AIBU to reflect upon my own childhood and realise how I would have perceived my own DC and ‘current’ me?

[HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMn]

I grew up fairly poor although I didn’t feel like I ever went without anything. I lived in a small terrace with just my mum and siblings but went to school in the ‘posh’ area. I never remember feeling poor, but it was clear that the other kids had more eg. They lived in much bigger houses (I remember thinking how posh their houses were every time I went to my friend’s houses, one even had an en suite!!), went abroad at least once a year, had both parents present and had more expensive clothes (they could afford Top Shop!!).

DH had a similar upbringing.

Me and DH were discussing last night how about how you don’t really realise how things change over time. We now live in a very mumsnet naice area, can afford multiple abroad trips per year and our children have very different lives to ours when growing up. Our house is by much bigger than my old school friend’s that I was once so impressed by and our DC go to private school (neither of us had even met anybody as a child that went to private school!). If our kids went to the schools that we did, they would probably be seen as the posh rich kids which just seems insane to us.

We still feel barely different to how we did growing up but yet our life says otherwise and we can’t really pinpoint where the change happened. We’re far from super well off, but it just seems so strange to reflect back to our childhood and realise how our lives now and our children’s lives are so different to what they once were. It made us laugh thinking about how childhood us would consider us super rich and posh (I don’t think either of us had ever even been in someone’s house that had over 3 bedrooms as a child!).

Anyone else similar?

My Mum had a similar childhood as you describe. And is thankful that her children have had better lives than she did.

I really recognise this. Came from a single parent family, lived on a council estate, and all my clothes were charity shop, hand me downs from wealthier friends, or from Leeds market (off brand Kookai bag, anyone? 😆)

Now I shop at Waitrose (that felt like a massive milestone!) and occasionally have a wtf moment when I realise how much I now spend on groceries without needing to think about it. I am still very thrifty and I’ve tried to raise our kids with a similar concept of cost and value eg just because we can afford it doesn’t mean we should buy it. And I still, annoyingly, have a ‘keeping things for best’ mindset that I’m actively trying to get over…

You’ve quoted the wrong post, but yes I do. I’ve always been involved in a number of organisations dedicated to alleviating childhood deprivation.

My one purpose in life has always been to make sure my DCs have better, which I guess is why it stings so much to hear them complaining or feeling hard done by. But I appreciate that they don’t understand genuine hardship and I’m so glad they don’t!

I agree with all of this! I shop regularly in M&S and always remember my mum proudly coming home occasionally with some M&S goodies as a treat around Christmas time! Sometimes even brings a tear to my eye when I remember things like this.

I’m also still thrifty. I will shop around for the best deals and am also guilty of keeping kid’s clothes ‘for best’ if it was something a bit more expensive (and then it never gets worn!).

Respectfully OP you didn’t grow up poor. What you’re describing is a normal childhood of the times. Families living in poverty then werent even going on camping and caravan holidays, they were barely able to eat, same as is happening now.
You’ve certainly moved income brackets but you weren’t poor as a child.

Why bite your tongue? They sound like they are being insufferable and need some perspective.

I could have written your post word for word. I grew up very poor (single mum at 17, dad in jail etc), but my mum had the foresight to send me to school in a very affluent neighbouring town. This was in the early 90s when such a thing would have been feasible. My mum got me reading flash cards from 2 and was always very strict.

My friends all lived in HUGE houses & went on multiple holidays a year, whilst we just went to Norfolk (which I loved).

Things changed for me after going to Cambridge.

We take our kids on holiday to Wales and rarely go abroad, and I don't think of us as poor OP. Like the vast majority of the population our kids also go to state school. This was the same for me as a child and my dad was a university lecturer...It is fairly snooty see domestic holidays as a sign of poverty 😂. Foreign holidays for a large family are expensive! My DH grew up ACTUALLY poor and he has one holiday to Devon the entirety of his childhood.its pretty tone deaf to cry for yourself and all the children who can only afford domestic holidays and state education. I think my kids are fine and I hope they'll grow up with a more realistic understanding of poverty so that they don't feel weepy when they look back to their poor childhood selves, swimming off the Welsh coast and watching dolphins off the Isle of Mull.

I have a similar story OP but I do think that the middle class families I know, going abroad combined with camping holidays and short breaks in the UK is standard and was with my childhood friends’ families, particularly with the outdoorsy types. At the risk of coming across all three Yorkshire men, we went on holiday twice, once to Blackpool for a weekend and once to Butlin’s for a week. I would have loved a week’s camping holiday in wales. I guess we have our own things we fixate on as evidence of difference to our backgrounds. Mine is confidence - being able to confidently talk to people from all walks of life, to be able to hold my own in conversations about topics such as travel and culture and to be able to walk into a University library or exclusive restaurant and feel that is a place for people like me. It’s another planet compared to my parents’ and my childhood world.

Ironically I think your childhood self had a far MORE realistic understanding of socio economic privilege.

I had a similar upbringing to you, but what I’ve come to realise as an adult is the kind of things my mum and dad had to do to make sure we were not poor. How those really special things like Christmas and birthdays were really difficult for my parents. They took on extra work, stuffing envelopes, doing census, home marketing things, they had some very creative ways of making money stretch. I remember one of the best birthday presents I got was a homemade dressing gown when I was 8. I unwrapped it in the morning and couldn’t wait to get home and put it on. Changed into my jammas at 6pm. What I didn’t know was, it was all my mum could afford. That she had sat up nights making it, despite looking after 3 kids alone and working full time, whilst my dad was working abroad. They had to make the very difficult decision for him to do that, and he did for 3 years and that’s what turned things around for them. I remember the first time he came home. We got home from school and they had been shopping and bought us more stuff than we had ever seen (and that wasn’t much). I got my first Sindy doll. It’s only now as an adult I realise how big that was for them. I have lived the privilege they afforded to me by sacrificing an awful lot to get us to where they were and far from thinking about me and how I feel about it, I reflect way more on what they did for us.

What saddens me about my daughter’s generation is, they are the first not to be almost guaranteed to do better than their parents. Her life is going to be harder than mine was, she will have an abundance of privilege but many things I took for granted in my early adulthood will be so much harder for her. She has been raised to understand the value of money. She understands what she has and how she needs to make sure she always has it, but that said, I’ll be using my privilege to make her life easier, to help mitigate the things she won’t be able to do because our generation benefitted and now the nation needs to tighten its belt. I have been in the fortunate situation to be able to save for her future and that is entirely down to what my parents did for me. I see being able to pass that on as a huge privilege.

It’s not ‘of the times’. I’m 34. I grew up on a council estate in a single parent household, with a parent on benefits for the majority of my childhood.

I’d be very surprised given how recent this was that you felt like an outlier in a single parent family!

But then you say the kids you were surrounded by weren’t actually rich at all and wouldn’t have been on £40k income so I doubt they were getting a free pass during their gap year either

Even the royals do these things, minus Brean potentially!

You thought money would make you a completely different kind of person? Is that it?

I feel that too. Dh and I both grew up poor. I think my dc do not feel privileged, it's even possible they feel poor in comparison to their peers as they go to private school and have a lot of privilege, but we do sacrifice a lot to make that happen and we don't have a porsche, or do longhaul, ski trips etc as many their peers do.

From observations it’s generally those that grew up poor that put lots of value on things like who’s got the biggest house etc.

I think it shows that actually there’s very little difference between actual people. Some just have more possessions than others but on nearly everything else there’s a lot of common ground. It’s only snobbery (and inverse snobbery) which leads people to draw the inference that we’re very different.

Grew up poor as well. I didn't really miss out on anything and my parents did well to encourage me to do well and get into a good school.

However, I remember my parents fighting and stressing over money ALL THE TIME. I found it a very, very stressful way to live. So as an adult, I prioritised a career that makes money over anything else. And we live in a flat, not a house, as I didn't want a big mortgage as I don't want to live on the edge, financially. I just love going to the supermarket and buying anything I want, without stress.

I do sometimes think about that too, my DS will have no idea what it's like.

God MN is obsessed with this kind of nonsense.

Seconding the PPs who observed that it’s your current view of things that’s out of touch.

Yes. You carry the feelings of ‘shame’ from your childhood. This is hard wired into your brain. I’ve seen it with more than one person who grew up poor.

Not sure what your point or AIBU is. You've managed to give your kids more than you had, which is wonderful and should be the case.

This

I grew up in a very large and beautiful home
I recall going around to a friend’s house at an outside of school hockey club I was in, I was around 10.

It was a tiny terrace. Teeny. But I LOVED her bedroom as she had really cool posters up and tie dye scarves everywhere. And as soon as home I tried to copy in my room about 8x the size. I was NOT thinking about how small her house was. I was thinking how COOL her bedroom was

I think it's true that for most young people life IS harder than it was for previous generations, very sadly. Harder to get into a good job (or any job, they make them jump through so many hoops). Salaries have not increased in real terms for a very long time. And yet degrees are demanded by employers for even mundane jobs, and then they have the student loan millstone round their necks for decades. They are fleeced by the universities for fees and first year accommodation, then by private landlords for their subsequent years. Can't really blame the universities I suppose, since the government doesn't increase their funding they are forced into relying on fees income.

Then the housing market has been allowed to get seriously out of control, in many areas young people have no chance of buying, and rents have become astronomical, so it's hard to save for a deposit.

I feel very sorry for younger people.

BUT your kids seem to be an exception to this. Buying in their early twenties, I am guessing it must have been with a LOT of family help (from you?)
However they have heard that their generation gets a raw deal (true for most) so feel entitled to moan!

I suppose It's a bit like some current pensioners, the ones with hundreds of thousands in the bank, house paid off etc, who still feel like they are 'poor pensioners' just by virtue of their age. The sort who were outraged when the government tried to remove their Winter Fuel allowance.

I thought from the first post we were taking about the 70’s.