To think middle class people are the most insecure?

[OneCheeryGreenHiker]

The poor don’t have time for pretence, the rich don’t need to prove anything but the middle class seem permanently anxious about schools, cars, kitchens, holidays… AIBU to think middle class life is just competitive insecurity dressed up as respectability?

Have you considered that it is possibly you who are a bit insecure?

Such a generalisation.

YABU. Perhaps you are projecting your insecurities onto others who don’t have them.

I am middle class and insecure if that helps? 🙋‍♀️

Doesn't anxiety transcend class boundaries? I feel like I know anxious people from all walks of life.

And what do you mean - be anxious about? I do enjoy planning holidays and am renovating my kitchen, so yes you could probably accurately describe my current interests as pedestrian and unoriginal, but I don't feel in anxious or insecure about them?

What do you mean by middle classes? None of the people I know that I’d consider to be middle class have ‘time for pretence’ either, as they’re all working in high pressure professional careers (surgeons, bankers etc) while also bringing up families. Who are all these middle class people with loads of time on their hands?

I am middle class and not anxious at all.

(although not about cars, kitchens or holidays)

How do you define a "Middle Class" person?

And while you are at it, can you define a "working person", as Sir Keir needs some help in this area....?

Just to add I’m middle class and currently having my kitchen replaced, but I wouldn’t say I am, or have ever been, anxious about it. I just had to replace it as the old one was 25 years old and falling to pieces.

Not that I've noticed.

The people I see who worry about the right car, right clothes etc are the wannabes, those who aren't happy with their lives and envious of others.

The MC are generally comfortable in their skins, often privately educated and confident.

Maybe it's you OP.

The class system is a blight on the UK and always has been. Labelling people and trying to put them into boxes based on perceptions of economic or social status is genuinely vile. How can we hope to be a mature society if we continue to use such divisive way to describe people. A system of hierarchy that creates and perpetuates a cycle of disadvantage. Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross.

😂 Fair enough, thanks for the honesty!

I'm middle class, had a good job, never felt anxious until I got sacked earlier this year..

I didn’t mean they have loads of free time, more that the pressure to keep up with appearances seems to weigh heaviest in that bracket. It’s not about actual spare time but the pressure to signal status.

YABU. Insecure people are the most insecure people. There are many insecure people in all social classes. I'm totally mc. I'm not anxious about cars or kitchens. I'm occasionally anxious about schools, but that's because I'm a teacher! Holidays? Why would you be anxious about holidays because you're middle class?

Do a bit of thinking and reading, OP. You seem to have divided society into ‘rich’, ‘poor’ and ‘middle class’, but two of those are purely economic categories, while the other is a social group which encompasses far more than income. It’s also perfectly possible to be filthy rich and working class, for instance, and to be UC and genteelly impoverished.

I meant middle class in the everyday sense, the professionals with mortgages, school anxieties, kitchens to redo etc. Not a scientific definition, more the social shorthand we all use.

I’m middle class and very secure within myself.

Ah, it was just because you said the working classes have ‘no time for pretence’, so I assumed you were saying that the middle classes had ‘more time for pretence’, which isn’t my experience.

There's a big difference between lower middle and upper middle for one. You also can't generalise, the people I know obsessed with cars are working class.

The MC are generally comfortable in their skins, often privately educated and confident.

Most middle class people are not privately educated...

Pretty much everyone who owns a house or flat has a mortgage. And kitchens need redoing periodically, regardless of your social class. I’m a WC professional with a giant mortgage, currently redoing my kitchen (because I bought a house where the kitchen had been installed in the early 1990s and was mouldering) and have always sent DS to the school geographically nearest to wherever we were living. Not an anxiety in sight.

I think you’re just assuming your own vague social notions are universal.

Why do 'the poor' have less time for pretence?

The super prime housing market and the trade in status cars would suggest that the rich do feel the need to prove something.

This is one of those threads where the title suggests social class but the OP is actually referring to economic status.