If you grew up poor do you ever miss it?

[Fstt1978]

This is a weird one. I grew up very poor , generational benefits, insecure housing etc.
I'm now firmly middle class to anyone looking in , and I'm probably romanticising it, but sometimes I find myself missing the simplicity of my other life. It's hard to talk about as it's very crass, and I have a lovely secure life now, but sometimes the choice of everything is overwhelming. Can anyone relate? I do not wnat to come over as tone deaf or entitled etc but I do find the class jump hard.

No I don't miss being poor in childhood at all . Ice on the inside of the Winfows , never new clothes or shoes , only ever the very basics . As an adult I was absolutely determined that my adult life was going to be better and it is . Within reason I can buy anything I want and don't have to budget .

My grandmother had no shoes and no food. My father no heating, or fridge. My mother skipped meals so that others could eat. There were no presents at Christmas once you were over 10, no school trips, embarrassing 3rd hand clothes.

None of us miss those things.

Of course we miss the love and warmth of childhood and the care and affection of our parents. We miss playing out and being mostly care free. But we don’t miss the hunger, stress and anxiety

No it was awful, I now live over 300 miles from my childhood home (Greenwich, opposite the park on a council estate)
Its a strange place to live when you are poor, I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb at school because as well as having the odd council estate I was going to school with children who lived in one of the most expensive and desirable parts of London. There birthday parties were held in million pound houses over looking The Park but I'd go home to hardly any food in the cupboard and an electric meter that never had enough money on it to last the week.
It was a shitty way to live, I don't miss it at all.

It sounds a bit like you have imposter syndrome OP. I get it I grew up with my dad working in factories and my mum working in retail, childcare with ad hoc cleaning jobs on top, when they split up money was even tighter. I also get what you mean about community, everyone picking each others' kids up so mums could work different days, borrowing a fiver to give to the provident man until payday, everyone being paid weekly and often cash in hand. Everyone seemed to work, but in very low paying jobs, no safety net. I think the community comes from necessity.
I ended up at Durham university and I suddenly didn't know who I was.

I can relate OP (You don’t happen to have a big birthday coming up or something significant happening in your life? I find I hit these thoughts at particular times in my life). The comfort thing you refer to is weird isn’t it, hard to explain to others, I can feel comfort , but also wouldn’t want take the dc back to where I grew up, as it doesn’t feel safe. PP mentioned imposter syndrome- yes, feel this in so many situations if you’ve managed to significantly improve your quality of life and that of your DC.

Miss it? No, but I know I can survive on much less than we have now. I am still the queen of bargain hunting and sales and special offers! Sometimes I annoy myself by throwing money at things that are, quite frankly, frivolous or a waste. DH grew up with way more than me and would find it really hard to economize. As in, he’s just never had to do it and if things were tough, his parents would bail him out. I’ve been on my uppers and had to make hard choices. I’d adapt and survive much more easily than him if we had to and there’s a certain power in that.

I grew up poor but I am still poor.

However, poor back then seems to be different to poor now.

Obviously I was just a child, but I was an only child to a single mum.

Weekends were spent with grandparents, a day out was our weekly trip to the town for the meat market and we would get a £2 coin to spend on a toy, friends were happy to come round and play in the garden, and we'd make our own fun mixing mud potions or picking berries off the berry bushes. There were plenty of council run play parks outdoors, and later bike parks.

Now, many of the market stalls have had to close as the town revamp put their overheads up, you spend as much there as you do a supermarket. The council have flattened most play parks, and erected housing on some, everything costs money, money that we don't have.

Nobody wants playdates at home, so it's soft play, the arcade etc.

Yeah, our windows aren't single pane anymore, and we have radiators in every room, but the simple living of yore is impossible to achieve even when you have no other choice but to live simply.

Simple living without stress is still a luxury those who are comfortable can afford.

I definitely relate to this. I'm really frugal and still struggle to see loads of things as a waste of money.
I also find food a big comfort. Value White bread toast and value jam is my guilty pleasure despite it being absolutely nutrionally terrible

Get a grip, seriously. You are romanticising what it’s like to be poor because you are in a position of middle class privilege. An actual poor person reading this thread will think you’re a privileged arsehole

Wouldn’t necessarily say I grew up poor, but I know every penny was accounted for. We often had hand me down clothes from cousins (my first pair of Nike trainers were ones too small for my male cousin at the age of 17). Except for one EuroCamp trip to France when I was 14, we weren’t able to afford a holiday (even a domestic Butlin’s style one) from me being 8 until I turned 25.

All that said, me and my 2 brothers always had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and knew we were loved and wanted. Given the upbringing both of my parents (but particularly my Mum) had to endure, I can’t have any real complaints.

Rob Beckett the comedian wrote a book about this - A Class Act. I have no idea if it's any good but I've seen him speak about it with exactly this tone. He's not one of my favourite comedians but I think I'd give the book a go, it sounded intriguing.

Nope. Going to bed hungry, ice on the inside of the windows and wearing my coat indoors, clothes and shoes with permanent holes, never having what I needed for school (home economics etc) and the embarrassment of it being so bloody obvious we were poor and neglected. The arguments between my parents over money and everything else.

Miss it? Absolutely not. I appreciate everything I have now pretty much every day, even when life is a bit shit. And, sadly, it often is, but at least we’re not battling poverty on top of it all. Cannot fathom how families with SEND kids etc cope when also living below the poverty line, frankly.

I think you are missing a time when life was simpler and less materialistic.

And I’m now in a job earning a six figure salary, happily married, no kids and will be mortgage free in 5 years (at 48 y/o) with plans to relocate to Spain when DH and I turn 50 so we can make the most of being young enough to enjoy the much better climate, more chilled out pace of life and a simpler lifestyle that isn’t just focused around working so you can pay your bills.

No I don't miss it. We're not rich now by any means but we have everything we need and lots of the things we want. If I want the heating on I put it on and don't worry about it. There's always food in the cupboard and hot water for a bath. My son hasn't had to worry about not having any nice clothes for own clothes day at school. He doesn't have to get dressed under the bedclothes because it's so cold, or have ice on the inside of his windows in winter. He doesn't go to friends houses and look at them with amazement because they're fully carpeted or have a phone or a tumble dryer.
No, I don't miss it. At all.

It was not easier. It was simply easier being a child whose parents tried to shield you from their worries.

I do not miss poverty at all. I am nowhere near as well off as some people on this thread. But I love being able to have a warm home. Being able to but what food I want in the supermarket. And being able to have a social life.

I grew up in the slums. Two rooms, outside toilet shared with other families. And very little heating, few clothes, and very basic food. I am only 62, but the poverty was raw. What I do miss was knowing all my neighbours. I knew everyone on the street. The kids all played outside every day. And people did help each other. But I also know I romanticise the helping each other out as they did, but there was also a lot of criminal behaviour. And if that housing still existed it would be infested with County Lines recruitment.

Was it a time when people understood what was actually meaningful in life: I find in tough situations one generally has a clear idea of what’s important and that can get lost very quickly when that situation isn’t as tough or is resolved

Do I miss hand me down clothing, shopping at second hand stores, very obviously NOT having the same "name brand" items as my peers, not being able to afford school camps/excursions? No. I do not miss being poor. As an adult I've worked twice as hard to become "middle class" so I'm never in that situation again

But class jumping is entirely different to nostalgie de la boue. I have a much more prosperous and expansive life than I ever dreamed of. I grew up in grinding poverty, and it was exhausting and cramping and miserable. I was a child who knew not to ask my parents for anything, ever, because I knew the money wasn’t there. I knew not to ask anyone home after school, because the food wasn’t there, especially as the week got towards payday. Thete were times I knew not to take enough food, because there wasn’t enough. And quite apart from the lack of money and space, we were governed by ‘not for the likes of us’. It was an awful way to live. I have no nostalgia for any of it. No, I don’t fit particularly well into the middle classes, but that’s not to say I want to go back.

I get you. My dad's small business went down the pan in the 92 recession and he left leaving me (older child) to deal with the bailiffs. We weren't poor in the way my grandparents had been but there was debt and a constant threat of the house needing to be sold. I miss being happy with less and not knowing the difference, being less 'discerning' and generally just pleased with most non essentials. Oh, and people doing things for me (and i them) without money exchanging hands because not everything had to be a transaction.

I'm quite well off now and I live in an expensive part of the country. I still sell and buy on Vinted and Ebay, have a heaped sugar in my tea (noone else round here does!), speak with a regional accent and prefer to go to my mates house than go out. I want to kick back and dunk tea biscuits in my builders tea and chat shit not critique the menu at the new caf deli.

I did find it hard navigating the very different culture of the middle classes but can now, for the most part, straddle the divide quite comfortably by realising I am the sum of many parts (albeit seemingly contradictory!) as we all are.

Changing classes is stressful. People who do so are at increased risk of mental health problems.

I never miss being poor, I also have zero guilt I got away from that life. It was because there were 6 kids, just too many mouths to feed.

Watch the old film ''The Chain'' about house moves...

A man I know who grew up in poverty but is wealthy now..It's one of his favourite films.

@Fstt1978
The chain film is here: