To feel there is no future for children unless they

[Honeyyourfamilar]

unless they start a business or are super academic or excel in their careers.

I grew up in a working class neighbourhood in London (zone 6 so maybe not London London) and so many of the parents were normal working class people who owned their own homes: postman, bus drivers, dinner ladies, mechanics. There was a couple who both worked in supermarkets and they owned their own home. In a few families only the bloke worked and that was enough to sustain the family - I am maybe showing my age.

These were people in their early 30s who were financially secure. Now those houses are worth £500k plus and there is no way someone working a low paid job could afford that.

Two people making £30k a year will get £240k mortgage, where is the other amount going to come from?

I think that young people don't have a future here anyone.

The only way someone who isn't earning a decent wage can afford to buy a house is if they get an inheritance or if their parents sell their £500k house, that they purchased for £30k, and downsize, and give a deposit to their kids.

The amount of families renting and dependent on housing benefit is just a disgrace. It also means people stay in horrible relationships because they cannot afford to leave.

This country is a ***.

What about jobs, friends, family, support networks?

When I was searching for jobs in my field / industry in my home town nothing came up. I moved the search settings to London and there were 100s.

And London and my home town are the only places I have any form of support network. Makes no sense to me to move to somewhere like Wakefield to afford a property but lose everything else. Just go to work, home, gym each day.

I am 33 this year and we bought a 400k 2 bed flat on 75k combined in 2019. I was 26, DH was 29. We married at 22 and 24, lived with dh's mum for 3 years and saved 20k per year plus 10k that dh earned in his gap year. Only having one child (dh getting vasectomy next week) so this works for us. I am in zone 3 BTW, dh refuses to leave nw london lol and we are in a fairly expensive part, our postcode includes the most expensive road in the uk though there are ordinary 1930s flats like ours too just a short walk away.

BTW I didn't even have indefinite leave to remain so didn't qualify for lots of mortgages. Dh is a 4th generation Londoner too.

Yes.
Not all job opportunities are south of Watford!
Depending on what you do and where you move there are plenty of jobs outside London. I live in the North everyone I know is working. And most own their own homes

Well paid trades like fully qualified electricians (eg the ones capable of doing more complex work ) are not easy things to qualify in - there is a lot of understanding of scientific concepts and mathematical skill required.

So it isn't actually a suitable option for many "non-academic" kids. It may involve more manual work but it also involves a lot of intellectual prowess plus soft skills of being able to study, revise, be motivated, explain things to clients in suitable language etc.

My heating engineer who designed and installed my heating pump has a university degree in engineering from Romania for example

There is a big gap between what highly skilled and qualified trades get paid and what a general handyman/labourer/painter is getting.

I know a female plumber, she's doing very well for herself. There are certainly barriers to more women entering these jobs, but at least some of these are self imposed. It would be useful to do some research into how these could be overcome.

Ah you've solved the problem with your personal experience of chatting to a few people.

There are huge barriers to women entering the trades. Just because you've spoken to a few people, doesn't make that not true.

Do you think that born and bred Londoners have never existed then, they very much did in the 80s and 90s and they were the majority, so you think they it is fair or acceptable for large group of people to be driven out of many parts of London due to gentrification, and foreign investment portfolios buying up the properties and renting them out, upping the rent continuously and pricing people out. I'm not sure why that is unacceptable in say Cornwall but absolutely fine in London! And this is why the answer is not for people from the south east to move to the North, so fatalistic to think that is the only answer and we cause a whole heap of other problems.

Being able to live at home and also having a partner definitely helps. When neither are an option you are pretty screwed!

I didn't say it was easy for a woman to enter the trades. I said there is a market for female tradespeople.

What are the barriers for women entering trades?

There was a lot of poverty in the 50s and 60s and the idea of owning your own home was unthinkable to the people I grew up with.
My parents moved into a council house in the 60s and felt very lucky because it had an indoors bathroom.The children still had to all share rooms and even beds. (something people on Mumsnet thing is terrible!).
Many people in the 60s still had to go outside to use the toilet.
And we didn't have a fridge or a telephone in the house until the mid 70s. I also remember ice on the inside of windows and having to have coats and blankets on the bed to keep warm.
The post war years certainly weren't all milk and honey.
More than one in three children lived in poverty by the mid-1990s .

This is true for my DH and the kind of work he does and the projects he wants to do are far more abundant in London ATM, it isn't the case for me though but my teenagers would not want to move from their whole entire lives, friends, culture and family in the south east.

The post war years certainly weren't all milk and honey.

why has said that? Equally life isn't milk and honey today because the technology exists to have mobile phones.

Both sets of grandparents were from working class families and they indoor loos and bathrooms. One had a semi detached house, as a child so in the 1930s she lived in a slum terrace and was one of 14. My parents went to university and my Dad became an Economist, it was definitely doable, the social contract still existed.

Well OP is staying she has a house in London and is worried about her kids. Perhaps she could let her kids stay a few years and encourage them to find long term reliable partners in their 20s.

My MIL had 4 children and a 2 bed plus box room terrace and we stayed. I am now thinking of ways to rejig my son's single room (which can fit a single bed desk wardrobe and chest of drawers) to a suitable adult room that can at a pinch accommodate a couple for a year or 2 and we will be able to give money too (vertical study bed as a double bed doesnt leave much space for anything else). Or I suppose at the grand age of 55, I could finally persuade dh to move to a ground floor flat in zone 5 which would be more spacious, old age proof and would be around the same value. Also by that time dh would probably want to commute by tube rather than cycle everywhere the way he currently does.

My son is still a foetus BTW lol.

PP said that there was poverty in the Victorian years but not post war and that isn't the case.

I get fed up of reading “if you are not academic become a plumber” you have absolutely no clue what skill set you have to be a gas engineer, maths, physics etc, every 5 years you have to sit a weeks worth of exams to keep your ticket, it’s not an easy option for the unacademic at all, you can’t leave school at 16 with no qualifications and just get a plumbing or electrician apprenticeship you have to pass exams just to get to that point, it’s not the 1960’s anymore, times and technology have changed incredibly as has the skill set required to become these trades.

My gas engineer has a university degree in engineering! My dh and him were discussing the merits of paying off student loan early. They both invested 10k in student loan overpayments.

My (Northern) parents talk about how when they bought a house most nights they ate cabbage soup (cabbage and the water it was boiled in) as their most frequent meal, sat on sofas they’d taken out of someone’s skip and had a broom handle wedged between two walls as their wardrobe.

I’m yet to meet a millennial who is willing to make that level of compromise to buy their own house.

Most people are living better and more expensive lives now that do make home ownership less affordable given the need for a deposit. But I do know people who work in supermarkets and have bought houses, so it’s not unacheivable.

I didn't say it was an easy option or it required no academic ability, now did I?

There are plenty of children going to university now who would have far better prospects going into a trade.

Definitely you can let your kids stay but them finding long term reliable partners is out of her (and often her kids) hands.

Edit: actually letting your kids stay also depends where you are. OP is in London so I presume the kids can live and work there. Not an option for everybody else.

@Whoarethoseguys no poverty doesn't equal milk & honey though?

Perhaps she could let her kids stay a few years and encourage them to find long term reliable partners in their 20s

Not everyone has a good relationship with their parents though & many parents don't have space or can afford the increased costs.

Living on cabbage soup for years sounds unhealthy and sitting on a sofa found in a skip sounds unhygienic!