It doesn't take educational status or mindset into account. I tried it several times changing the hobbies and it didn't change the result.

I feel like there should be a board or a thread where you can post your circumstances and be classified by mumsnet. It would be interesting to see people’s logic anyway.
Despite the insistence from
some that everyone knows their class and what class other people are I strongly suspect most of us are unsure.

The only thing that would prove is that class is subjective, there's no logic involved.

You are right but I still think it would be interesting as individuals clearly think their classification system is a real thing that everyone follows. It must be important enough to some families that it’s a common subject to be discussed. I wonder if it only comes up a lot if you don’t feel like you quite fit in with your school/work/social group and otherwise you are rather oblivious to it most of the time.

It must be important enough to some families that it’s a common subject to be discussed.

I don't think I've ever discussed it as a family, only here.

No, I imagine it might feel rather personal with family, especially if individuals or subgroups within families sit at different parts of a notional class structure.

Like in my family, my widowed grandfather took my father out of school at 13 because they needed his messenger boy wages, and he stayed at that company, earning very little and refusing promotions because he didn’t want ‘hassle’, till he retired. He and our mum had a lot of children and we grew up at the poorer end of working class — outdoor loo, food declining in quality/quantity towards payday etc.

His younger brother refused to leave school, got himself onto an apprenticeship and ended up being a marine engineer, earned far more, had a middle-class lifestyle (golf, holiday home in Spain, large house in the suburbs), and his children grew up more ‘prosperous lower-middle’.

The gap widened throughout our childhoods and we drifted out of contact with our cousins.

Similar thing happened with my mother and her siblings — she was the eldest, taken out of school and put to work by her widowed mother, while her younger siblings got more education and options.

I’ve only ever seen it discussed here too but I think some people must be super aware of it and have lots of comments made grown up about class perceptions and fitting in etc. Discussed is maybe a poor choice of word but I don’t see how anyone can get to having such defined ideas about class without it being stressed as being important them growing up.

I suppose within families you discuss aspects of class, without mentioning class per se - e.g. I'm unusual in my extended family in not having been to private school - but I grew up being quite capable of discussing them, knowing which ones locally and nationally were considered good, despite it being irrelevant to my own life. I also knew which newspapers one should read, all sorts of things like that.

Most people in most societies absorb all sorts of codes about how you live there, and while a lot of it may be specifically taught ("we don't do that, darling,") to children, it's not something you go to lessons for, in general. (Do finishing schools still exist? I imagine there are still places you can learn manners and deportment if you really want, but it seems rather '50s to me.) Things are just passed on and we don't think about it very overtly. And everywhere does that to some extent, but the English class system does seem a more extreme way of doing it than other places - however, I don't think it's as it once was, partly because TV and the Internet means we all have more access to people whose lives aren't like ours.

It’s a tired cliche that ‘old money types’ don’t spend money, preferring to drive bangers and wear moth eaten clothes. While some old money types may not buy things from ‘flashy designers’ (plenty do, incidentally. I know plenty ‘old money’ types that have quite the LV/Hermes/Dior/Chanel collections), that doesn’t mean they’re not keeping brands like Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli in business. Old or new, those with wealth spend what they want to, within their means.

The old money cliche also usually gets trotted out by those who are neither old nor new money, but who want to put the flashy little upstarts in their place as beneath them in the class spectrum. While some old money look down on new money, there’s quite the history of new money bailing old money out (see the Dollar Princesses).

My husband is solidly American upper middle class, whereas I would be new money I suppose, from parents who were white collar/‘the middle class’ in a socialist country.

It may be a cliche but that doesn't mean that it isn't true. The richest people in DDs school are the ones driving 15 Yr old Subaru Foresters, the men wearing old cord trousers. Their money is in land rather than in their pockets.
They don't give a flying fig what anyone thinks of them. It is just a different mind set/attitude.

@MorrisZapp so true. I also teach in a working class area. Although the parents want them to do well and seek support for them, a lot of parents are very disengaged from education and have a many more issues going on.

Well you’ve said it yourself right there - land rich rather than cash rich. I don’t know anyone that is old money and cash rich that fits that stereotype, and I’ve met a lot. I’m sure they do exist, but not to the degree that mumsnet seems to think they do.

I honestly do know people like this. They literally have nothing to prove to anybody so absolutely don't care about their perceived wealth. They are so well off they don't understand being poor at all, I grew up poor and they have absolutely no idea what it means. It's not just out of touch but they literally can't imagine or comprehend it so I don't even try to bring it up. The poorest people they have met are usually reasonably well off. The ones I know are cash and land rich and own multiple large residencies around the UK. When I first met one of them he was so posh I thought he was speaking German lol. I'm not saying they never spend money, they both spend enormous amounts of money on their pets, skiing and various other pass times that most people can't afford, but what they prioritise is just vastly different.

What people prioritise is individual, surely? You get ‘flashy’ old money and flashy new, as you also get understated old and new, as you get people that will be both depending on what they feel like. Like I said, I’m not disputing that there are those that will fit the ‘rich but with an impoverished aesthetic’ trope, but ime it’s not to the degree mumsnet would lead you to believe. I haven’t personally encountered any, and I’ve spent years in and around those circles 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m not suggesting that they care, or should care, about what other people think at all. My point is that old money and new money will buy what they like, and if what they like is a Louis Vuitton bag then yes, they’ll buy it.

CaterhamReconstituted you say that you cant change your class..? What do you base this idea on ?

I agree with this. That's how I'd define it too.

I agree with @Bjorkdidit that it's too subjective to be judged by some kind of scoring matrix. But most people just somehow know anyway. We don't need MN to arbitrate.

We also don't need a scoring matrix or set of measures to spot assholes.

I'm not sure if having the classics read to you at a young age makes you upper middle class, but I'm certain that telling people about it makes you an asshole.

My Emma Bridgewater mug collection?