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 always remember a conversation I had with a classmate. He told me he went to an independent boys boarding school in Kent, fees circa 30k per year. I automatically said "Christ, how did your parents afford that?" and he said like it was nothing at all, "They just skipped holidays for a couple of years." Oh, I see. Yup.

My personal definition of class comes down to how many paychecks you are away from throwing you back to where you started.

For example you could be a highly successful accountant that started from working class background but you know that if you lost your job then after say three months you wouldn't be able to pay your mortgage or would struggle finding a new job etc etc

If you are middle class then you know that a family member would be able to support you so you wouldn't lose your home and that you know someone that would always give you a job

Massive piles of presents around the Christmas tree for the kids, quantity over quality.

Crushed grey velvet sofas and a house where nothing is older than about 20 years old.

Refusal to buy anything second hand, insistence on new everything, won't even drop off clothes at the charity shop in case people see you (OK, so that might just be my inlaws)

Working class is an attitude of mind. I was born into a relatively poor working class family and I now work in a professional job. There are still certain (bad jokes) you can tell which will tell you if someone is working class. One is I went to x's house and they were really posh- they had fruit on the sideboard and no-one was even sick. The other is the joke about wearing clean underwear as if you have an accident, the doctor will not want to see you in dirty underwear. Both of these go over the head of anyone with middle class origins. Then there is the love of fried breakfasts, brown sauce, limited travel outside of some areas of Europe and often the limit in expectations. Many working class kids struggle to be able to see a life beyond the area and limited jobs they know.

I would call you "self-made", not middle-class.

Its not cut and dried but to me the stereotypes that seem to be validated a lot are:

• not being that convinced that there's a huge value in "academic" education, a preference for vocational/skills based work
• some quite conservative values including an expectation women are unlikely to be the breadwinner, or won't work outside the home when children are young, men will be a "provider"
• fewer rules/limitations on children & young people (less limiting screen time, later/no curfews, allowed to do things like play out unsupervised at an earlier age)
• valuing conspicuous displays of propsperity like cars, branded clothing, very regularly updated/on trend home decor
• a big focus on appearance/presentation but particularly with regard to effort put in, whether thats your home or your makeup, lived in/natural look is not desirable, its considered better for things to look "done" and for that to be clear/obvious. Things that match.
• close family/community ties, a strong network of family & friends who help with childcare, provide favours - linked with a broader perspective that its ok to need/want help & ask for it
• more likely to follow popular trends in terms of entertainment, holidays, fashion

This is surely ridiculous. I know multimillionaires who live a very luxurious lifestyle who work... we can't possibly say they are working class. Also, what about a couple where one person works and the other stays at home (eg with the kids) - is one working class and the other not?

For that matter, my own parents were often unemployed and their income came from benefits. Were they NOT working class because they didn't work and had a different source of income? Come on...

I am self-made, yes, but would you still call me working class? Seriously?

level of formal education of parents

Needing to work for a living.

Wow! Deficit model.

That's just income though. What is your occupation ? What level of wealth do you have? What do you do in your free time? What are your interests? Who do you spend your time with and what are their occupations?

Not expecting you to answer those but they are the questions that'll determine class.

If you're in car sales and do exceptionally well on commission but blow it all on commercial goods and AI holidays, rent your house, have no savings, spend your free time getting drunk with your mates from the supermarket you are WC despite the high income.

I wasn't brought up in the UK with its class system, but I am middle class even by UK 'standards'.

One can be middle class and quite poor.
A friend’s family were “Landed”, had a “family seat’’ and hunted with a well known hunt-
In the 1960’s her family had to pay massive , crippling death duties.

Friend ended up in a modest 19th Century semi detached villa .
Definitely upper middle class by birth and manners.

Surely it's the hard working people that Keir Starmer keeps banging on about

For me, "self-made" is an alternative term and the right term to use. It means something like "working-class-done-good" to me and is about state of mind, as others have said. You may have a middle-class 'lifestyle' but to me, a person who grew up on free school meals and who has experienced financial hardship... that person is WC to their bones because of what they have experienced, and I would consider calling a person with that background MC to be an insult.

I find this fascinating. I would like to think I'm working class, but probably realistically bordering middle class.

My mum was a duty social worker, but not a very senior manager, my dad was a community worker, then manager and now a freelancer. Grew up in a small ex-mining village. We never had any spare money and grew up on findus crispy pancakes and oven chips. We went abroad twice when I was a child, once was with an inheritance when a grandparent passed away. I got called 'posh' at secondary school but at uni I was amongst the poorest and people laughed at my local accent.

I now have a mid-senior job, dp lower paid healthcare worker. We do have foreign holidays and trips away at least once a year. Mortgage, 2 cars, some branded clothes, weekly shop online, have a cleaner, eat out about once a month. But we do need to budget quite carefully. Family could help us if we got stuck financially but not indefinitely.

Our dc have never been skiing for example, we don't have savings for uni for them and paying for driving lessons will be a struggle. We could never even contemplate private school.

Are we middle class? Working class? I don't know!

Not an accurate measure of class but this is my take:

Poor/ underclass: financially manages day to day/ week to week

Working class: financially plans month to month

Middle class: financially plans year to year

Higher class: financially plans decade to decade

It is about access to resources. That includes earnings, investments, inherited wealth, but also family you can fall back on. An aristocratic young person might be doing a cleaning job and have little income, but their family has vast wealth the young person will inherit and has a vast safety net.

I read somewhere that there's no such thing as middle class.

Just working class and upper class.

If you need to work, you're working class.

You can be high earning working class, low earning working class, somewhere in the middle working class.

But isn't it just upper class?
I was thinking middle class is about being actually able to afford things but without "family wealth".

So a married couple where one is saying a mechanic and one is a sahp, he's working class and she's just what, under class? Without class?

@surreygirl1987 I didn't say people who work, I said those that need to work. Millionaires that work, whether middle or the upper classes, do it by choice.
I earn over 150k but still have bills and need to work to pay them. I consider myself working class - most people are.

It's not an insult, you know, but horror at being described as such seems to emanate from your comments.

Chippy tea