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.

Interesting that people don’t go to each others homes as much.
I think society has moved on. I don’t remember there being coffee shops when I was growing up. Sure there were cafes but they were not comfortable, inviting place to sit and have a nice drink and a slice if cake. They were more likely to serve builders tea with pie and mash. Have plastic chairs and Formica tables. You couldn’t really just sit and chill in there.
Tines change though.
It might face been lack of choice and lack of money which prevented us from meeting in coffee shops.
I don’t invite friends round to my house, I’ll meet them somewhere. I used to entertain more but nut now. I just don’t really want to do it. Maybe it’s the instagram age where I don’t want people seeing what I have and don’t have. Maybe I just prefer to get out.
Lots of things are very different now. I love the fact I can play games on my phone, watch what I want on the tv when I want. Go abroad on holiday rather than just to the same caravan sitting in the cold and rain, trying to watch programmes on a small, black and white tv with the picture fuzzing every time anybody moved.

I grew up poor and I became richer later on.

I don't miss being poor.

However I do see now that being richer doesn't stop you having problems.

And that money can also bring a lot of problems.

I became more wealthy from an inheritance.

However the wealth came with a lot of sadness.

My dad killed himself. And I had to sort through his estate for two years. Then a lot of my dads family were severely cruel to me because my dad left me the money.

So by the time I got the money, two years later, I felt emotionally destroyed.

I would rather have my dad than money of course.

And in that, I realised that money is not true wealth for me

Love is true wealth

No, I’ve never missed it. Shit food, never enough of it, going to bed hungry, being worried I smelled because my mum did not prioritise washing and brushing teeth, feeling guilty for needing new shoes, hand me down knickers, avoiding people my mum owed money to…

Had a sort of sequel to it as an adult for a while, was not fun but not as bad as when I was a kid and I’m as sure as I can be that my kids never went to bed hungry. Both instances have stayed with me: make sure the fridge is never bare and I’ve always been a stickler for my kids having a shower/bath every night from when they’re babies.

No. If was unbearable. I always felt like a stranger. Fear, anxiety, worry, violence, arguments, not being able to regulate emotions and not having the opportunities that my children now have is just nothing I ever want to return to. Especially now as a mother. There was more of a ‘family’ element and family being together, but this wasn’t always a good thing. I don’t miss the simplicity of being poor of growing up in that environment because it wasn’t simple. It was awful.

That’s not to say I don’t feel somewhat of a stranger in my life now. Your early experiences shape you and it’s hard to relate to new friends sometimes now and of course you carry the general fear / worry about finances and not having enough into adulthood, even though I’m perfectly stable.

I am poor to MN standards i grow up with nothing not just poor but with nothing.
I have a nice life now i wont say rich but ive done well.

I found poverty absolutely horrible.

But I have to say, I've found having money also hasn't made me happy.

I think because someone in my family died in a very bad way for me to inherit the money.

So the sadness cancelled out the happiness of the money.

Yeah this sounds like more to do with the people around you more than literally missing being poor.

I'd say I'm middle class but friendships I have are definitely more about visiting with kids/going to friend's place for lunch rather than going out to eat or drink.

I think maybe you need to find some more laid back friends (although I realise easier said than done if they're not out and about!)

Although I will say I grew up in a very poor part of London until my parents made some money in my teens. I found he culture shock huge and missed the old place. But that was more to do with the people and "vibe".

No. Thank my lucky stars my children didn’t have to grow up as I did.

I’m comfortable now but still worry about money and will never take it for granted.

As for that ‘doors always open , popping in and out of each other’s house’, life was far more transactional on the council estate I grew up on. People were often popping in to borrow something (sometimes money), ask for free childcare, or just gossip as a way of entertainment.

I grow up without much. Now I have anything and everything all the time and I don't get the same buzz from new things. I'm just spoiled now

indeed - it's an interesting thread, would all the dicks please fuck off to the far side of fuck and let us discuss it.

And THAT is not language which would have been heard, or acceptable, in my poor, WC childhood! I had to adjust to hearing it and it was many years into adulthood before I used it.

I think it's imposter syndrome for many of us - we move in circles where we are not always 100% sure of the "rules of the game", we think we might get "caught out" at some point, so never totally relaxed. I've read threads on here, for example, about things like etiquette around weddings, visiting people for meals and taking gifts etc. that were totally alien to me, and I had clearly, over the years, transgressed!

I knew where I was in my WC childhood, I knew what was expected of me, what was "polite" and what was "rude", where friends were people you relaxed with, not people you competed with, where not having any money was not a barrier to getting together.

I have no desire to return to poverty, my parents NEVER got over their anxiety around money, I'm working on it, but there is always a niggle of doubt that there will always be enough. My ex, who grew up in a very MC, wealthy, family never felt that - he would spend down to his last penny, secure in the belief that there would always be more where that came from. Debt didn't worry him, he would borrow large sums for his business, convinced that he would make enough to pay it back (which he did) while I was wracked with anxiety over it.

When I go "home" to visit the elderly relatives and friends I do know I relax with them in a way I don't with my friends here. We go to a local working men's club with one relative and always have a great time, it feels safe and familiar - so if I miss anything it's that feeling of not being an outsider.

No. I never ever miss it. When I compare my childhood to my children’s I can still feel that anxiety and unworthiness I felt all the time then. It has made me very grateful though.

No. But could be because I haven't moved far enough away from it.

Fascinating thread! I'm really enjoying all this discussion.

I grew up in the 70s & 80s in a rough ex garrison town with very high levels of unemployment & poverty.

My early childhood was poor. We didn't have a home & lived with grandparents for a couple of years

Eventually my parents bought a tiny, boxy new build on an estate on the edge of town & we lived there for the rest of my childhood

It was a very working class estate & most of the mums didn't work & spent their days in & out of each other's houses drinking tea or coffee.

There were many dramas & fallings out. We had 1 open plan kitchen/ sitting room downstairs so everyone was on top of each other all the time (my dad knocked the wall dividing the 2 rooms as they were both tiny)

It was v cold as we didn't have heating for years until they saved up to install a fireplace & back boiler in the one fireplace so it would heat radiators (which had to be installed)

I remember the astonishment when the fire was lit & the radiators worked & the house was warm for the first time. We didn't always have the money to buy the coal that was needed so it was sporadic

I escaped by reading everything I could get my hands on. My biggest dream was to have a floor to ceiling bookcase. I planned it & visualised it & dreamt of it.

I knew early on, from books, that there was FAR more to life than this v limited place I was living & education was my ticket out.

I worked hard in school & won a place in a red brick university. I was the first in my family to make it to 3rd level.

My life & my dcs lives are VASTLY different to what mine was like growing up. And i don't miss it one iota.

I'm proud of what I've achieved & I love having the ability to eat in a lovely restaurant or travel abroad to another city because I wasn't to visit a gallery or a museum there & we do this regularly.

Our friends are educated, cultured people & i adore spending time with them & being able to discuss performances or exhibitions or books.

I feel like I was an outsider in my childhood life not my adult one

I never hide my roots & talk openly about growing up poor.

No I don't miss it, any of it. I particularly don't miss feeling less than and being very limited in my choices and decisions. I've told my two to never make decisions based solely on money and to come to me. If I had this back up my life would have been completely different.

I hid it well and I remember feeling horrified when someone else recognised it because she was poor.

Despite my DF working so hard we were poor compared to my friends. I felt resentful then and I still feel resentful. It was miserable and I had a nasty, resentful DM who spent money like water on herself, hated not having money and refused to work.

You can have posh flats :)
I think I'm one of the few people who prefer flats to houses, also because of the warmth aspect.

Shift work and poverty can make people fat as well though and I don't think there's any shame in preferring to be thin.

You can get close communities that are not poor though. Mostly rural I suppose...

I'm not sure you could have classed us as poor as we always had enough to eat but we certainly weren't well off. No car, no holidays. I think I know what you mean though op. Nobody had anything so there was no comparing clothes, shoes, tech. There was no tech! And of course no Internet so no wider comparison. Everyone left their back door unlocked and neighbours would pop in with a cooee. There are people on Mumsnet who never answer their door unless they are expecting someone. We all played out and knew the names of everyone in the street. Everyone knew who to avoid (the local paedo).

I think it was character building - but I was a child. So the struggles of it would be more keenly felt by my mom than me.

I remember not being able to afford a TV and my mom washing all the clothes in the bath because we could not afford a washing machine. I am sure my mother did not miss that when we got a machine.

I miss some of the things from childhood but I think there was more community support items for poor families. I look at my family members now who are still very much poor and I envy somethings but not others.

Hmmm many middle class people also buy secondhand clothing you know Have you never heard of the NCT clothes sales?

🤣 No.

It wasnt like that for me. I was very aware how precarious things were, maybe that's why I don't miss it.

I don't miss it, no. But I do sometimes wonder at the resilience and determination growing up poor instilled in me and the drive it gave me and I look at my dcs in their extremely privileged position and wonder where will their drive come from?! They've got nothing to work to get away from!

No. I hated it.

In the 1980s, my brothers and I were each allowed 125gms of cereal in the morning.

Supper was bread and jam or floury dumplings with cinnamon sugar. My mother was frantic with worry about how to pay the bills.