Is there a worrying class divide with parenting?

[teaandcupcake]

I saw a tweet (and subsequent TikTok) about this and found it interesting.

The author of the tweet and the girl on TikTok were basically saying they notice the way their middle-class friends parent their small kids is screen-free, lots and lots of books, lots of time and attention. Their toddlers can read and write. In contrast, teacher friends at deprived primaries have shared stories of reception starters in nappies, children who have no idea how to turn the page of a book or use a knife and fork.

The concern being that the divide between middle-class and working-class children is going to be so vast in the future we ‘can’t even fathom it right now’

I found it interesting as the topic of reception children starting school without reaching basic milestones has been discussed on here many times before but not whether it’s class issue and what’s causing this.

And this is the problem. Nothing has come in to replace the heavy industries/manufacturing which working class people relied on and which no longer exist. Todays economy is more service based. That's another reason why the grammar system wouldn't work today. The "non academic" jobs which "non academic" children were expected to go into no longer exist.

Trades still exist? I agree industry is a yawning gap now.

They exist yes but not at the level they would be needed to accommodate all "non academic" youngsters. Especially given that the numbers who went to Grammar School were effectively a minority so you've got a majority of "non-academic" who failed the 11 Plus.

And "non academic" is a BS, borderline fascist way of describing a young person anyway. Coming from a time when people were judged on their genetics in a way that was frighteningly close to what was happening in Hitlers Germany.

We all have abilities. Some of us are great at English and Languages but struggle in Maths. Some of us can't spell but have musical talent. Some of us are bright but struggle with confidence, dyslexia, ADHD...we're not all across the board superstars and you can't make a two-tier distinction between "academic" and "not academic" especially based on a bloody exam aged 11.

@KHMP1971 True. And this is why I resist this narrative which is fashionable at the moment that no one should go to university unless they want to be a doctor but everyone should learn to be a plumber or an electrician.

Don't me wrong, a job as a plumber or electrician is a fantastic trade, well paid, rewarding and relatively recession proof. But not everyone can do these jobs, they are already punishingly hard to get apprenticeships in and at the rate people are pushing their kids into them there is already a glut.

And while elite degree courses clearly aren't suitable for everyone, I don't want to go back to a world where there's a small handful of degree educated people and a great majority of people without any tertiary education. There are plenty of jobs which need specialist post-secondary education and it's not an all or nothing between PPE at Oxford and becoming a hairdresser.

They certainly do, and often out earn a degree from the off.
I know a lot of families who made a lot of money as a tradesman, my Dbro being one of them.
There was a scheme in NI years ago, where companies were paid to employ apprenticeships for 2 years, after 2 years the companies could employ them to continue training as a 3rd year, if they were good enough, you need a brain to be a trade person, it was a win/win. It gave many young people an opportunity to have a career.
My cousin makes 1000's weekly as a plumber fitting high end bathrooms, there is a lot of cash jobs in it too.

Not everyone wants to be a plumber or electrician though. It isn't a job that would suit everyone and I really don't like the idea of schools limiting a young person's career choices or steering them towards certain careers telling them they "don't need to go to University" especially based on an exam age 11. There are plenty of options post GCSE for young people to choose trades or college or university.

This is the thing. The world has moved on. There are so many degree/Higher Education subjects and courses now. I agree not everyone is going to be a doctor but there are many many other options. Its not just "Academia" or "Trades" or "Manufacturing/Manual work" as perhaps it was in the post war world of the 1950s. It's a different world now. Children need to be supported to choose GCSE subjects which interest them and make career choices from there not be stamped at a young age and put into a box. That's unbelievably anachronistic.

That was over40 years ago. 2 generations What's the excuse these days?

I agree the 11+ is unfair, children should be given better education earlier so it's a fairer playing field.

I don't think it's automatically 'borderline fascist' to classify some children as 'non academic' though. Maybe not as early as that, as you say. And it's negative to frame in terms of what they can't do than what they can. But there's nothing bad about some being less academic but having other valuable skills/smarts. It's wrong that there is a perceived stigma.

@RubySquid

That was over40 years ago. 2 generations What's the excuse these days?

Lack of work. Nothing has really replaced the mines/steelworks except call centres and care work. People who don’t want to do that tend to leave.

Yes, and the care work situation is very short, at the same time, we don't want people doing it who hate it. It's poor it's viewed as an unskilled job that anyone can do.

Then move where there is work. If the first lot of people had done that in the 80s then the next generations down would be bringing up kids in working households.

@RubySquid

Then move where there is work. If the first lot of people had done that in the 80s then the next generations down would be bringing up kids in working households.

Sure, and a lot of people have done that, but if an entire generation ups and goes, leaving just the elderly, the sick, those with below average academics and those with no motivation to work it doesn't do wonders for a community.

And mass exodus looking for work just tends to take the problem and put it somewhere else. I didn't grow up in an area like that but surely you can see why people want to regenerate the area, rather than just letting the life be sucked out of it?

Tbf the remove and replace method should been implemented by the government. There was nothing stopping the government putting in manufacturing roles of some sort, keeping the economy going, pride in the community, they left people with nothing but depression.
The entire community can't move out.

Exactly, and there's not enough city housing, let alone good housing...

Rural people esp tend to be attached to place esp if have long family tradition & links there.

Yep. All of us writing class parents just drag them up until they can fend for themselves then pop some more out for the benefit money.

But if there's no jobs there you can't stay for 2generations not working. You don't have to live in a city but go donewhere there is work And seeing as it's the youngsters GRANDPARENTS who were losing jobs you would think they had enough time to get educated to do something else.

Many many people move away from home themselves and families for work

Yes, I do agree...it's hard but people have to adapt if that's how it is for now. I guess when it gets entrenched there's a learned helplessness element...

@EmeraldShamrock000

There was nothing stopping the government putting in manufacturing roles of some sort, keeping the economy going, pride in the community, they left people with nothing but depression.
The entire community can't move out.

This was under Margaret Thatcher, who hated the working classes and thought people should "get on their bikes" (actually I think that was Norman Tebbit) to find work if there wasn't any where they lived.)

Thatcher was probably right ultimately that the mining industry in the UK had had its day and should have been phased out but the way she went about it was brutal and vindictive. If it was done with support and a bit of strategy it could have been different.

It's weird, on the Angela Rayner thread the other day on FWR, some, including some working class posters, kept saying Thatcher was working class. Her dad was a shopkeeper when she was young but firmly petit bourgeois as some pointed out, not working class. It was weird.

I agree Thatcher seemed to hate the working class. Why, I wonder? That also came out horribly in the Hillsborough response.

What I’m wondering is what specifically makes middle-class and working-class people more or less likely to potty train/give unlimited screen time/teach kids how to use cutlery. No one seems to actually be talking about the specifics in much detail. Eg. Middle-class family, two lawyers are going to be working crazy hours, aren’t they more likely to have less time and be more stressed than a family on benefits? Therefore the former be more likely to let kids have more screen time and have less time to teach basic skills? Or is it about education? Eg. Is a working class family who aren’t well educated assumed to either not know that kids need to learn these things or not care enough about their kids to teach them?? Cos this isn’t about money, it doesn’t cost anything to teach kids this stuff. So what is it about?

@CleopatraSelene

I agree Thatcher seemed to hate the working class. Why, I wonder? That also came out horribly in the Hillsborough response.

Possibly because she knew her family wasn't all that far removed from the working classes she so despised.

That level of snobbery and judgement is most intense towards people who are similar enough to make others wonder what the difference is. Which is why historically the most vehement explicit disgust towards immigrants often comes from people at the lowest rungs of society: they want to have someone to look down on.

It's pure armchair psychology but I feel a genuinely grand Prime Minister from generations of wealth wouldn't have had as much to prove as Thatcher. The narcissism of minor differences.

It's primarily to do with your anxieties about what has the biggest power to let you down socially and economically.

There's this trope which you see a lot on here (and elsewhere) that working class families care much more about tidiness and grooming than middle class families who are more relaxed about their kids going out with unbrushed hair etc. It's a bit of a stereotype but there's some truth in it.

Look at where the fear comes from. The biggest fear, historically, in a working class community, was that the family would be judged for not being "good" in the sense of morally correct, upstanding, having enough money to clothe their children. A middle class family has no such anxiety about what their kids look like in church or school but they are deeply anxious about their kids not getting into the right grammar school/private school/university or getting the internship they aim for. Because these are the things with the biggest potential to let them down and trigger social scorn.

People instinctively pick up the social anxieties their parents had and understand what the thing is with greatest potential to hold their own children back in their communities. And they prioritise accordingly.

Well it's not an excuse... nothing has come into replace the lost industries.... you'd need to do a bit of socioeconomic research on the area to understand....

You can't just displace the entire population of a region lol.