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?

Oh my goodness, yes! My personal bugbear! I've known so many very obviously middle-class people declare boastfully how working class they are, usually on the grounds that their great great great great great grandfather was a farm labourer or something! Drives me bonkers. I actually think it's far worse than being fake posh. Being fake working class is very unfair on those who have had genuine working class struggle. It also makes a mockery of sociology.

Which is interesting because his kids will not be.

People build entire careers around it. Jess Phillips for example is a middle class person who pretends to be working class. Her father held a chief executive position within the health sector. Everyone thinks she’s working class because she is gobby and has a regional accent.

Another example is Jack Monroe, a well-educated person from a middle class background, who pleads poverty and has made an entire career on writing recipes you can make for 30p (but when Lee Anderson, an actual working class person, says basically the same thing, he is scum).

But they might be working class even as adults. I’d say it will depend on their interests and level of education and work when they’re adults. But yes they may be middle class.

You see, with the greatest respect, I'd say, from what you've said here, that you have working class origins, but that you've been socially upwardly mobile and you're now solidly middle class. An educated salaried professional home owner is the definition of middle class in my view. That's always been my understanding.

Honestly I think these days it can depend on who you are actually talking to and their personal definition.

This has a stab at explanation starting with history and trying to apply to UK today.

I personally don't think profession or money defines someone as middle class these days. I think a lot of it is upbringing and the background you come from.

education
speech
manners
how you spend/save your money

The ruling classes are laughing at you over their port and cigars.

Some people aren’t very observant, though, or have flawed or incomplete notions of the shibboleths of the class they’re aspiring to be accepted into.

John Betjeman’s ‘How to Get On In Society’ (1958) relies on the reader understanding that the poet is mocking the nouveau-riche pretensions of the non-U hostess, and that what she believes to be social conventions that will her allow her to ‘pass’ in the class to which she clearly wants to belong (fish knives, frills on the cutlets, meals being ‘daintily served’, a husband who rides, ‘elevated’ language like ‘requisites’ and ‘vestibule’ etc etc) are in fact betraying signs of her non-U status.

The poem gets its satirical effects from a speaker who has misunderstood the class shibboleths of a social class she wants to be a member of.

And of course some readers don’t get this, either, and as a result misread the poem — the commentary on this website for instance thinks it’s about ‘the superficiality of upper-class society’:

https://allpoetry.com/How-To-Get-On-In-Society

TL;dr — people misread other people’s social class all the time.

How so?
Surely social mobility is a reality?
I do agree there's an upper upper elite that is probably virtually impenetrable. But, between working and middle there's lots of movement I think.
Having said all this, I'm totally confused about what class I am myself?! A mix of working and middle in my upbringing. Probably lower middle overall. Definitely a lot of middle class cultural influences. But, due to health struggles I've been held back, and I'm as a poor as a church mouse! Also not a home owner, so middle class feels inaccurate. Genuinely don't know. Can I be classless?

The BBC did a survey a while ago you could take to find out what class you were, it was mostly to do with how you spend your free time, education level and level of job as far as I remember.

Yes, I did that recently. I think I came up as emergent service worker. There seemed to be lots of new categories, and it showed just how much the class system has changed. It's not clearly defined at all anymore...

link please, sounds interesting.

I found that one fairly problematic, as it asked nothing at all about your upbringing and/or parents’ jobs, so while I came out as ‘elite’ based on our household income, socialising with everyone from cleaners to lawyers and medical consultants, and my liking for opera, that doesn’t take into account that my parents were a binman and a cleaner, and the vast majority of my family and DH’s family do unskilled, manual minimum-wage jobs. I mean, I am the result of my upbringing as well as my income and tastes.

Nevermind, found it: BBC News - The Great British class calculator: What class are you?

That's interesting, as I'd say profession and education level are very much class indicators (money less so nowadays, as, as others have stated, many middle-class professionals are less well paid than some blue collar workers).
Maybe neither of us are right or wrong, it's just personal interpretation?

haha that above quiz I posted is bonkers. I got "Elite". Don't think so pal!

Having said all this, I'm totally confused about what class I am myself?! A mix of working and middle in my upbringing.

Why does it matter? There may have been a clear distinction between classes years ago but the boundaries and expectations have become progressively so blurred that the whole concept is now an irrelevance for the 99% of the population that aren’t at the very top.

Before I joined MN, social class never entered my head at all. I assumed everybody else was the same. How wrong I was!

Then he isn’t 10 years past retirement age, is he?

The situation with your parents retirement may be correct; but your parents are presumably not in their 20s or 30s, are they? Teachers still working today have nowhere near that level of investment in them.
Teachers are always setting up new lessons. 50 hours per week is not at exam times (it’s more like 70+ then) - 50 is probably baseline.

Teachers are also effectively unemployed during summer. They are not paid for this time. It is not “holidays”

You most certainly can.

My family, although not exactly from slums, but certainly from the arse end of a big city. Typical single parent family, little money, blah, blah, blah.

I left school at 16, got a union card and went to work. My sister, just a few years later became an air hostess, first and second marriages to guys she met working in first class, and she now lives the life of Riley, huge house, swimming pool, the lot. She hasn't worked for over 30 years and she's only early 60s. She's absolutely a totally different person compared to who she was growing up and into her 20s.

I've never been out of work and live on a totally different planet to her.

I guess there are two different things - the way you'd be classified by sociologists (probably definitely middle-class) and the way you culturally identify, due to earlier influences, which sounds like a mix or working and middle?

I agree, successful working class people in different trades can definitely afford one.

Although a Porsche (or an entry level Range Rover) “bought” on Finance screams Lower Middle. Paying for ostentatious displays of wealth on the never-never.

Ok

so if the duchess of somewhere fell on hard times and had to go and work on a checkout in Sainsbury's, does that make her working class ?
no, it does not. Class is defined by much more than your profession/work, sometimes things that are hard to define but everyone recognises it. Education, social circles, family background, sports and leisure interests (normally linked to education and social circles) also play a big part.

Araminta that went to Roedean, plays polo, has a membership at a private members club isn't going to be working class just because she dropped out of uni and now runs a yarn shop in Brighton.

The reason why I personally think that top professionals such as doctors and lawyers are always middle class, even if they grew up in working class homes, is that they have a kind of cultural capital that only top professionals enjoy.
Even if they had a working class background, they've had some kind of advantage to get to that place - be it a loving supportive family, excellent mental health, natural brilliant academic ability, great teachers or whatever. I think it's important that we all own our privilege. It's disingenuous not to.