To ask what class you think you are?

[IHate]

People always say everyone on MN is middle class, but are we?! I honestly think it’s a pretty socioeconomically diverse mix.

What class would you say you are? Curious how people map themselves when you take both background and current life into account.

These are the rough descriptions I’m working from (from Reddit - I didn’t write them, so please don’t come for me 🤣). Heritage first, income last.

Upper class
Old families, land, inherited wealth, public schools, Oxbridge, connections that run through generations. Sparse vowels, quiet confidence, and a sense that everything important happens in drawing rooms you will never see.

Typical household income: irrelevant, wealth is inherited.

Likelihood of two parent families: very high.

Age at first child: early thirties.

Upper middle class
Professionals with long-standing pedigree. Parents and grandparents were doctors, civil servants, academics, barristers, consultants, senior military. Private or grammar schooling, strong cultural capital, instinctive ease in elite spaces. This is the group most people mean when they say “middle class”.

Typical household income: often £150k plus.

Likelihood of two parent families: high. Age at first child: early to mid thirties.

Middle class
Educated, comfortable, but not posh. Teachers, mid-level civil servants, senior nurses, managers, small business owners. Cultural capital is mixed. Grandparents may have been skilled workers. Big on gardens, National Trust, and well-behaved children.

Typical household income: around £90k to £150k.

Likelihood of two parent families: moderate to high.

Age at first child: late twenties to early thirties.

Lower middle class
Clerical, admin, retail management, entry-level professional families. Polite, aspirational, very aware of class boundaries. Parents or grandparents often from working class backgrounds. Transitional rather than settled.

Typical household income: around £60k to £90k.

Likelihood of two parent families: mixed.

Age at first child: mid to late twenties.

Working class
Manual trades, industrial work, care work, service work. Strong community identity, distinctive humour, bluntness valued over polish. Heritage is key. You can earn millions and remain working class because class is about where you come from, not what you now earn.

Typical household income: usually under £60k, though can be higher.

Likelihood of two parent families: lower than middle groups.

Age at first child: late teens to mid twenties.

Precariat
Insecure work, unstable housing, gig economy. Identity varies, but the instability itself defines the experience.

Typical household income: under £25k.

Likelihood of two parent families: low.

Age at first child: late teens to mid twenties.

I’m solidly working class. Also, if discussions about class make you cross, this is probably not the thread for you.

Are there any theories as to why the Brits (or perhaps more accurately the English) are more obsessed with this than other countries?

We tick all the boxes for middle class except the age we had kids, we were chavs and had them early 20s 😱

Very wise

The caste system was very powerful in the subcontinent. Not sure whether there was a similar system in China.

This is true. I don't think it's the norm though if you look at the world at large.

Middle class. Immigrant grandparents on one side who grew up very poor but were comfortably MC as adults. A mishmash of working/middle class grandparents on the other side. Dad would say he’s MC and he probably is, mum would always say WC and again, probably is.

I would say DH and I are firmly MC. I have PhD, he has MBA. We had children young though but we are National Trust members.

I dont think its as sttaight forward as you have it there. I also dont think most people are good at judging their own "class" for example Gordon Ramsey claims he is working class as thats where he came from. Following your set up there dh is upper middle class but our current income is nowhere near that bracket. I did not grow up in the uk so find it harder to see. My dad whom I did not live with (parents divorce) would fit upper middle my mum working class. However for Denmark they would both fit middle class

Dd1 has just got married to a man from Liverpool. His friends and family view dd1 and our family as "posh" aka upper middle class due to how we speak and behave. They see themselves as working class but say sin in law is middle class Yet income vise we are close to the same .

If pressed I say I am middle class and I am not ashamed of that but I try to avoid judging on what.people eqrn and look more at how they treat others. To me thats good values.

Only guessing, but medieval and early modern society was very stratified - royalty, nobility to support royalty and be rewarded for such, peasantry who were given the right to farm by the nobility in return for payment, then serfs. And of course merchants in the towns, and clergy and craftsmen everywhere. It’s what made society work then.
things got shaken up with enclosure and the agricultural and industrial revolutions - enter the working and middle classes. But essentially much of the land in this country is still owned by the nobility of yore. It’s only ructions like inheritance tax and wars which saw a chipping away of that ownership.
so easy to see centuries-old hangovers! Ditto in France I think

Although I know what class I really am, I still don't feel as if I totally fit into it anymore.I won't bore you with the reasons It should not matter but it seems to. There can be snobbery amongst the middle classes for the working class and a sort of contempt for the middle classes and upper class from many working class. I don't see the class system ever disappearing in the UK but from a few posts on this subject, there are people who do not believe in it. I would like to know what age and demographic the people are that say they belong to no class please?

In Ireland there is less of a private/state education divide, so by and large children mix more socially (there are ofc some private schools)- the farmer’s, local solicitor’s and shop worker’s kids can all be at the same local school together.
There is snobbery, but more about money than class for the most part.

Would you say then, that Ireland is similar to USA,only snobbery is down to actual wealth?

I think income is probably the least important of the factors listed, tbh. And I’d agree with Gordon Ramsay that he is working class.

What’s the class structure like in Denmark?

I don't fit any of your groups

From a FSM family, have a degree from a poly, and a career. Mum was a school cook. I earned about 3 x national average for most of my career. Less now as I'm in my 60s.

Own my home, working full time and have a moderate pension fund. I'm a single mum, one ds, born when I was in my 40s. In private school on final year of a scholarship. Heading for a degree in engineering.

I hope you are right, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to state that as fact!

I imagine that when you're thinking of 'class', you are thinking of middle class mummsnetters fussing over it like Hyacinth Bucket. When I think of class I think of Marx, who never comes up in these discussions. When we dig into it, our relation to the means of production still determines almost every aspect of our lives. You think it doesn't matter because everything has been done to blind you to it to undermine class solidarity - why do you think that is?

I’m 1st class thanks.

The French don’t even have a word for “bourgeois!”

I'd agree, but there has to be room for a generational shift to be factored in. I mean weren't the Royal family in Monaco originally robber barons?

People can different views of royalty, but I don't think modern day royals fit working class definitions.

I would have thought that by the time grandchildren come along, social mobility would be changing the class "status" of the family - such as that is.

Yes they do: it's bourgeois.

And I have heard it used plenty in France.

Gosh. I’d say working class.
Late teen parent, no family is university educated, most of my immediate family have had a conviction, have lived on a council estate etc.
However, my household income is now approx 170k, I’m university educated, privately educated, grew up with holiday homes, a pool at home, National Trust trips at the weekends, count a wide range of people from long term unemployed to those with titles as my friends etc.
Im really not sure but I think overall working class that’s done ok?

I agree. My example was: Alan Sugar is a billionaire, but will always be working class. His kids, on the other hand, are probably at least UMC, and his grandkids are probably vair vair posh.

I think that poster was making a joke.

😂

Oh sorry! I'm dipping in and out for distraction as I finish something for tomorrow morning so not following everything perhaps!

What triggered that comment was that I do so often hear it said that France did away with class because of the revolution. Lots of people do seem to believe this yet it couldn't be further from the truth. I actually think plenty of people in Britain are less class-obsessed than some French people - so that's saying something!

You’re throwing around Marx the way some people quote astrology — selectively, vaguely, and mainly to feel superior. If you want to talk class in 2025, you’ll need a framework a bit more current than ‘workers and the means of production.’ Otherwise all you’re doing is cosplaying critique.

You also assuming everyone who disagrees with you is simply ‘blinded.’ That’s not insight — it’s intellectual laziness.