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 agree with those saying its accent ( to an extent)

i have a very broad black country accent. My degree, my profession, my title...... nothing will ever stop people hearing my voice and doing a " DUDLEEEEY" impression. It can be useful, but mostly its infuriating to have to "prove" intelligence/competence in a way no one else is asked to

I work in a private school now, and it has been fun to show young people an accent that is rarely heard on tv/radio (when i started i was asked what country i was from haha)

Im not "oh woe is me, the burden of a yam yam accent" lol, but it definitely has an impact in terms of class distinctions and first impressions

Oooh I am also established middle class even though we are curry renting BUT if my salary drops couple of thousand, I would be emergency worker class😂 didneven know that's a social class😂

We are special class. Really😂
And not just because of accent. 😁

Anyone who thinks class isn't a thing any more, surely isn't working class.
The lack of opportunity is a massive factor in what class you are.
My dcs will not have an inheritance, never had tutoring and do not have the benefit of professional parents who can guide them in education and career choices.
If you are a non home owning, non Uni educated, manual worker like myself, its pretty bloody obvious what class you are.

I disagree. I'd be considered middle class now but want to remain known as working class!

The 'class' concern appears to have shifted. When I was growing up, the anxiety (if we can call it that) was at what point did LMC professions, lifestyle values and behaviours become MC. In the 60's and 70's what defined one as being WC was still very clear, nowadays, not so much. I live in a village where quite a number of trades people have MC and UMC backgrounds. I think class is becoming more of a mindset. It's about who you are, your cultural and educational capital, how you hold yourself and your behaviours. It helps to have some money.

I did the BBC calculator two times— the second time I answered if I had split with my partner (of 11 years), and it was quite a drop off from Established Middle Class to Emergent Service Worker. Luckily a split isn't on the cards for me, but does make a nice illustration of how precarious some people's class position can be, how wrapped up it is with people they make their lives with.

@BlueSilverCats I got working class

That's so interesting. Yes, I agree with this.

I suggest people read Jilly Cooper's book Class and then decide.Brillant read.

The oddity of that calculator is that it asks no questions about your parents or upbringing. I get ‘Elite’ on it, based on my educational qualifications, job, household income, likes and friends’ jobs, but I grew up in grinding poverty, with an outdoor toilet, illiterate parents in unskilled minimum wage jobs, with barely enough food towards payday. That also determines who I am in class terms.

Was just thinking, so many people here say it's just England/ UK that are class obsessed. Do you think that extends to the former colonies too? I'm pakistani and I find they are very into 'staying in your lane', being judged by your manners/ car/ education/ house/ job etc

When I changed my answers to rent instead of own a house it switched me to emergent service worker. Thing is houses are so cheap where I live that people can own easily, we bought ours when we only had one below average income.

But even if most would call themselves MC, isn't class also about how others perceive you? Maybe it's regional but the teachers round here are mostly working class, even if they do enjoy some of those things thought of as, but not necessarily, more MC. I just did the BBC class calculator and came out as 'Elite' and I'm definitely working class.

Is it really that simple though?

I grew up on a dead rough council estate in the arse end of Croydon, but my DF's career really took off when I was in my early teens, he was a senior manager, very well paid and worked all over the world. They lived in their council house till the end of their days though!

And I went to an independent school, thanks to doing well in my 11+, went to uni, bought my own house at 27 etc.

I still think of myself as working class, but whenever it's been discussed, all my friends roar with laughter and tell me how middle class I am.

According to the BBC quiz I'm Technical Middle Class.

I think from a political/economic perspective it is probably more useful to at demographic distributions of income and wealth. I think there is an emerging underclass which would be defined as 'poor' under a number of metrics that is a concern that might be masked by the term 'working class:.

I think at least locally here are many skilled tradesmen or managers who identify with being working class and probably would take it is an insult if you accused them of being middle class. Working class seems to be a connection to a working town's mannerisms and value set

Hard to define in some ways, my father grew up in a council house and was very bright, married my middle class mother and promptly moved to Africa and then India for his job, where I grew up. I went to international school and have a distinct accent. Based on some ideas, I would be working class as a product of my father being from a working class family, though our lives have been rather unusual and based on this people assume I’m upper class — which I am not.

At the end of the day, who cares!

Cheeky bastard. Working class people aren't thick.

A perspective from across the pond, Malcolm Gladwell (Revenge of the Tipping Point), whose folks were university professors, quoting a US estate agent:

"Working-class affluent. That's my client. ... People that have jobs and make a lot of money. So, doctors, lawyers, professional people who are not blue blood."

Define brands? Rolex? Patek Philippe?

Whymeee
No uni degree is working class for me (as a foreighner). It's awkward noone mentions education.
Half of the big players in Silicon Valley dropped out of education to start their businesses!

There was a story about Emma Thompson returning to her secondary school and deploring the pupils lack of a 'professional voice' - one that you use when talking to authority or to be understood authoritatively.
Cockneys born before the 1970's tended to have a very clear enunciation which enabled many to escape manual work and enter white-collar jobs closed to their forebears but rise of Estuary English means that door is closed to some of the younger generations who are unintelligible to their neighbours.

So middle class he mean

I think maybe he's referencing the middle-class as largely killed off. Sixty years ago, my job would finance a large house, at least a housemaid and enough money that I could be confident to enrol a couple of children in private schools.
The idea of houses being bought for cash seems mad today but wasn't uncommon for hundreds of years.
Perhaps almost all of us are just different strata of working-class.