Class

[Boe]

Just wondered what made people a certain class - I was described as middle class the other day and not sure if I agree.

There are a few mentions n Northerners thread about her parents coming to stay and I can not for the life of me figure out what makes one middle class or working class - I go to work so IMO I am working class - Is this right????

Do you keep coal in the bath and pigeons in the back yard?

You're reminding me of the book 'Tis, where Frank McCourt gets a job teaching in the USA. When he says he had a poor background, they ask him if he kept pigs in the kitchen. He replied, 'No, we didn't have a kitchen. We made tea over the fire and we ate bread.

I think the concept began a long long time ago, and doesn't really relate to our vastly changed modern society.
I believe that originally, if you worked in one of the "professions" or owned a business that made you middle class.
Nowadays there are no clear and universally recognised distinctions and rules - everyone will have a different opinion and therefore I don't think the concept of class has any value anymore.
Having said that, my father has a strong sense of his own identity as being working class, even though he owns a Manor house!!!

Values

oh dear - i feel controversy on the way.............

scoobysnax - I disagree that class distinctions have no value any more, but I do agree that there are problems with the definition.

Essentially your class is determined by your occupation (or, if you don't have one, then your father's/husband's occupation. This is one of the problems with the system). If your job is managerial/professional then you are middle class. If it's a manual job (eg. builder, plumber, cleaner) then you're working class. There is a big grey area for jobs like secretaries, computer techie types and self-employed skilled manual workers though. Also sociologists have lately started going on about an "underclass" made up of the long term unemployed.

I say it is still relevant because statistics still show that your father's occupation is very closely related to whether or not you go to university and your own occupation. Class still determines who you are to a certain extent - partly through shared values but also through things like education (workers' children in general not going to the best schools etc. teachers and other professionals may also subconscoiusly sideline these children. or something.)

It's late and I may not have put that very well. What I want to say is that class exists. And it matters. It doesn't matter as much as it did, but it matters.

...and if you have coal in the bath then you are 3 pupils short of a class.

Arent strippers classed as 'professionals' nowadays

lucy 123, I'm afraid I completely disagree about class being solely related to profession. If that was the case then there wouldn't be such a hoo-hah about it. There are plenty of upper-middle class builders around (try hiring one in Fulham!) and plenty of working class managers around too.
I won't attempt to provide a definition, since the english class system is one of the great hornets nests of our time, but it certainly takes into account background and upbringing as well as what occupation they have

Class is a category that other people define you in. You do not decide it, it is how you are judged, the identity you are pigeon holed into. This is my belief. But the basic concept of class derives from Carl Marx at a time of mass upheaval and changing lifestyles.

or Richard Branson???????

Oh, he's upper. Always was.

princess - you are right about there being upper class builders and working class managers, but they are in a minority. As I said, self-employed tradespeople are a grey area (because they earn a lot more than, say, teachers and deal with all the non-manual side of running a business).

In the case of working class managers, they usually have a working class background (i.e. their father was working class or they started out in a manual job). Their children become middle class and technically they become middle class too.

No system of definitions is perfect, but the old fashioned sociological class system can still tell us some things.

Forestfly - we do have some choice when it comes to class. Others judge us mostly by accent (and, by inference, class) - choose to mix with people in a different class and you can get the accent too: once you've got the accent you're that much closer to getting the job you want. Look at Damon Albarn (working class accent etc. Father an architect).

Nah, Boe, class isn't about whether you work or not. I'm middle, even though I grew up on a council estate because I now own my own home speak reasonably posh, have a degree and work in journalism. Some journalists deliberately cultivate being working class so they got more money when they write a novel!

Lucy123 I disagree that class has any bearing on society today. I think it is used as a way of judging and generalising. IMO it has no relevance any more.

I think that class SHOULDN'T have any bearing on society today but I think is still does I am afraid. Whether we like it or not people still pigeon hole people according to their background/upbringing/education/occupation ... I see it around me all the time.
I have two old friends who was brought up completely middle class (ones father was a vicar and her mother an academic .... the others parents were academics ... they - the friends - went to a good school and to uni). When they met at University they went out of their way to 'become' working class in order to make some kind of statement to their parents ... accents changed, the whole works ... and I personally believe they went over the top. Funnily enough, now they are both married and with children they have become more middle class than their parents were ....
Historically .... the Upper Classes were nobility ... people who had titles, land, didn't have to work etc ....
Middle Classes were the educated professions ... Doctors, Lawyers, Politicians ...
Working Classes were the manual (and skilled) working people ... people who worked the farms, factories, household 'staff' etc etc ...

I see myself as middle class ... I see that from my parents backgrounds and from my own upbringing and education and profession ...
HOWEVER ... I do not and have never ever seen myself or my family as 'better' than a builder/plumber/miner and his family or 'worse' than Lady Bottomly Smythe and her family ....

My husband bought me an SLK Mercedes Convertible for my birthday, does that make me upper class? Unfortunately theres no room for the two car seats but it's still good for the girlie nights out!

One reason why this is such a tricky subject to discuss is that the word 'class' means different things in different contexts. Sometimes we use it to mean occupation, sometimes it refers to social status and sometimes it refers to position in the social power structure (eg whether or not you sell your labour power to other people, or own capital). So you can be a posh gardener (like Edina's gardener in one episode of 'Absolutely Fabulous', who was the brother of a peer), or a high-earning plumber, without the term class being meaningless. But there is very little doubt that class (in all these senses) does make an enormous difference to how people live. For example, I have just been reading a book on the social determinants of health in the UK. It shows very clearly that, looking across society as a whole, people who are higher up the social scale suffer less from major illnesses and live longer. These health inequalities start before birth (due to differences in nutrition and antenatal care), are amplified by the education system and then are further amplified by the structure of occupations.

My husband and i are undoubtedly snobs but we refer to 'class' not as in social status but as in the mentality of the individual. Rather inappropriately we refer to 'council' as those who expect everything in life to be provided for them and expect to do or pay nothing towards it. This is the case between my sister and i. Whilst both i and my husband work extremely hard to bobtain what we have, my sister expects everything to be provided by the state and everyone to rally round her at the slightest domestic mishap. i don't think that your future 'class' is dictated by your upbringing as we are all given the equal opportunity of a good education but not all of us work to achieve.

A good education should make social mobility possible, but it isn't working. Consider A-level students who gain three A grades. 78.5% of such high-flyers have parents in social classes 1 and 2 (professional/managerial), even though only 29% of the population as whole is in these two classes. 12.3% of those with three As have parents in the bottom three social classes (skilled and unskilled manual), even though these groups make up 52% of the population. If your parents are in social class 1, and mine are in social class 5, you are 37 TIMES more likely to gain three A grades at A-level.

Class shouldn't matter these days, but it does. I always considered that my family was middle class because my father was a Civil Servant, we didn't have the local accent, we lived in a nice area in a house my parents owned & we had a car, a colour TV and a telephone, in the days when no-one else did!!

I met DH when I was 18, naive and idealistic & the fact that he was a labourer from a council house with a father who worked on the railway didn't bother me at all. More than 20 years later it has come to be more & more significant as my children get older & are judged on what their father does (unskilled supermarket), & not their mothers junior management civil service career.

20 years ago it didn't occur to me that people would look down their nose at me because of my DH- now it's a fact of everyday life. I hate it, & it causes an unnecessary strain on our relationship. It shouldn't make any difference, but it does.

i absolutely hate all this and i couldnt care less whos upper,middle or working class,id treat the binman with the same respect id treat the queen,why some people enjoy making others feel inferior i`ll never know,tallulah feel proud of your dh and stick 2 fingers at those people

A question: how do artists and generally more bohemian types fit into class structure? I ask because my boss, a poet, was surprised that my dh has some interest in poetry, saying that "middle class" types generally don't . Her statement implied that she, as a poet living in "edgy" Walthamstow (London) is anything but middle class. Also she speaks disparagingly of "middle class" things in other contexts as well. And yet she's well-educated, edits a magazine, has a posh-ish accent. What is she if not middle class? I know that, historically, artists have tended to distance themselves from the bourgeoisie, but ifas others have saidclass is something that is imposed on you, can she & others like her so easily "elect" to escape the class system?