What makes you working class?

[Bdueb]

Was listening to an interview with oa well known actor talking about their childhood and growing up working class. For them a key part was lack of travel and having not left their local area much etc. That was 20 years ago. What about now - what do you think distinguishes working and middle class childhoods of today?

I like chips and gravy. I think that cements it for me.

Class changes but there's usually transitional generations that are a bit of a meeting point.

Eg
My grandparents were almost entirely WC. My parents grew up with my grandparents in blue collar jobs, values & cultural etc mostly WC

Except for a desire for education which resulted in my parents going through higher education, having professional careers, values shifting and acquiring more and more cultural capital.

My siblings and i grew up mostly middle class but with residual hints of the WC origins of our parents. Focus on education, all went to russell group universities etc, music & ballet lessons, taken to theatre, opera, orchestral performances... but also football games. Parents always wanted us to wait to open presents on christmas morning but it never quite happened!

Our children however are completely middle class in terms of values, upbringing, cultural capital. I'd say it took two generations to shift.

Oh and yes, we do go camping. The children love it.

On MNs WC seems to get confused with the underclass & MC with UMC.

I'd greatly appreciate you leaving my mother out of your comments.

Enlighten us (seriously 😁)

You talk about WC like it's something you want to remove all evidence of? How odd

What being WC actually is and what the 'solidly MC' of MN think it is are two very different things.

😂You and everyone from Yorkshire.

My parents came to the uk as immigrants after the war, leaving a life of luxury to work in a factory. They did ok, privately educated me, as I did my own children. I would assume I'm middle class (if there is such a thing) but maybe not as my parents must have been lower class here when they came? Who knows.. or cares!

My grandparents lived in council houses, worked in the steelworks and brickworks. My dad was in the police (my grandad was determined that my dad would not work in the steelworks), mum was a secretary. I was the first in my family to go to uni, I've worked my arse off and I've done quite well. The BBC class thing says I'm elite. I have friends who work in pubs and friends who are multimillionaires. I know I'm not really WC. I understand social mobility. But I think when you've grown up the way I did, in a steel town in Lanarkshire, you're WC in your bones.

So what if you marry and dont work at all? What does that make you?

I don’t think the classifications are useful in modern Britain. My parents are blue collar workers, although with a skilled trade, who made a good amount of money when I was an adult. They now have yachts, classic cars, homes abroad etc…

I was the first in my family to go to uni and have a professional job. My children attend a public school. Are we still working class because of the circumstances of my birth? My husband comes from a very wealthy family who can trace their lineage hundreds and hundreds of years.

I just don’t think the traditional class system fits modern Britain. A hundred years ago nobody from my husband’s family would have dreamt of marrying somebody from my family, they were labourers and navvies. Today it is nothing noteworthy.

I think this is interesting.

What is a "working class attitude to money"?

I think I have one myself; I worry that everything I have/have worked for could be taken away from me if I lost my job, is that a WC attitude to money?

Similarly, I would never choose to take a lower-paid-but-less-stressful job just because it would be nicer for me, and I wouldn't go back to university now and retrain because, while my parents are comfortable, I don't have family wealth to rely on and I can't imagine choosing to forego my salary (and disadvantaging my family) for self-satisfying pursuits.

Maybe someone more firmly MC would be less concerned by ending up in a precarious position because someone could bail them out.

My parents worked hard to get comfortable and saved hard and prioritised our education, and I now do the same, which maybe suggests we're 'insecure middle' at most. It does seem a stretch to claim that I could consider myself WC (neither my parents have degrees but both had decent/'professional' jobs that require a good degree today) but then I definitely don't feel like I have the security of not worrying about maintaining my income that other 'more established' people seem to have where they didn't particularly worry about how much their chosen career would pay. And maybe that's a/the difference.

@Whymeee read the thread!

Not all WC people live in SH. I know that's the stereotype on MN. But it's bollocks. Plenty of WC people own their own homes.

Absolutely there are so many ways they could be different, and have different class markers. This was actually the point I was making: profession is too blunt a tool due to a whole spectrum of other influences. The subjects I used as examples were merely that, I don’t believe that the subject determines social class, nor did I state that. 🙄

Well yes. Both my WC parents owned their own homes. My grandparents on one side did as well.

15 years ago the majority of posters were desperate to demonstrate how MC they were.

Either they'd list off all their own MC credentials to a ludicrous extent (some would then say 'but I'm WC" to make people respond "no you're not!"

Or they'd scornfully tell other (MC) posters who said they were MC that they absolutely were not (for ridiculous reasons), in a very "how dare you get delusions of grandeur" sort of way (this still happens today).

15 years ago people didn't pretend they were embarrassed to be MC in the same way. The privileged in search of an "I'm not privileged!" card to play is strong now, but there is still a real undercurrent of a drive to knock people down.

It's hard to explain.

Yes I agree.

People who claim that needing to work makes you working class - you'd need to have a spare million in the bank to be able to fund a life without working (and then it'd be gone, with nothing to give to your children so they'd then need to work and would then 'be WC').

People who have a million pounds to live off without working are extremely rare, it's certainly not a requirement to have that to be MC.

What is a "working class attitude to money"?

In the job I worked to put myself through uni (I bloody hated that job!) I earned the princely sum of £2.38 per hour. To this day, whenever I'm considering buying something, my brain automatically works out how many hours I'd have to work to pay for it - more often than not I decide its not worth it 😂

I think you’ve summed it up perfectly 👌🏻

I'm like this too, but is that not just a sensible attitude to money and appreciation of the value of things?

Or do MC people not give finances any thought?!

I don't know where all these ideas/ presumptions about the WC come from. When I grew up in a very WC town in the 80s nearly all of the children I knew did most of the things touted on this thread as being MC markers. All of my friends were big readers and the local library was well used, we all did after school clubs ranging from tennis and swimming to dance and horse riding, as well as gymnastics, netball and football at school. Brownies, GG and scouts had waiting lists to join. Tuition on a musical instrument was common both in school, and privately, for instruments such as the piano. For families, going on rambles/ walks or bike rides in the countryside or along the coast was a common day out at the weekend or in school holidays, as were trips to NT/ EH properties. Going to the theatre and art galleries was also not an uncommon way to spend your free time. Holidays amongst my friends were a mixture of other parts of the UK, France and the Spanish islands, along with more occasional holidays to USA/ Canada and South America. Some very high achievers academically. Teachers were also predominantly WC, which is still the case now. Probably a quarter to a third of my primary school year went on to university, with a fair few firsts from RG universities. I find it astounding that being academically able, keen to do well at school and enjoying the arts and travel is seen as only for the MC! Even back in the 80s when I was a child it was not the case 🙄

I'm not sure many MC folk's brains automatically calculate how many hours they'd have had to work at their 1996 hourly rate to work out whether something's worth buying, no😂

Totally agree. I think there are some astonishingly unpleasant assumptions on here.