What makes someone middle class?

[lilibet]

Just had a conversation with a mate and a mutual freind has described themselves as middle class.

He works in a shop for a living, his parents work for a living, to me he is therefore working class.

I appreciate that a brain surgeon is obvioulsy a bit higher up the social strata than me ( I work in finance in the NHS), but to me if you have to work for a living you are working class.

Thoughts and opinions?

Obvious posh area then eh,CD.

They wouldn't know what Boden was where I live.

Delayed gratification point is exactly right Edam.

I think the difference is working class people won't delay and posh people can gratify all their desires without waiting

Moondog, very interesting. Yes, these working class traditional names - like Mary for example are quite popular amongst the m/c.

I love it! Another class thread on mn, my favourite! lol!

My definition of classes -

Upper class - someone who inherits and sits on bum.

middle class - someone who likes to think they are too good to be working class, just because they have been to 'Uni'or similar!

Working class - anyone who works for a living.

A dole scrounger (sometimes called chav) - someone who spends there life depending on the government for everything and anything without paying anything into the state.

Paul Willis is a sociologist who carried out a study of a group of boys from a Birmingham school in 1977. He homes in on Suggarmans idea of immediate gratification (1970) in his study. Deffo not a new idea.

Went to an NCT Nearly New Sale in Edinburgh and was overwhelmed at the appalling dress sense of children there! I favour second class clothes myself, but aim to buy good quality ones that look pretty darn good on my boys but the trend amongst these wealthy ladies who lunch was boys with long hair, trousers with holes old, stretched jumpers. Girls = long matted hair, old tatty dresses and tackety boots! I think they are competing as to who can look the most dowdy and have the most money.

Competitiveness is a definite middle class trait.

footballer's wives are the new upper class hehe

aha - then charity shops also have classes - where CD lives they are m/c, where moondog lives they are w/c.

It's all tosh and crapola really, isn't it?

yes but they all have one thing in common.

they smell.

THEY DO!!!!

Well done mumforfirstime, think you've just insulted everyone on benefits... all those lone parents who can't get affordable childcare, for a start.

ooh yes our charidee shops are posh as fuck

v odd

I did used to buy skiwear at the one on Ken High St when I was a stoooodent

A survey (don't all yawn at once) I read about recently in the Telegraph had set out to ask people what class they were.

Researchers were amazedat how many people resolutely stuck to a working class label,even when they obviously had moved out of that band.

There is some inverted snobbery re being working class though I reckon. 50years ago,peopel were hanging by their fingernails to the lower middle class label.

Now everyone is braying about being WC and proud.

Good on 'em!

Oh, Paul Willis invented it? The only sociologist whose name I can ever recall is Max Weber.

To ski presumably CD??
My,you were posh then.
Were you a chalet girl with silky hair and a slightly too loud voice???

my daughters boyfriend goes on about class,what the hell does it matter,he lives in a council house,is unemployed fat and bald,lol i know that has nothing to do with it but added it all the same !!and reckons he is working class.I think its just something,some people like to use about thenselves,im working class and dont give a t*.

I don't see the point in saying you are working class if you obviously aren't???

If I'm honest - don't all jump on me at once - I probably am middle class. Both my parents were working class (mum seamstress, dad shipyard worker) but I didn't grow up working class, definitely not - even though we (4 of us) lived in a one bedroom flat til I was 17.

Somehow I've grown middle class and I know I am (by the general definitions accepted by the masses). It would be ridiculous for me to claim I am working class.

Sorry, just trying to be honest.

Hmmm,LM,sounds like agreat catch-not.

I would have to ahem.. intervene in such a case.

I have always thought of myself as middle class - slightly out of step with the people I am arround

As a child the "working class" children had better clothes, cars, Holidays etc

We owned (mortgaged) our house, never had enough money, never went abroad, didn't have the trandy clothes/tape deck/cd player/video

As an adult I still feel 'out of step' with my surroundings I'm not well off enough for Mark Warner - yet feel out of place at Haven

I wonder if it is less to do with class than with the lack of understanding of popular culture

no moondog

I was the one playing cards til 4am with a huge bifta and a vat of nasty cheap marc in mate's parents chalet. We didn't need a chalet girl we were perfectly capable of cooking!

Middle classpeople are actually quite proud to have uncool,old or desperately dated stuff.

Working class people are mortified to have the same as they define themselves by their posessions which the MC don't.

WCs are slaves to the vagaries of fashions in all its permutations.

Anyone read 'No Logo' Naomi Klein??

Brilliant.Her diatribe on how spoilt WASPS (Ralph Lauren) manage to flog Maine summer beachware to black inner city kids is nothing short of brilliant.
Also lots on how Nike et al have appropriated black street style.

I think the mc's do define themselves to a certain extent by their possessions, apart from the charity shop ones but they are not all like that.

They would never buy their children clothes in Adams or George or Tesco. Wow! I've amazed even myself at my sweeping generalisation!!!!

This is really interesting. Made my brain work! I'm now thinking how my parents went from working class stock to raising me and my sister who have never, not even from the word go, been working class people. Hmmmm.......

well moondog,thought she would grow out of him,as if we say anything she would do the opposite.She is 23 and he is 42!!its my hubby and his brothers who object more,i keep the peace..