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.

And it made me feel defeated from a young age and not determined. Perhaps that's a character failing of mine but I could never see a way out.

I think those who get out are rarely the very poorest.

I grew up very poor. I miss m family home from back then : the lino we polished with dusters on our feet, the roses my dad grew, how neat everything was, because it was so sparse. I miss the simplicity, because everyone on the estate was poor, we didn’t have anything materially. Making scones was lovely on a Sunday. We were all sharing the same experience, watching the same tV programmes and getting paid on Fridays.

Omg it's my dream to have a posh flat, like Charlotte's from satc, in chelsea 🥺🙌😄

Hell no

I think I get this more than anything else.

I grew up dirt poor, benefits, gas and electric cut off, hiding behind the sofa from bailiffs etc. and to boot I had absymal nasty parents.

I've got out, I live a massively different life style to what I had. My DD is thoroughly spoilt by comparison to what I had (and I indulge her on all the things I so wanted to do).

But, I feel like I don't really belong in this "class". It so natural to others in it, I feel like I'm playing pretend, but equally when I end up back in the old world (very very occasionally) I don't feel I fit there either. I definitely feel adrift at times with it all. Like I'm fake and I'll get found out.

Absolutely NOT. My version of poor - I was born in 1958 - involved living in a 2 up, 2 down house with no central heating, no bathroom/toilet inside (only a toilet across the yard and tin bath in front of the fire once a week, sharing bath water with my 2 brothers...), sharing a bedroom with first the older brother, then the younger one until I was 16 and we moved to a 3 bed house with bathroom and inside toilet (still no central heating, mind).

I could go on about all the other things I didn't have that friends at school, etc did. But no - I do not miss poverty. It was miserable and I had no fucking privacy.

My god I love the working mens club. We used to go on Christmas afternoon

No. I'm still poor. Not so destitute I can't afford food, but very much in the no car, no fun, no holidays mode of living. I was never able to break free of the generational poverty curse.

The fact that I have a job at all - even if it is minimum wage - means I've done better than my parents. But when I look at how much more comfortably they live - in council housing and on benefits - I feel like the butt of some great big cosmic joke.

People like to act like getting out of poverty is just a case of working hard and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. But it's really luck you need, as far as I've seen. You can be as clever and capable as you like and work yourself to the bone, but there are all these little invisible markers that tell people you're not middle class, and subtly count against you when you're trying to get ahead. It's not always easy to find that person who will give you a chance to prove yourself.

I understand where you're coming from and I feel for you, OP. I think I'd feel a bit lost at sea too, in your shoes. But you are one of the lucky ones. Your efforts paid off. Enjoy it! And remember, you're here now. You're in the middle class. You've arrived! You can decide how much or how little you need to fit in with them

I can't take credit really. I'm intelligent but I benefitted from the last years of full grants so uni was free for me. I've worked solidly since, and just got a bit more savings each year. It wasn't hard work it was luck as you say and an exceptional careers teacher at my school who rounded up us estate kids and even did home visits to our parents to explain that uni wouldn't cost them anything and we should go.

Remember it was your parents who likely suffered the most growing up poor and making ends meet.

They no doubt loved you to bits and the real meaning of love wasn't tainted with expensive treats but, probably, family days out and stuff that really does matter. And it's that you remember fondly.

I kind of know what you mean. I grew up in an unusual environment where we lived on a council estate but my mum worked in a bank and was quite a high earner. So we had money and I never as a child had to worry about clothes on my back, food on the table or heating and hot water, but I grew up with friends who had both parents unemployed and it was a very typical council estate vibe.

I loved my childhood; there were loads of kids out playing all the time and I also loved playing on my own in all the parks and green spaces.

Everyone would just be chilling about, sitting outside, eating dinner, getting an icecream from the van..I'm sure that unbeknownst to me there were lots of struggles and people wanted more or better, but these were large houses with front and back gardens and it genuinely felt like everyone was just living life, living for the day and having a good time. As most people were council tenants as well, they had secure tenure and cheap rents and I've definitely seen kids I went to primary school with grow up and have a baby of their own, renting a council house a couple of streets away from their own family home.

I don't think it's a bad way to live at all, if you are in the straight and narrow and not battling substance abuse.

I do agree in a sense but actually I think the way you spent your day to day life is what you remember and what shapes you. I definitely have clearer memories of playing out day to day with the whole street than I do of days out, and the days out I do remember do feel special, but they are not more or less happy.

That careers advisor was brilliant. My school really did not do anything to encourage poorer kids to go to university. And I know some who thought you had to pay to go, there were free grants then as well.

She was fantastic.
I imagine now she wouldn't be allowed to do it as she never said she was coming, she just knocked the door and our parents would go "oh there's Mrs Smith from school, what does she want"
She would probably get reported now. But 4 of my friends went as a result of her reassuring our parents. She even helped us work out how to save the money for our first train fare there, or helped our parents organise lifts etc (someone from her church took me there)

I think your childhood sounds brilliant.
I loved playing out, but we had incredibly basic food and the house was cold. But when we hit teenage years is when I really felt it. I had few clothes, and mainly hand me downs. I remember someone asking me in school about the band t short I was wearing. I had to admit I had not bought it and did not know the band. And my bedroom was absolutely freezing. Zero heating at all in my bedroom, no matter how cold it was. And we never had money to do anything. Even as a teenager my main entertainment was going walks with friends and hanging out in bedrooms listening to music. I had good times, and I enjoyed being around friends, but it was nowhere like my middle class friends childhoods.

We had frost inside the windows and free school meals and no new clothes but I feel like it was easier to be poor in the 80s and 90s. Standards of living were in general lower. Everyone out playing in the street. No social media to make you feel so shit about yourself. As a child you could not see some of the stuff that it would absolutely kill me to look at now as an adult.

No. And I worked my socks off to make sure my kids didn’t worry about lack of money like I did as a child. I can remember being scared to go to sleep at night because my parents talked about the electricity being cut off. My father had a good job, my mother was a Sahm mostly but then started part time jobs yet they never had any money. Lack of food, poor quality food, clothes that singled me out in school.

I'm just reading the responses OP and I do think the nail has been hit on the head; growing up poor as a child can be okay for the child if your parents are resourceful, dedicated and physically and mentally well, and have been brought up themselves in an environment that develops these qualities. It's also easier to be the child in the poor family than the parents, as long as the parents aren't abusive or you aren't really going without (there's obviously degrees of poorness).

I struggled when my DC were very young with money for a while, and it was an extremely stressful time. Counting the pennies in the supermarket, relying on others, even using a foofbank on a couple of occasions or selling possessions to get money for food.

It's an awful, draining way to live and it begins the vicious cycle of overspending when you do have money and then spending the rest of the month struggling, because you are so deprived that you have little self control.

I'm so glad and so proud that we are doing so much better now and the days of not having money for food or energy and running out of options are starting to feel like a distant memory, but it will always stay with me. I'm sure my kids knew no different as they were tiny and I always prioritised ensuring they had what they needed but it's horrible rummaging around the day before payday for that last tin of Spaghetti hoops and those few fish fingers in the bottom of the freezer to put your child's dinner together 😔

It's... complicated. I don't miss being hungry and I don't miss being cold. But I am different to the people around me now and they think I'm such a weirdo, or crazy sometimes, and I miss being with people who just know what I mean, know what I mean?

Posh people live in a strange version of the world and it makes them seem mental to me sometimes, but as I'm there with them, it's me that is mental. It's all, like, put down to my iconclastic "personality". It's a bit lonely sometimes. I don't mean to be eccentric. I'm actually NOT that eccentric, just displaced, I think.

It's been interesting trying all the things, but, you know, honestly I'm mostly not bothered. London is too hectic, airports are rubbish, skiing is terrible, fancy parties are unbearable, fancy hotels are okay, but not life changing, Michelin star restaurants are generally pretty great but the best part is still tumbling home with your friends at the end of the night. It's just not really for me! I tried it all out but now I don't really buy things, except computers. I'm happier going for walks and reading books and wearing my old clothes to death and having my mates round for a drink. I like my local. I like my little house. I'm stopping here.

I think what I needed was "enough". After enough, "more" doesn't really make me happier. I was already reasonably happy; I was just cold and tired, so once that was sorted, the rest is neither here nor there. I just can't be arsed with most middle class preoccupations.

I grew up "poor" in the 90/00s. No one in my school had much but everyone was fed, clean, clothed, lived in secure housing and got the odd day out or activity. Most of our time was spent playing at eachothers homes or in the park or playgrounds. After school activities was swimming once a week or a church or volunteer run group. Things were bought locally. Most of this was enabled by Mums not having to work and a welfare state that supported them. Debt was uncommon and no one got evicted or had their utilities cut off.

I sound like a bleeding FB post but most lower income families with two working parents probably don't live as good as this now, certainly not when you consider the stress of juggling it all. Let alone actually poor

no, I miss being young with my siblings. I dont miss horrible foods and hunger, cold and ice on the inside of the windows, coats in bed. No pets, no school trips, home made school bag, home haircuts, no holidays, one beach day trip per year despite living near the sea, no ice-creams etc. Jumble sale clothes and bullying. I didnt go to a restaurant, eat a takeaway or a cream cake till I was an adult. fags and boozing prioritised over the needs of the children. different times tho I gusss !

I didn’t grow up poor but we were neglected and money wasn’t prioritised to pay bills.
I don’t miss being hungry, not having clean clothes, not having enough food in the cupboards or having no clothes to wear that weren’t handed down and didn’t fit properly. I had some fun times with my siblings and playing outside though, as we never went out to activities etc. We never went to cafes or fir an ice cream or even the beach despite it being nearby
I love the fact we eat well, are healthy and can do nice things now- not that they are expensive but getting fresh air, going for a forest or beach walk etc
I do absolutely treasure my life now and feel so lucky (despite being on a low income) so I understand some of the points made

I can empathise with this too and in a way I'm glad I'm not very well off still.

There are pressures I will never be exposed to because I will never be part of those communities. I remember realising a couple of years ago that you could buy children's jackets for over £500!! I remember going yo a wedding a hearing this man go on all night about going to private school. He was in his late 30's, school was decades ago but it was still his first point of conversation, as was his middle classness (only time I have ever heard in real life and not on MN talking about class!). These are things that I will never have to worry about and in a way that is a blessing.

I've never been able to live as an adult in anything bigger than a small 2 bedroom place. But I've spend so much time learning and watching other people who choose to live in small spaces, that I see all the benefits and I don't think I would ever want to live in a large place.

I think it comes down to outlook.

Benefits for working families were higher during this period. It was worse beforehand, and worse now.