to think many parents who send their children to the lower quality independent schools are so pretentious it is cringeworthy?

[Barrelofloves]

Is it due to insecurity? Because I have found the seriously loaded/titled folk are not like that at all.

Scottishmummy/MadameDefarge - no thanks. I have my own bossy prefect at home.

I was Head Prefect and only gave out 1 hour of detention in the whole year which is something I am very proud of.

Xenia, his state school was stuffed to the gills with middle class children, but also rough sink estate kids and EAL children. A fairly bog standard London state primary.

I didn't move him because of the mix of children, but for the failures of the system. But I do believe the system can be improved.

Luckily for him he was born into a reasonably intellectual family, where reading and the intellect are valued. Perhaps we are rather too boho for your tastes, we place no value on high salaries but on personal fulfillment, but it certainly does no harm

Maybe its a bit like America, where people genuinely can't can't see how the NHS functions in an egalitarian manner. They would still prefer to cling to a system which bankrupts the families of sick children and the elderly rather than imagine there is a better way of doing it.

And also, I have never been the type of person to take whatever shit is doled out to me, whether I pay for that service or not.

If he's doing better in the private sector that's great.

I am lucky enough to have found personal fufilment and a reasonably high income and love my work. The two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed the lower paid jobs like factory line production worker, call centre worker tend to be less interesting and the higher paid jobs more so.

Someone asked why I supported an ex husband. I don't exactly do that. The sum which commuted his demand for maintenance for life and his over all financial demands on our assets means I have a big debt which feels like a payment to him but that's how English divorce law works. Be the part time artist married to a richer man and you get paid out to on divorce. Be the higher earning female (or male) spouse and you pay out on divorce. I don't see that as a reason for women to pick low paid careers as you risk too much thereby.

Being personally fulfilled through your life and work is a great aim for children but you can do that and be privately educated and earn reasonable amounts and that tends to make life easier and in this society women earning a lot tends to give them more choices. Now some people can't handle choice - look at the mess some lottery winners make of having choices and some might argue it's simpler if you "know your place" and class and do what your parents did in terms of career, simple, no choices, and marry at 22 like your mother and be a housewife but I think women benefit from having more choices and earning more (and going to a private schools on the whole helps with that) gives them those choices.

Hey, ABD, didn't see either SM or me offer to boss you around!

lol i did say would you like us to be bossy prefects?

Xenia, I have no objection to people earning decent money, good money, or even fantastic money.

I do however have several very high flying friends who feel utterly trapped by their choices of profession, and the sheer drudgery of paying day in day out for the big house in hampstead, the four sets of school fees etc etc....many can't quite work out how they got there.

I also have friends who are successful professionals who who earn decent amounts and also feel oppressed by pressure to maintain a certain lifestyle, despite the obvious material benefits. ( I'm thinking particularly of one friend in banking who spent the first week of holiday this year fretting about the office, and it took until the last night almost for him to regain his joie de vivre)

I also have friends who earn enough to get by, maintain a decent household, provide for their children and generally be good eggs.

And then again, I have friends who earn sod all, but who manage to create loving, vibrant homes where all are welcome.

I have friends who are high ranking academics whose salaries barely cover their mortgage. their book advances are pitiful, yet they are fulfilled. Or not!

There are many many ways to live our lives. I think its sad to say to our children this only one particular for personal fulfillment and success.

I would also say that equality in earnings in most industries has not yet been achieved. But as long as your earnings are in parity to your partners, then your power in not diminuished. Sadly we still have a situation where childbirth and child rearing negatively impacts on a woman's earning potential, however well-educated and personable you might be. these are the issues that need addressing. Not forcing women back to work within two weeks (I have an an acquaintance who bartered her maternity leave for a parking space) but to acknowledge that the investment in training and experience of women outweighs the few months they might take off for maternity leave.

We have a long way to go.

OMG 13 pages and this thread is still going with no conclusions!

Xenia - way to mortify your kids - singing in the school choir

I for one appreciate your openness on threads like these and would have a drink with you anytime - so long as you don't start singing.

Its a war of attrition.

MadameDefarge - you have a lot of friends

I do, don't I?

nah, I'm just old. picked up a few along the way.

I know a friend of a friend that knows Xenia in RL too. Or at least they think they might know it. Apparently might not be a male/female but something else. Any why should we assume that just because it's mumsnet that people posting are female.

About accent. I come from North Wales and in the particular area I come from the local accent is tinged with "scouse" being as Wales is so close to Liverpool. Having a scouse accent is a huge hindrance I can assure you. It sounds, well, scally -ish. If you move away or mix with certain groups of people, of course your accent dilutes (as mine has).
BUt if people think that a strong scouse accent has no bearing at all on an interviewers decision to hire, they are living in la la land. Who wants to hire a lawyer who sounds like a criminal himself? SOrry, thats a stereotype, but whats the point in being PC when its a fact? IF you don'T think the real scouse accent is terrible, all that tells me is you haven'T heard it!!
OF course the higher up the classes you go in Liverpool the less rough the scouse accent sounds. BUt lets imagine a really bright and clever kid from a rough background by some miracle getting a scholarship to study law or business somewhere... SOrry, there'S just no way.
SO I think accent is another reason social mobility is so difficult in the UK.

Abetadad, ineresting that you had the same background as my father. He wasn't privately educated, but I'VE got a sneaky suspicion that his mother may have been, though I'm not 100% sure. Your description of the private school you went to sounds lovely.

I'm sure Xenia is a real person. I'm just not totally sure that what she writes is always true, and I think she gets a real kick out of irritating other people with her opinions.

NB Xenia my family aren't downwardly mobile, having "low" paid professional/artistic jobs doesn't actually mean you slip down the class 'rankings', because class is about a lot more than how much you earn, and likewise how much you as an individual earn doesn't necessarily translate into how much disposable income you have. This is probably why some private schools feel no need to push their students into doing anything either worthwhile or high earning with their lives. Certainly I went to school with a few kids who at 17 were given their first Astin Martin. No need for them to bother about making money (and god didn't they let everyone know about it). Oh, and the reason why they went to that school? Because their fathers had before them.

I went away, did the washing up and realised that my last outburst about accents was uncalled for, so i logged back on to say , sorry, it wasn't really directed at anyone, but that I just get annoyed by the unfairness of how the whole system works to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.

nooka,
I completely agree that class is not always connected to how much money one earns! of course you haven'T "moved down the classes" if you take an arty career. Bohemian interests such as art, poetry and music, also politics and sociology, have generally been the pursuits of the highest classes anyway. Xenia, you can't really believe that someone who has come from a wealthy background, but who refuses to pursue money themselves, has moved down in the pecking order.

Gosh yes, of course class isn't just money but people do move down classes. I know somenoe who in fact was paying his wife £12m on their divorce but he was working class. About 2 generations ago the family had been very rich but for some reason it was all lost, he'd gone to a comp, have awful accent, manners not that good etc etc... lots of the badges of lower class ness etc which all his money didn't cover up, not that it matters at heart. It's just a fascinatnig issue.

The impoverished aristocrat always sought the rich self made industrialist's daughter in the Victorian era.

And yes accent matters. I'm from the North East. I don't think we really had much of an accent but obviously I knew of lots of people who did.

"male/female" - surely I would be one or the other though. I might well be gay or I might be a hermaphrodite but legally everyone is either male or female.

Well I'm from a very poor background and can see nothing great about it.
Worrying about the bills etc is nothing but stress and agro so I always knew I'd put earning well high on my agenda.

I do, however, have mates who had a very comfortable childhood but chose a career in the arts or media and cannot quite get over that they don't live as well as their parents. Or we newbies.
But it's all about choices no?

awful manners! pah. what a silly middle class nonsense.

I do like it when they like to walk on the outside of the pavement and open the door etc

A very interesting other issue is the generations always improving. We had the 1950s "never had it so good" generation. Then children have on the whole done better than their parents. I remember in the 60s we got Central heating for the first time etc. However now for the first time perhaps there is not a constant improvement in food, income and living standards and indeed healthwise as we are having such hugely obese children mankind as a whole and woman kind too is eating so many cream buns they are going to be less healthy than their parents.

How do chidlren cope psychologically with what they were used to as children not being replicated. Identikit clones that we are my siblings and I have all dully perpetuated our lives - detached houses, private schools. What if one of us had decided to earn very little and then couldn't give their children some of the opportunities we had had as children (not that those were particularly massive in the 60s in our case - we certainly weren't rich)

There was a thread recently about just that Xeniahere

Its slightly naive to think that if you replicate the earnings of your parents you will replicate the lifestyle. The vast changes in society, not least the property market means that most people would have to greatly outstrip their parents in earnings to have the same lifestyle.