To find middle class parents insufferable?

[Gwst]

Sorry rant incoming! I'm so sick of how since becoming a parent half the people I speak to seem to be insufferable snobs about the area we live in (in a big city). Schools are "terrible" despite good ratings, couldn't possibly be good enough for their children, and are upset they don't live in a posher area, too many undesirables round where we live, complaining about drugs etc when this is an issue that 100% doesn't affect their demographic. I've recently had someone say they had to move to the suburbs because at their local school all the parents had "a can of coke in one hand, a fag in the other and 10 kids" and another saying a nursery wasn't good enough as they didn't want their child looked after by someone with a speech impediment. Both of these left me with my jaw on the floor shocked someone would think it's OK to say that but they seem to have no embarrassment about saying it to me, a casual acquaintance. And the area we live in is full of creative types, ostensibly left wing etc but also seem to hold these reactionary views when it comes to their kids.

The thing about schools drives me mad as I guarantee most of these people have zero experience of attending or their kids attending a challenging city comprehensive. It's just this perceived bias that their kids will get bullied or become drug dealers or other crap that they heard from their parents as to why they went to private school and are now parroting but can't afford private school or a posh area themselves. I went to a pretty crap school but I came out with good grades and went to a prestigious uni. It wasn't all great but it was a realistic cross section of society and arguably gives you good expectations of the real world and that fact that not everyone in your community is privileged etc. But no one seems to care about that and just wants to look out for themselves and everyone else be damned.

I am middle class myself lol. And my kid is going to have plenty of (unfair) social advantages anyway without us having to get them into "the best" school or only socialise with other middle class people. I just really don't get it. Am I alone in thinking like this??

Yes I totally agree with you. I am quite put off the idea of sending my own child to private school (although I could afford it) as I don’t think I can cope with all the private school mummies.

already experienced lots of irritating middle class parents at nursery along these lines.

Omg, you’ve just quoted yourself 😫😂

I said there’s good parents who treat their kids lice and lazy slobs who don’t and then their kids permanently have them and give them to the rest of the class. If you want to send your kids to a shitty school to make a point then good for you. Enjoy the nightly lice combing!

I mean, that's great. But my view is that I want my children to have a wide range of friends because that, in my view, is a normal way to grow up. It is not normal to live in a segregated world that only contains people of a similar wage bracket/level of affluence. It just isn't.

When did your children leave school? Schooling has changed astronomically in just the past 10 years. You use your be able to get an education relatively easily in a ‘bad’ state school. Now it’s much, much harder. Violence and disruption is off the scale and is not being addressed whatsoever here where I live in Scotland. It’s little better in England.

V late to thread and aware that convo has prob moved on but I sort of straddle the working/middle divide, my upbringing was solidly working class and now I’m bringing up my kids in a middle class household. (First family member that went to uni, professional career, married middle class man…)

I see the divide very clearly and anybody here claiming it doesn’t exist is kidding themselves. My child attends a popular local state primary and the middle class mums definitely stick together, then there are the mums that have been born and raised nearby and stand with their friends, i have somehow managed to carve a niche whereby I am friendly with both groups but only on a superficial level. I love a can of Coke but my kid has a Boden coat.

I can imagine that mums of privately educated kids would have preconceptions about how the other half live, but that goes both ways to be honest.

Private school kids never have lice?! Wow. Worth bankrupting ourselves for fees then I guess.

The biggest influence on a child's education is home, so think again about that fag and coke can....

My kids aren’t in private school, they’re in a normal school which I picked over a shit school. A shit school that had parents dealing drugs in the playground and kids beating the crap out of each other regularly.

Eh? I didn't attend private school. I went to a comprehensive.

My DS is at a C of E secondary school where you now need to attend church 3x per month for two years to get a place. We are Christians and chose it for its strong Christian ethos and no other reason.

I often think if no-one was pretending to be a church goer, then no-one would need to pretend. They could all get in on the basis of some other number on the list. But because there are enough people doing that, it is self perpetuating. I heard that a fourth sibling failed to get a place for this September because although once a month was enough for the rest of the family, it now isn't enough. If those families were equally spread over both secondary schools, they would be much more even. But they're not, because of a strange ability for people to pretend Christianity for a long time in order to get the school they want. And then the kids are just the same as anywhere else.

No, good point.

I dunno, there's nothing wrong with wanted what's best for your kids. I loved one of the schools I visited for my kids, but didnt choose it because of the area. I wouldn't gob off about the reason for not choosing it, but that was the reason. I don't want my kids surrounded by rough kids and I'm not ashamed to say so.

You plucked one thing out of what I wrote. The truth is that I DO have friends that span the income scale from cleaner to a million-pound CEO. My point was that that's a huge range of different friends and that the MC is much more insular than that.

But yes, go ahead and ignore the context and the point of what I was saying, and pick on the fact that one of my friends is a cleaner.

No, you can't have it both ways.
NHS is in dire straits too. My DS had a head injury, was bleeding and half conscious - we had to wait in A&E for four hours before a junior could see him (and it required more than a junior and hospitalisation).
It was appalling even before the current crisis, and one of the reasons is precisely the same problem - we're not a socialist country so the top priority is always making (or saving) money.

I'm not sure what 'having it both ways' means. But attitudes that we have to be stringently capitalist or nothing don't come from people with an altruistic agenda in my experience.

In short I find enforcement of ideological purity very very suspect.

I raised my kids in a middle class area and couldn't bring myself to speak to a lot of the parents. Absolute snobs of the worst kind. Wouldn't mind if I wasn't far more middle class than them 😂 Now live in an inner city area, what a bloody relief. Barely an Audio, unnecessary Range Rover or BMW in sight.

Have you considered that you could be the one in the wrong?
Since when is caring about your children a bad thing?

Some people choose their kids school on their own convenience- they don't want to have to drive far for example. So people choose their kids school based on what's best for them. We know which one you are. We can't all be the same.

It means living in a capitalist country and having socialist type infrastructure. It doesn't work in real life as we can clearly see.
It's now failing in Scandi countries too.

Ireland is moving towards a socialist-type healthcare system due to the weight of evidence that it is better than the current two-tier private and public system. The fact that some countries struggle to make socialist policies work doesn't mean those policies can't ever work - democracy isn't easy to implement either and does produce bad results in some instances (the US being a standout example).

People who believe that 'getting ahead' involves exclusivity have a fear of socialism, which makes discussing socialist policies difficult as they'll always see anything in which they can't purchase or work for an advantage over others as disadvantageous.

We'll just wait and see.
Democracy has already failed spectacularly too.

Your posting so funny and on the nail!
Am also from Ireland and 25 years on from when mine were little I still look back and shudder at the behaviour and the carry on of so many of the parents I met. But probably Mumsnet is not an avenue where the poster and ourselves are likely to meet many fellow travellers. 😆

As long as parents can afford and look after the children they bring into the world, I don’t particularly care if they complain.

It’s the ones who expect tax payer funding for their broods and go through life with the “entitled to” expectation.