Fed up of friend acting like her child grew up deprived

[Pollylo]

I have a friend who now has a DD that is in her 20s and has secured a training contract with a top magic circle law firm down in London. We raised our girls together so I know what the girls childhood was like.
Friend and her daughters dad were never in a relationship, both very involved in their daughters life though. Neither of them had high paying jobs (Warehouse work and TA). Friend lived mortgage free though from inheriting her parents house.
Her daughter did lots of clubs, including getting several hours of private tennis coaching a week from about age 8. Her daughter did play competitively and well.
The girl went to a Grammar School, often ranked the best state school in the North.
Friend acts as though she grew up on the breadline, and has built herself from nothing. I appreciate she's the first in her family to go to uni and has done very well off that but I'm fed up of her acting like her child was deprived. AIBU?

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story…

Why do you care?

Yeah it's annoying but I think you need to let it go

I know someone like this ,she had her daughter at 21 ,but was emotionally much younger ,her parents practically raised her daughter and she the daughter lived with them on and off throughout her childhood ,the person I know Haa never really worked for various reasons ,her daughter is now in her 30,s and has always been highly academic and has a PHD
The mums narrative now is thst her daughters achievement, s are down to her sacrifices as a single mum.
When in reality she had very little to do with her daughters upbringing and her academic success, is down to her own hard work and the continued support of her Grandparents i just inwardly eye roll

People will always have a skewed version of their lives and like to make a martyr of themselves. I have a sibling you'd think suffered terribly during childhood and adult hood and was/ is so hard done by.....in my opinion absolutely not ...I'd know since I lived it with her and she's suffered no hardship or personal tragedy (unlike myself) but there is just no talking to this sibling.

I'd just let it go and maybe make the odd jokey comment like "oh but I thought you were mortgage free" or "oh but didn't little Rosie have all those tennis lessons"

I'd be fuming if I was your friend and read how outing this post is.

Also, you personally know of all of their struggles growing up? And how they managed their finances? You actually know that level of detail?

You’re not being unreasonable nor reasonable… Just emotional :)

Living mortgage free would have really helped but we don’t know how much the father was contributing financially. Perhaps all those clubs meant that the mother was really struggling financially and she is projecting how she felt back then by attaching the meaning to her daughter’s upbringing.

You said your daughter is of a similar age. Is it possible that your daughter didn’t achieve as much and you’re just a bit jealous? Which would be perfectly normal

If the conversation came up again I would probably say something like ‘’your daughter did very well but the credit goes to you for spending all that money on clubs, extra lessons etc. I know you didn’t have a mortgage but all those classes must have been really expensive- I know they were unaffordable when my daughter was small and we were looking into it’’. If she’s clever she’ll understand what you mean.

Holy Jesus. Were you there every hour to judge then?

I know someone like this. She's a single mum in a low paid job but lived rent free in a house her parents owned, had private school / uni / clubs fully funded by grandparents, and even had access to benefits until the youngest was 18 at which point her dad gave her the house and a few hundred thousand in cash.

I hugely respect that she raised them alone but she just doesn't understand that she was supported massively to do this.

A lot of grammar parents are like this, assuming no one realises their kids school is full of rich people who refuse to pay for private school. They hog the best free schools then get "credit" for tutoring 1:1 and going on expensive holidays. Personally the hypocritical side of grammar schools makes me laugh because they seem to obviously proud of their wealth in this respect because they assume everyone else is unaware of their gig.

She just sounds like she’s proud of her daughter. It’s kind of nice.

To be honest, I went to a top grammar school and many of the children there were from very wealthy families, it’s easy to have a skewed sense of how poor you are when surrounded by wealth. I can almost relate to that feeling as I came from a moderate background.

Im not saying they are wealthy. They aren't, they never went on holiday and as far as I know never tutored, tennis was the only privates.
The private school in our town is a little different to in the south though in the sense of my daughter went there too and it was a mix of. backgrounds.

First in family to go to uni is actually a huge achievement. Hardly anyone manages it and there's an extremely high dropout rate for those who do. To convert it into magic circle is actually really rare. And it's highly likely she's going to face massive discrimination throughout her career even those she's got to the starting point.

Don't make this your business and let this woman be proud of her daughter.

This is true.

What are the false narratives you're carrying?

This is the most bilious thing I've ever read on here - and that's saying something

Never having holidays does suggest things were pretty tight. And compared to her school/uni/magic circle friend's dd will very have been a lot closer to breadline than they were and it does make her achievements even more remarkable.

YABU, compared to the peers she will be working with she has done remarkably well to get where she has.

Organisations with a commitment to E,D and I monitoring will sometimes ask your parents occupation when you were aged 14. Given her parents were in low paid/ semi skilled work the stats really were stacked against her, and that's before you throw in having separated parents (which is often regarded, for statistical purposes, as an adverse childhood experience).

Ok so she wasn't living in material poverty, but there is more to inequality (in this country at least) than just poverty and statistically speaking she's done fabulously well to be the first person in her family go to university and to make it to a top law firm. She will be as mysterious as a unicorn to some of highly privileged public school alumni she'll be coming up against at work, some of them will never have even met a warehouse worker let alone be raised by one.

I think you need to look inwards at why a young woman's success and her mother's pride is bugging you so much.

To be fair to them, she's not from the "typical" background for youngsters going into a magic circle firm. Although with social mobility being a thing, that's changing now. I recently applied for a job and part of the application asked what kind of school I went to, if I'd ever been eligible for free school meals, what the occupation of the main wage earner was when I was 14 and if I was the first in the family to go to uni.

Why does it bother you so much though?

Absolutely - this is a remarkable achievement for her daughter. And sure she’s had support and help from her grandparents to get there - but her background is significantly less privileged than many magic circle law trainees.

let her be proud. Beyond the actual breadline privilege is always relative.

She raised her on her own as a single parent though and I think that's an achievement on its own TBH.

In some ways it sounds like they were lucky but you don't know all the circumstances and in any event her daughter has done very well.

I think YABU. I don't know if you grasp the magnitude of her daughter's achievement. There are around 30,000 people applying for 5,500 training contracts every year, the process is very competitive and it often takes years of applications for someone to succeed.

For magic circle firms the process is so much more competitive! Around 500 training contracts and over 10,000 applicants. Most aspiring trainees will never apply for magic circle firms. Each application can take a week or more to complete so you don't waste time with ones that are unachievable.

Yes she had private tennis lessons and went to a grammar school, but probably half or more of the candidates she will have been up against are either private schooled or Oxbridge educated.

Her mother is probably extremely proud of her daughter because even with a grammar school education the odds were against her; a girl from a single parent household, the first of her family to go to university. I'd be absolutely beaming!

The only part of this that sounds easy is the free house. And if that came from inheritance it may mean the mother had lost her parents?

Sounds like every spare penny was going on the tennis - not easy to afford that on a TA and warehouse workers’ salaries.

The daughter got into the grammar - without tutoring, you say?

It sounds like the daughter is very bright, has achieved a great deal, and that things were probably pretty tough for your friend while raising her.

No holidays at all nowadays is actually very rare. You have to be pretty hard up for that to be your childhood.

She’s right to be proud of her daughter and herself. Try to be pleased for them.

I went to a comprehensive, first person to go to university. We weren't exactly on the breadline but nearly lost the house to the building society in the 1990s recession and my parents could only give me a few quid here and there at university. I went to an ex poly. Took me two years of working and a year of law school to get a training contract and it wasn't with a magic circle firm but a good one, and I have worked for magic circle firms as an associate, though I vastly prefer the in house work I do now and actually can't stand the set up in most law firms - but that's by the by.

I do count my blessings and good fortune in lots of ways but I have mostly worked with people who are far more privileged than me and I think I've done pretty well.

Also have I understood rightly that your own child went to private school??? If so she did not have a similar upbringing to your friend’s daughter at all, unless she got a scholarship. There is no way warehouse staff and a TA could afford even the cheapest private school so I don’t think you can compare.

Absolutely.