How the other half lives, what and when you learned

[tomorrowalready]

Reflecting from another thread made me realise it was not until my 20s I found out some people expected to have a private bathroom. I went to university then and shared with another mature student who had been married, divorced and said she found having to share a bathroom with unrelated people unpleasant. I had always taken it for granted as had live in jobs and rented bedsits before. She was a lovely person and also the first person I knew who had a glass of wine every evening and she introduced me to many new things - cooking with garlic, sherry, owning and using a car for shopping for example.

So what did you take for granted that surprised other people you met?

@ShowerOfShite I’m sorry

@Dindundundundeeer I kind of agree with you on both counts - ie it’s nonsense, but at the same time it’s part of tradition/culture which we just have to accept in order to have a set of… cultural anchoring points, I guess? (I have this argument with my DS regularly and am no better at coming up with an actual reason for it then, lol). But I just wanted to point out that people who hold their cutlery in the ‘wrong’ hands aren’t usually doing so out of ignorance. Multiple members of my family do this (or did when alive) and it’s because we have a strong mixed-handedness gene. All of us know/knew how to hold them ‘properly’ but we are weird, semi-lefthanded people for whom some things just feel more comfortable that way.

"it is a very odd dynamic to witness from the outside" - YESS!
Particularly from Oz.

@HaveringWavering

Because you are telling me that my own assessment of my own parents’ class is wrong, and you know better, with a huge side (snide) order of keeping me in my place. However as you are clearly just some amateur sociologist on a parenting forum you’re right, I should not care.

This is complete projection on your part.

Fair enough😊

[quote sassbott]@korawick12345 I wanted clarity on your thinking. Not to validate who I think I am. Trust me, I don’t wake up each morning wondering if I’m MC or WC. 😬[/quote]
Sorry that fair enough was in response to this 😊

@maddiemookins16mum I grew up in Alberta in the 80s and this all sounds pretty standard for the time

@DappledThings

Gosh your Home Ec teacher was a patronising arsehole! I am more than a decade older than you and my grandparents knew what Chinese takeaway was! She really was! She was young as well, newly qualified so only about 12 years older than me and just seem convinced that anyone of my grandparents' generation (born 1920s mostly) would be so bamboozled by a takeaway. It was weird.

She was no fan of me in general. When I accidentally stained her countertop with turmeric I tried to laugh it off saying that stains from spice were cool as they showed what a varied and experienced cook you were. That didn't fly funnily enough.

My grandmother is of the same generation as yours, albeit white British.

She's unusually well travelled for someone of her generation - thanks to my DGF's work - and has been to China herself. Consequently, she's always been a relatively adventurous eater, and cook - she remembers going to Chinatown in London to buy provisions in the 60s / 70s.

She's now in a nursing home and bemoaning the lack of exciting foreign dishes - it's all boring cottage pies and casseroles apparently

When we're allowed to take her out again I fully intend to take her to a suitably exotic restaurant of her choice! Pre-covid she was known to enjoy a trip to Yo Sushi, as she likes picking things from the belt the nursing home staff struggled to believe this when she was admitted. She struggles to bend her neck upwards though, so without looking at the rather tall, ginger waiter's face she asked him if he was from Japan - "err, no, I'm from Cornwall"

This is a good thread - great diversity 🙂

One thing I remember from moving to a middle class area from a working class one, and from a home where we relied on convenience food and neither parent could cook. This was in the late 1980s. I joined the local guides and one evening we were making spag bol. I was to bring the spaghetti. I brought in a tin of Heinz spaghetti from the cupboard. Had absolutely no idea, I'd never eaten proper pasta at that point.

I grew up with divorced parents, where DF earned a good wage, and DM was on benefits until I was about 10, and worked in insecure minimum wage jobs after that point.

It led to some bizarre mixed priorities and a bit of culture clash.

I think the first time I became aware of the poverty that some live in - and has stuck in my mind all these years - was being about age 7 at the local (free) adventure playground. I overheard another child ask their mum for 50p for an orange juice, and was told they could have one but there was no more money after that, as she picked small change out from her purse. It had never occurred to me until that point that 50p for juice would be an issue for some.

There were some very strict delineations between my parents of what each would pay for. School uniform was always my DM's responsibility, which led to a bizarre situation where DF would happily pay to take me skiing, but I was left really hoping that one day I'd be given the proper school uniform jumper (an aunt paid in the end, and I remember being ever so happy with my smart new logoed jumper).

My paternal GPs sent me to a fairly no-frills private secondary school, on account of the local state schools all being fairly dire (I had been to a state primary). There were lots of children from families where sacrifices were clearly being made to send them there for the same reasons, so not many people had ponies etc.

I do, however, remember being in a lesson and the teacher asked "who knows what minimum wage is?". I immediately responded with "£5.73 an hour". Everyone turned to look at me. It turned out that the question was about whether or not people understood the concept of minimum wage, not whether or not they could quote current rates. It was what DM earned so yes, I really did know!

Likewise I was being privately educated but had a blazer that was bought with lots of growing room, but had become a 3/4 length fit before the school told my DM in no uncertain terms that she had to replace it - I don't think she would have otherwise. I wore the same kilt from age 11 to 16 though, it being periodically let out by means of having the buttons moved.

Plenty of tomato sauce! Did they use it or not?

Surel two classification systems are being merged
Lower/middle/upper class
Or
Unemployed/working class/independently wealthy

@scrollingleaves that's lovely. 😥

The first primary school I went to was firmly middle class, and I remember one little friend coming over - we must have been 7 or 8 - and being bemused by our lack of piano! The next school I went to though was in a much more deprived area, and it was the first time I came across divorced parents, blended families, single mums, or just generally money being an issue. One friend didn’t have a house phone, they just used the phone box (this was early 90’s) which was a real shock. Then they did get one as cable tv rolled out! She was allowed to watch Nickelodeon and help herself to snacks, whereas my mum you were only allowed if you had a plate and sat at the table. I realise now that they were probably the cheapest crisps and value biscuits, but her mum was so lovely and welcoming, and I was secretly quite jealous.

I was astonished people could have a bag of chips EACH and not between the whole family!

I remember being impressed with friends who's mums where at home when they came home and who's dads came home later in work clothes - we where a single parent family and mum worked

I thought the very epitome of posh was having pop delivered to your house!

We where very green though - all our clothes and toys where 'recycled' often from jumble sales, we didn't have the heating on ever - shared baths every other day between 3 of us, walked everywhere, never went on a plane - but we just called it being skint!

I went to university btw - working 4 jobs to pay for it!

More astonishingly my single parent mum who left school with no qualifications went on to qualify as a teacher when I was 14 - so yeah poor people do go to university!

" On the one hand MIL thinks she's a cut above her hairdresser but still talks about toffs and "people like your family""

A CUT above the hairdresser. I like that.
It's perfectly possible of course that she is between the hairdresser and your family in the class system.

@HaveringWavering

I’d consider most office work, including secretarial, to be white collar and very much MC.

I do this kind of work and it's somewhere in between (so between upper working class and lower middle class). Used to be called intermediate work I think and in the old classification C1. A, B was middle class and C1 sometimes considered middle class.

However, it can be low paid and routine so I think there's a good argument for considering it working class as well. Owen Jones does in his book.

@cakeseeker

Today I learned that having a massive detached country house with three gardens, au pair, and money to throw around at will isn't considered rich, "just" middle class.

It always comes across as a bit if a humble boast when people say something like that

I get very confused about class, my mother was definitely wc and went to grammar school, eventually university in her 30s and definitely had a mc lifestyle. Her siblings are a mix but the lives of my cousins are definitely related to their parents education and wealth. My father always felt he was wc, also grammar school but his father was a teacher and mother's family were farmers, to me that's mc, but he didn't think so.

I'm a graduate, Dh isn't but we have comparable income, don't worry about money, I'd define myself as mc and definitely see my kids as mc. But we couldn't afford staff or private schools or a fat country pile.

@HaveringWavering

Utter nonsense. My grandparents were a miner, a butcher, and two shop assistants. My parents were a PR consultant and an optician. They were 100% middle class. Or are you suggesting that my brother and I were MC and they were WC, so the family contained two separate classes?

Class is interesting

My DHs framing would all say they are middle class having gone from a similar background but too me from a Victorian solid middle class 2 university educated parents background they are working class.

I come from a different country and this is one thing that has shocked me in the UK. There is such a fight against classes.....

Anything that is remotely HC is hated and mocked by LC, and viceversa. Why?!

I know that people may get shocked at how the other half lives, and think they'll never experience that, but to have such disdain?! I don't understand....

DHs grandmother would talk about tennis, for example, with the same disgust I give mold

Of you have a regional accent you verifiably are not middle class.

I say this as somebody with a regional accent, privately educated via scholarship and two first class honours degrees.

I know plenty of MC people and I'm not one of them.

@grey12, your DH's grandmother's attitude to tennis may seem absurd now but it was probably grounded in the history and development of tennis and other upper class sports even if she did not know the details.
Tennis is a game that needs a lot of space and time , special equipment and knowledge . It was popularised and formalised in the lat 19 th century by people who had free time in the summer afternoons and evenings to spend hours playing rather than working, space either on their own land or in a club for one or more courts, money to pay for equipment, social connections to have someone to play against and later have competitions with, it also facliitated social mixing between young men and women where they could form judgements on appearance, character and fitness in a socially acceptable yet fun way. So it was and still is stongly imbued with an upper class culture despite the professional circuit. So DH's grandmother would have been right in seeing it as an upper class pasttime when she probably spent her youth in physical labour for little reward. A class marker as others have said.

@cakeseeker

Today I learned that having a massive detached country house with three gardens, au pair, and money to throw around at will isn't considered rich, "just" middle class.

Me too! Wonder what "rich" is...?!

I went to a wedding once where they had all these food stalls serving every kind of food imaginable, and waiters bringing round champagne and cocktails and canapes. Everything was delicious. I'd never seen food like it. I stuffed my face voraciously. And then an announcement, "Would the guests please take their seats in the next room for dinner"!!!!!!!! We then had to survive a 7-course meal!!!!!!!! It was amazing and kind of a torture at the same time, because I was bursting at the seams but couldn't possibly leave any of this delicious food.

Like grey12, I’m from another country. I find the uk class system is mystifying yet fascinating.

Trust the British to do tribalism in such a weird and Byzantine manner. Only the country (a) with no written constitution and (b) that invented cricket could do it.