When do you become middle class?

[ForMintUser]

I was reading the “rich get richer” thread which made me think about something I have been wondering about, interested in other people’s opinions.

My parents came from working class, council house backgrounds, neither set of grandparents ever had much money, never owned a house.

Both parents left school with no qualifications, didn’t go on to further or higher education.

My father worked as a salesman, eventually got promoted to management and ended up working in senior management for a UK wide company.

I would say they were working class from birth but would probably be middle class now, jobs in management, home owners etc.

I would say I was raised middle class, there wasn’t a huge amount of money when we were children but certainly didn’t grow up in poverty, myself and siblings all went to university, have professional jobs.

I will say I recognise there is a lot of luck and timing in this (particularly in relation to house prices and the fact that my mother was able to be a SAHM because a family could live on one income then). I’m not a big believer in the idea that hard work always equals success, it does for some but not for others.

My question is, if they were born working class and are now middle class (happy to be corrected on that if people don’t agree) surely there needs to have been a point where you would say they had become middle class? So at what point do you become middle class?

Yes, all the above is true (and this is also in answer to the post asking about the differences between the US and the UK). Not least the fact that in the US, race and class are still very much an overlapping category. In different and subtler senses, those systemic racial inequalities are also at play in the UK although, thank the gods, we have nothing to equal the Jim Crow laws and racial segregation policies here. And I would not want to be a woman living in the US with a real prospect of a Trump presidency, not to mention the alarming rollback of women's rights in the red states in particular.

The barriers determining 'class' are subtle and hard to define in any society. In the states education does have a part to play, but it's mostly a question of wealth. A person can start in a housing project, be educated and enormously successful, and be deemed upper or middle class. You don't remain the class you were born into, and depending on the peaks and trough of your fortunes can be a member of all social classes at various stages of your life.

The old transatlantic ocean liners have been thought of as a microcosm of class structures in the early twentieth-century. Until World War 2 the UK had its landed gentry: huge estates owned by old, wealthy families which still exists today but to a far lesser extent. The US equivalent was the prominent 'gilded age' families - people like the Rockefellers, Guggenheims, Morgans, Vanderbilts and Astors, who made vast fortunes in property, railroad, tobacco, oil and steel industries then built huge, tacky estates in the style of European antiquity. This might well be where the UK stereotype of the 'vulgar' American started. These also included powerful entrepeneurs or media moguls like William Randolph Hearst or Howard Hughes - both of whom have been viciously satirised by Hollywood, no less.

I think those old stereotypes are a better way of putting it into context, as issues like class structures do have their roots in history. But in the US there's far less emphasis on where you originally came from as the thing that defines you forever, and more emphasis on the success you make of your life. This conveniently ignores things like systemic privilege and structural disadvantage including the funding of Higher Education. Also, the 'wrong' set of circumstances can bring you down with a crash and there are fewer safety nets.

Smalltown middle America can be a comfortable, pleasant and safe place to be. Or it may be that this is illusory; a view coloured by personal experience. I've lived in Maine, a place with a low crime rate and the rare anomaly of being blue around the coastline and red in the interior (as a general rule). And that brings the inevitable problem of gun laws. The recent shooting in that state quite shook me, being close to the home of my own experience. It struck me that if it can happen in calm, quiet, 'safe'-feeling Maine, it can happen anywhere.

There are advantages and disadvantages - not least a certain degree of hypocrisy - to be found in both countries. But they are diametrically different. The US can be quite a culture shock to those expecting a common language and similar culture to our own. It really isn't.

So hard to get into, that I think if you get a place anywhere then accept it. In these kinds of vocational courses, your university has very limited impact on your job offers, vs a 'subject' like economics, where a degree from a high ranking university would generally carry much more weight than a lower ranking one

I live in the countryside and have done all my life, other than stints abroad for work, so have never really thought about tree lined streets, as trees and greenery are so abundant to me.

It was new information to me too, as a lifelong city dweller! But once I’d read it, I could see the truth in it.

Absolutely. It makes perfect sense, of course.

I suppose it's quite sad, in a way, that the mere presence of trees is not a given for many people.

I wish people would read Shakespeare, who used the term 'palpable-gross' and to my knowledge wasn't American...

I also wish people would understand that language evolves and to try and be classist about language is uniformed and childish.

I’ve lived on three council estates, all have been tree lined and had lots of green space. There the only places I’ve lived thay have been tree liner actually.

@Simonjt city planning has changed a bit so depending on where you were living/when they were built etc. It’s visible in older areas eg Roath vs Grangetown in Cardiff. Cardiff is quite green city overall too.

City planning seems to currently favour building whole estates without amenities of any kind, no shops, schools, parks etc though they might have trees! It’s a particular irritation of mine but not relevant to the thread.

You take your kids to camp Bestival

But his children will be extremely middle class with all the trappings of upper middle class life they are enjoying during their childhood. Private schools, extracurriculars, numerous holidays (inc skiing 😉), meeting many famous people through their parents etc..

Also tradesmen mainly work for themselves. Our local electrician can name his price as he is in such demand, his wife is a very part time accountant working from home who does his books. They are our neighbours, kids in private school, multiple holidays, mum spends her nights ferrying the kids to multiple activities on top of what they are doing at their private school.
The parents are ambitious, invested & aspirational, the son is likely to do electrical apprenticeship to join his father in the business. Lucky kid to be able to join a very successful family business just like that.

I find Carole Middleton fascinating. Did she ever dream her daughter would marry the future king, her grandson would be the future king.. The key for the kids was extracurriculars & education.

We have a huge middle class. Education, job and aspiration mark out the middle class. Has done for some generations now. What oriole did even a generation ago means nothing if you are a doctor and own a house! My DHs forebears were agricultural labourers and lace makers. My great grandfather could not write. My DM went to a grammar school. My DH also and went to uni and became a Chartered Engineer. It matters not one jot about family history. We are middle class by education, jobs and home ownership. We have had aspirational forebears who could take advantage of education and not be working class any longer. And escaping from it was important to them.

I don't think you can actually change class in a single generation in the UK, you can become "nouveau riche" but it usually takes two or three generations to obtain the kind of social and cultural capital to be truly middle class.

Middle class is ambition and attitude too. You can definitely be different to your parents. Education allows that to happen. It’s not all about money. It’s what you aspire to, what job you have and how you bring up dc and your values in terms of wanting to become middle class. Certainly many attending grammars from working class families attained MC status very quickly, They did not want to be working in a factory or down a mine. They wanted to manage the factory or become an accountant. They saw the drudgery and short life span of hard manual work and grasped the way out.

i don't think anyone cares anymore x

They do. It is continually held up as being important by politicians. Keir Starmer’s mum was a nurse. In the early days of nursing, women were middle class who nursed. That did not really change until the 60s and the expansion of the NHS. However it’s still not a working class job.

Some of the most over indulged and badly behaved children I’ve seen are from clearly white MC families

I hate R4 too!

You become middle class when you automatically write and post a hand-written card or note in ink to thank someone for a gift or hospitality, rather than sending an email or WhatsApp. (But you also have already been in touch with thanks electronically).

@bigTillyMint There are horrible children within all classes. That doesn’t define class though - being a crap parent is open to all.

You can't become middle class, in England anyway, any more than you can become an aristocrat. Even if you marry into the aristocracy, it doesn't make you upper class. Under the rules of English classism, you are the class you were born into and can't move.

Oh absolutely.
But pp inferred that only MC parents want their children to have good manners and not see thrmselves as the centre of everything. Which is not true IMHE

I grew up working class. My two parents both had unskilled low paid jobs, only one person in my whole family has a degree (it isn't me) and my family are more likely to watch football on the TV at the social club than tennis courtside.

Looking at my current situation, I am now middle class. I don't really know when it happened, but it is a realisation that I've come to slowly over the last couple of years. For me it's mixture of the following:

• marrying someone who is middle class
• the house and area we live in
• the wages we earn
• the type of jobs we do
• the difference in what my parents had at my age and what I have now
• a shift in what I like and how I choose to spend any free cash

I still definitely feel working class and 'other' when in middle class settings because of the following:

• I don't have a degree
• I use certain words/phrases that are seen as 'common'
• I don't understand a lot of the unwritten 'rules'
• I don't think badly of people who choose not to have a big 'career' a job is just fine
• I don't understand things like fancy wine or special cheeses
• I don't play an instrument and my childhood holidays were at caravan parks
• I have no expectation of any sort of inheritance and find it very very weird when people talk of their 'inheritance' despite their parents still being alive
• loads more I could list all day

I suppose economically you can move up in class, but I think you'll always feel some sort of difference, because most of the people who are the next class up will have had several years head start.

I think the "middle" means you're not worried about debt and are planning for the future.

Who that applies to in this day and age is anyone's guess!