How do you define class?

[ButterPie]

After a conversation with DP, I have come to wonder what class I am. I suppose, on paper, I am working class, as DP works in a warehouse for minimum wage, we live in a rented house, neither of us have degrees and so on, but, I dunno if I am being somehow snobby, but I feel quite posh somehow. We read the Guardian, we have an aga, we use terry nappies, until recently we were regularly in various pieces of performance art, basically we are the big stereotype of middle class left wing bohemian nobs. I was looking at my house this morning, it might be rented, but when I was little I would have thought it incredibly posh - double glazing, central heating, garden, semi detached, french doors, basically what my mum used to dream of.

Hmm, so, what class are you, and why do you think that?

and all along Bonsoir thought you meant you were someones wife

LOL! Indeed, the book trade is immensely middle-class!

I live in a village full of modern 4-bedroomed detatched houses. All the women are SAHMs and drive 4wheeldrive cars whilst their husbands are teachers / insurance men. They are all very nice, but fairly ordinary middle class people, or desperately pretending to be.

I come from a very different background from them, although at the moment I have the same house/car. I come from a long line of upper-middle or Upper class families on both sides. Everyone in my family went to public school and university, mixed with people with titles, had ponies as children etc (if thats all some kind of "measure").

The women in this village (my "friends"), very much hold me at arms length at times and find it hard to relate to me, saying stuff like, "well you wouldn't know about slumming it", or tuning out if we are having a conversation about something to do with our childhoods. I have had to learn to just shut up and never refer to my past or my family, or to my plans (hopes) for my children, so as not to alienate myself.

I feel very lonely a lot of the time and really think that it is not only a case of higher classes looking down on and judging lower classes, it happens the other way round too and if you are on the recieving end, its really not very nice.

Sorry that ended up a bit of a rant.

You are obviously living the wrong life, BigusBumus. Move.

You're right Bonsoir and in fact we are putting the house on the market next year!

Older house, smaller car, get the family heirlooms out and you'll find like-minded friends in a jiffy

Ooh, thought of another sign. Fruit bowls. As a child I thought people with fruit bowls were incredibly posh. All that yummy snacky food just sitting there, not being devoured by a crowd of kids, or being forgotten about and going off.

I now have a fruit bowl. I even occasionally eat an individually packaged item not in a lunch box situation, and have chocolate and wine in the cupboards, not eaten/drunk as soon as it gets in the house. I have arrived

Jajas - I think that makes you posh!

The distinct class system ended with the second world war. What we have now are newspapers, media and retail trying desparately to still pigeon hole people into a niche so that they can sell us things.

It's very english. I didn't ever think about class until I went to england. It all more important there!

read this thread just before christmas ...not being british, i find the whole class obsession quite funny to watch from the outside, occaisionally flitter within...

so bought up topic in conversation at christmas lunch.
dh is firmly of the opionion his family is working class (father fireman, state schoo, table manners, table manners) and that i am upper class (tonnes of money, public school, nibbles before dinner, never crisps).

MIL was v v upset and insisted that she was middle class on account of her book reading, radio 4 listening etc (i wanted to point out that listening was one thing, understanding was nother, but i refrained.) she then asked me what class i thought i was and i just said "foreign" to which she said "oh i've not heard that one before".

I don't know, it annoys me when my husband calls anyone with a 4&4, a nanny, a slightly posh accent and a puschair worth 700£ middle class. ( you know the stereotype, I live near Richmond Surrey and there's loads)
I don't see it that way-half of these women don't have neither a degree, or substantial career, they happen to marry wealthy men and that is it. I could never feel inferior.
I come from an academic family, and I am foreign, so I don't really naturally belong to any class but I observe the British system and I think I haven't found a definition of class yet. It is clearly not education, it is clearly not only wealth, what is it? I think it existed in the past but I don't think we can speak about it in modern times. Poeple mix far too much, a lot of ex working class background earn a lot of money, and so on.

The media use the term, 'middle-class', when they mean middle income.