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?

Edit: quoted the wrong post!

This is quite a good summary, and gets at the hard-to-define-ness of it all.

Whether you say toilet or loo

www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm

New class system according to the BBC

The last 2 times we’ve gone out with friends my female friend has driven, I’ve sat next to her and husbands were in the back. What class does that make us?

The complexity of it is also compounded by the British attitude towards it. Everybody belongs to a class. Everybody can work out exactly where you are in the class system within about five seconds of meeting. Even people who painfully try to adopt the affectations of the middle class are immediately spotted as interlopers. Yet nobody mentions class (in polite society), and we pretend it doesn’t exist. There’s even sometimes talk of moving to a “classless society”. But people know it’s a pretence, and everyone knows everyone knows it’s a pretence.

Middle class people don't watch football? I think millions of MC people missed this memo.

I would say that having a profession makes you middle class eg accountant or doctor.

Not the amount of money you have.

Interesting. I’m apparently established middle class! Although to be fair, I believe the house value/savings part of it is really skewed and I’d probably get a different result if I went by what my house was worth in 2013!

I never know what class we are really. I don’t “feel” middle class as such. I was the first (and still only) person in my family to be university educated. I didn’t have an affluent upbringing at all; my parents were in the care sector, but managed to own a standard house, share a car, and we did a few UK holidays per year. Growing up, we did things which may be considered middle class; like piano lessons.
Id day that working class people probably thought on is as middle class, but middle class people probably saw us as working class.

However, my kids are probably middle class. Our household income is twice the national average. Our home is worth around the national average; but that is quite a bit more than the average for our area. Our kids do a lot of “middle class” things like martial arts, guides, music lessons, swimming lessons, attend paid childcare, etc.
In saying that, our interests are very much more aligned with that of the working class, probably because of our upbringings being working class (my partner was brought up working class also) - we love a Saturday night with a Chinese in front of the TV, we don’t like “high brow” entertainment, and so on.

It really is quite complex. I don’t believe your class is fixed though; at least not across generations.

That could be quite complex though - what happens in a family where one parent is professional and another parent works in manual labour? Most of my friends are in relationships like this. Ironically; the most wealthy has two non professional workers!

Bollocks. Working class people are just as interested in education and now that more people go to university, it just means that there are more educated working classes in a way that wasn't possible decades ago.

My dad and all my older male relatives were miners. The women were generally SAHMs or worked in factories, or were barmaids, shop workers, cleaners etc.

I went to university, have multiple professional qualifications and am an expert at a global level in a very niche field. None of that changes the fact that I was brought up by a miner and a part time barmaid.

These threads always go the same way, with people who describe themselves as middle class conflating working class people with the cast of Shameless when in reality, there's a huge amount of overlap in income, education levels, interests etc and it's only if you go back a generation or two can you see a difference that is usually less well defined today.

Why turn this into a question about social class when in fact it’s about your mother’s subjective impression, which quite possibly bears no resemblance to actual reality?

So you'd definitely put me as working class (accent, general scruffiness but not in a 'posh' way).

Yet others would say that I couldn't possibly be working class because of my profession, education, salary, interests, hobbies etc.

Therefore, it's all meaningless bollocks now.

I think it is you that considers tradesmen as working class.

Um he's not middle class!

Education & mindset.

I have several sisters. One is a head teacher, two degrees. A love of reading, languages and architecture. Quietly financial stable but nothing ostentatious. Treasurer for the parish council. Doesn't gossip and seldom on social media.

Another is gel nails, constantly on social media, showing off. Hasn't read a book in years. Shares every drama and gossip. Left school at 16. Noisy & brash.

Both are kind and caring. Both raised by the same parents. One is definitely middle class. The other less so.

It’s meaningless bollocks in the sense that we shouldn’t judge anyone on superficial things like accent and dress. Our economic interests, which are based on where we are in the class structure, is far from bollocks though.

Class is as much about cultural capital as financial capital.

… gel nails are working class?

Well that is utter bollocks isn't it.

Technically it's the occupation of the biggest earner in the household that determines class but in reality it more of a feeling these days. Generally it's a split between professional/office work or manual, unskilled or retail. Some jobs don't even fall into the traditional categories because they are new, but what it isn't is about income per se. It also doesn't matter one iota, not in this day and age!

My massively reductionist theory:

No inheritance or very small coming your way = working class

Decent inheritance but still need to work for a living = middle class

Inheritance large enough that you and your cousins have never had to work (other than maybe managing family assets) = upper class

This one interests me. I was sure my interests would be “working class” (I’d choose rock music over opera) but that quiz above said the fact I had a range of interests made me middle class. Even though all of those interests are fairly working class. I guess the freedom to choose is maybe more important than what the actual choices are?

Yes., this describes my life in many ways, but I am the daughter of a binman and a cleaner, and I married the son of labourer and a barmaid — no one in either of our families had ever stayed in education past 15. We both have multiple postgraduate degrees and work in traditionally middle-class jobs, but I would describe us both as ‘educated working class’. As you say, there’s no taking away the fact of our upbringings, or that we’re still very close to our two big families where the majority of everyone else is a lorry driver, street sweeper, cabbie, binman, cleaner, shop worker etc. This is what our young DS is also growing up around.Sure, he’s having a very different childhood to that of his parents, but he’s never going to think there’s some category of ‘other people’ who do these jobs, because they’re his aunts and uncles and (pre-retirement ) his grandparents.

@Bluefell

How do you explain a love of Wagner opera and Below Deck . I'm confusing.

Actually by the old measure we are category A by the new Elite but we all have guilty pleasures.