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?

That is sadly untrue. I did my teacher training in a school with very poor exam outcomes. By far the greatest challenge was trying to engage the parents in their kids education. It might be hard to imagine if you don't live in an area like this, but there are huge numbers of parents who have absolutely no interest at all in their children's education, and who never set foot in their children's school.

Starting a thread on MN to let everyone know how MC you are makes you MC.

Middle class =

• Sharp elbows especially in regard to their dc's opportunities
• Looking at others (in a competitive way) to see what they have and what they do and how you and your dh, and kids compare next to them
• Comparing your dc with other people's dc with a competitive view
• Looking down your nose at those you deem lower in social class than what you are aspiring to
• Seeking to associate with the right kind of people
• Reading the right books, doing the right activities going on the right kind of holidays (based on what's deemed MC or higher, not based on what they actually enjoy)
• The fishwife veneer is thin

There you are.

That's just a north/south thing surely. No one in the north would say loo!

I’ve been a teacher for 15 years, mainly in deprived areas. All but a handful of parents want their kids to do well. Some of them lack the ability to make that happen, usually due to their own negative experiences of school, health issues/addiction, and so on. But fundamentally they would all choose for their children to be happy and successful over struggling.
Not everyone’s “trying their best” is equal, sadly.

Cultural Capital is a big part of class markers.

I am WC but now MC, husband is established MC so I have effectively married up. I’m a professional, I am well read/travelled and like all the cultural class markers and engage in them all as do the children. Social
mobility has been evident in my story through a good education and parents who were chippy and driven.

However my “values” I think are still very WC. I don’t like it when then kids say what instead of pardon for example.

Nah, I’d argue it makes you aspirational middle class. True middle class know they are middle class and don’t need to be told.

Yes, though it’s not always stemming from a zoned-out lack of interest. My parents weren’t fully literate during my schooldays, so were never able to help with homework, tended not to engage notes home from school, and were petrified of parents’ evenings in case their inability to read well became humiliatingly obvious. To them, teachers were scary authority figures poised to humiliate them.

In adulthood, I’ve taught literacy in prisons, and the percentage of prisoners who struggle with reading and writing is high, still.

"What?" is posh. "Pardon?" is very much working class. "Sorry?" is the middle way.

Not money.

Oh and you can't change your class. It's ingrained in you from your upbringing.

It’s the father’s job; I am middle class my DC are technically working class, but they behave middle to upper class due to school/friends and our lifestyle being more middle class due to me.

Both of my parents were born working class, and became middle class. Their values were at odds with their upbringing, and by the time they were established in adulthood, they had little in common with their parents.

There doesn’t seem to be one clear cut definition. It’s probably not worth worrying about.
The definition of what activities people like by class are probably less to do with interest and more to do with available money/time. If you have higher earnings then you are probably more likely to go to the theatre than if you don’t. You might love to go while working on a low wage/when unemployed but struggle to justify the cost of tickets (if you can afford to buy them at all). You might struggle to go to even a free museum/cultural site because the cost of transport, accessibility without a car, feeling like you have to make a donation, having to buy food at the cafe etc. You might also work at most times such locations are open and you’ll be doing all your own household jobs vs outsourcing so you might have less free time.
I think virtually all of it is bound up with money and generational wealth.

Education has blurred the lines somewhat. DH’s boss is upper class. He inherited the company. Has no idea what DH does in terms of running the company on a daily basis, he just swans around having lunches and getting in the way. DH is more highly educated and intelligent than his boss - but his boss owns the company. That’s ultimately the difference between middle and upper class - the middle class person might be smarter and more skilled but they won’t own the company.

They're working class still. You would be middle class as you would have been brought up different.

Haha. I’ll remember this one!!!

No they aren't 😂

So what if you’re a consultant surgeon but your father was a coal miner?

There is no middle class in 2024. Jobs like teaching, nursing, medicine, social work used to be enough to support a household are now not enough to scrape by. Anyone who has to work for a living is working class.

@Rainydayinlondon

as far as I know consultant surgeon would be working class by birth but living upper class professional lifestyle with job, their offspring would be defined as same.

That's bollocks. My dad was a crane driver, skilled manual labourer, cash wage packet at the end of the week and lived from one pay packet to the next in terms of his outgoings and income.
But he was also very well read, politically aware, a erudite conversationalist, astute critical thinker and enjoyed going to the ballet (not very often obvs).

He was working class. Working class or middle etc is about where you are in the food chain of society.
While there are patterns/correlation of attitudes and entertainment choices etc that can go with the various strata (don't get many working class members at the golf club cos it's an expensive hobby), they are a false equivalence. Your opinions and preferences are not intrinsically linked to your class.

People do therefore associate some lifestyle features with certain classes but that isn't what defines it.

@RegretMisery

I totally disagree with this.

The actual working class are working 60-70 hour weeks, sometimes 2 jobs. No pension. Unsociable hours.

A teacher, once in the job a few years, earns the average wage, good pension, sociable hours, endless holidays.

Totally different.

It’s correct that you lead with income when describing your upper middle class status because it’s one thing that definitely separates the upper middle class from the lower/middle middle class.

You can be poor and middle class (and indeed much of the middle class is now impoverished due to choice of career and stagnant wages in the UK), but you can’t be poor and upper middle class. Ski holidays, private schools and second homes in the Cotswolds don’t pay for themselves.

I am upper middle in my birth country. Here, I think I am just an eccentric foreigner with expensive tastes.