Marrying into a middle class family

[derbyshire]

I'm working class, fairly well educated but sometimes find myself adrift with my MC in-laws. Been married for 15 years, 3 children in primary school. I think most people would say I'm a good mother: BF kids, they're all doing well at school, nice children etc. but often feel I'm just aping the middle-class mores around me.
My ILs don't understand why I'm not more chilled about birthday parties/dinner parties etc but I've never admitted to them that I never had a birthday party when I was young. Certainly no such thing as a dinner party - dinner was something you ate at noon and never in somebody elses's house!
I get so stressed about all those things they find "normal". I've never joined in with the forcing kids to eat veg - my fussy kids eat more veg than my mother! She won't cook for her GC as she said she didn't know how to cook that "stuff" (pasta).
I admit I'm ashamed to admit how much my childhood varies from their upbringing - food really is a class issue!
Strangely enough, educationally I probably outrank them - its all the niceties of life where I'm lacking. Think I'm probably considered "weird" but we never had drinks/socialising at home. I think the gap has become more pronounced as the years have gone on........just find myself struggling more as the years have gone on. Suppose it just feels more and more false.

Thanks for all the interesting views - particularly the ones from the other side.
I think it boils down to following unwritten rules: the problem is that they ARE unwritten, and if you haven't grown up with them it can be mystifying.

I am deeply MC and my family has been for generations.

Your ILs, OP, are just snobs and rude. There is no excuse for the latter, even if they are the former.

If I were you I would pity them for having so little imagination and being so limited.

If your children are loving, with good manners by which I mean consideration for others, not how you hold your knife, and happy wherever possible, then you are doing brilliantly.

And I would react like you. My ILs have diff standards from me. DS has to learn to operate between cultures within UK society and now foreign society as well. He does so v well. He has ketchup at home on some things and knows ILs won't have it so doesn't ask.

And some of my ILs are recognising that having fun on the cheap can mean you have a lot more fun..

BTW, cake forks ? V nouv unless provided by someone in the Almanach de Gotha ( waits for flame mail )but would never say save here.... And so what ? WTF.

Go for it, be true to your standards within yourself.

But if they use unwritten rules to trip you up and criticise you, you have to wonder how happy they are with their lot in life and their social standing, to resort to such pettiness.

"waiting until everyone sits down, putting your cutlery in a certain position when you've finished - my parents don't do that now! That stuff matters to them"

Sorry but you really need to teach your children table manners. It doesn't matter if you were not taught about any of this. You really should teach your children, if only so they will not suffer these problems later on in their lives.

I am not talking about 5 different knives and forks for each plate, but at the very least they must eat with knife (right hand) and fork (left hand), wait until everyone has their food to start eating, chew with closed mouth, and place knife & fork appropriately when they are finished.

I am only two generations away from the villages of a developing country, but my parents were very strict about table manners and I have been thankful for this in later years. Show proper attention to teaching this stuff to your DC and I'm sure they will appreciate it later, as well.

My Mum grew up in a tenement between Edinburgh and Glasgow. My Dad grew up with nannies (at least two at a time) and ponies.
The cultural differences were huge they made their own middle road based on good manners and do as you would be done by. The ignored the snipes from both sides of the fence.

I'm WC (have been on the poverty line too), and OH is MC. Maybe even 'posh'.

He went to private and boarding schools, and wants to send our lad to one too. I went to some fantastic 'normal' schools and see nothing wrong with them. I can see it's going to be an issue as DS gets to school age.

And I am from the barbaric Arctic, where people herd reindeer for a living, and even I was brought up with proper table manners.
My parents had a book about etiquette, I was made to read it when I was around 11. (Now, my parents were not reindeer herders, I grew up in house with an orchard, but there was no difference in my table manners and other childrens table manners, be their parents nurses, farmers, fishermen, doctor, or in fact reindeer herders)

BTW, the cavendishes always used to have not only ketchup but afair brown sauce on the sideboard at chatsworth.

Why would the MC way be automatically better? Smooshing peas onto the back of your fork just sounds daft, eating dessert or cake with a fork can be handy, but not all the time. When you eat your dinner should surely be at your convenience.

I can't imagine ever caring what hand my dc hold their knife and fork in.

In that case, neither will your children. I can't see them thanking you for that in later life, especially if/when they mix with people who were taught table manners.

Why is having your fork in the wrong hand so appalling? It's not like eating with your mouth open or anything actually disgusting, so isn't it really rather convention than manners?

There's a time and a place for casual cutlery use, eg at home or out for a casual meal with friends. There is also a time and place for correct use, which may be if you are taken out for a meal as part of an interview, or are entertaining business clients, who may have different ideas to you about what constitutes good table manners. Ideally you need to be able to do both with ease, so that is what I am trying to instil in the DCs.

Eating with mouth open, elbows on table are a big no.

Forcing my dc to eat in a way that feels uncomfortable, to please others, is also a big no.

Who are these wankers who judge people on how they hold their cutlery?

That's fine but sometimes we do have to please others.If you hold your knife and fork back to front you will elbow your neighbour when cutting your food.

Poor manners and eating habits do lose people jobs ,who wants to discuss business over lunch with someone shovelling food into their mouths as if they haven't eaten for a month.

as others have said its about time and place.I would say both dh and I are MC although my GP were definitely WC .We eat most nights in front of the TV ,dh is rarely here before 9 so we watch the news , but as a family at the weekends we eat at the table

How close are you sitting to this neighbour you are supposedly elbowing?

Not being disgusting when eating is fine. Bizarre rules about how you eat peas is just superior nonsense.

If you are sitting at a restaurant table ,or as I was last week at a corporate function and the person next to me kept lifting his right elbow up to shovel his food in ,rather than using his left.

Like it or not if you work in professional circles potential clients / employers do judge you on table manners it's just a fact.

*Sorry but you really need to teach your children table manners. It doesn't matter if you were not taught about any of this. You really should teach your children, if only so they will not suffer these problems later on in their lives.

I am not talking about 5 different knives and forks for each plate, but at the very least they must eat with knife (right hand) and fork (left hand), wait until everyone has their food to start eating, chew with closed mouth, and place knife & fork appropriately when they are finished. *

I'm not sure the left and right hand thing matters. We always laid the table for the evening meal at home, and you always knew when it was my sister's turn at laying the table, because the knives and forks were the wrong way round, but it takes all of about 2 seconds to swap them round for the rest of us right-handers, so it's hardly a big deal. And I think if someone's eating competently with cutlery, you're going to notice that far less than someone being forced to eat with the knife in the right hand when they're left-handed and not used to it, as it will make them clumsy with it.

Having said that, though I'm right handed, from time to time, I've found myself using cutlery the other way round without much difficulty, so I don't suppose it's that difficult to learn to use them in a right-handed manner when you're not - it probably all depends how far along either end of the spectrum you are between left and right handedness and ambidextrousness (not sure if that's quite the adjective for being ambidextrous, ambidexerity maybe? But whatever.)

Though my parents had their faults, one of the things we were very lucky with was that we grew up mixing with people from all sorts of backgrounds, so I knew people who went to Eton as well as those in Council houses with very little money at all. What it's meant is that I know you get lovely people in all strata of society, and you also get snobs at all levels. The ones worth sticking with are the ones who are interested in people for themselves, and not how they do everything. I find it interesting that people do do things in all sorts of different ways, but I'm mostly not going to look down on anyone for it.

OP, your childhood sounds deprived and your ILs sound like rude judgemental idiots. Social class is not relevant to either of these observations; you seem to be unnecessarily preoccupied with it. There are "posh" people who lead chaotic lives and don't care about table manners, and many working class people with beautifully behaved children whoh have birthday parties and all the rest of it.

If you aren't confident in your manners, get some etiquette books - libraries often have them, or you could start with Debrett's etiquette website (Debrett's also publish books on etiquette, and are widely recognised as the ultimate authority). But not to fit in with your inlaws, just for your own confidence and so that you can teach your DCs how to behave so that they grow up and go into the world without the anxiety that you are currently feeling.

The point about table manners is that although the knife/fork thing is arbitrary, it's a really easy way to spot people who might not have other, more important manners, and also, it's just bloody easy to teach.
Surely part of bringing up your kids is teaching them when it's easy to conform, and when it's important not to conform and how (if that's what they want)? Personally I think this is a 'meh, people do seem to care, let this one go and certain things will be easier' kind of thing.

The class thing in this country is crazy Just be yourself that is all we are and can be. My builders think I am posh because I gave them strong coffee this morning that is what we have come to. I am not btw by any stretch of the imagination

I am amazed to discover, reading this thread, that I am not middle-class at all after all these years, I eat ketchup, use one-coat paint, eat fish fingers/beans, don't make my own pasta and so on! I did meet the odd person along the way that sniffed at the fish fingers but I thought that was because they were poncy and a bit socially stilted, not because they were more middle class than me!

OP- one solution for me has been to marry a foreigner. Everything I do (not drink like a fish, put my children to bed at 7pm) is deeply odd, but they just put it down to me being forrin.

table manners are so important - who wants a business lunch or romantic date with a view of a mouthful of food for example.....

As a lot of others have said, the way your ILs are behaving isn't about class - they're just being rude.

Yes there are some widely accepted etiquette rules about things like cutlery and dinner parties and various other unimportant things, but they are not universal rules and it doesn't make you "better" if you know them, it's just a way to enforce the boundaries between the varying microcosms within the MC (ie your ILs are differentiating themselves from people who are LMC in an aspiration themselves to be UMC while probably actually being MMC).

That said, be glad you're WC. I was brought up very MC and being MC is largely about social climbing and guilt - only the WC and UC get away with not giving a shit about how they are perceived via their behaviour, which is really rather lovely (speaking with a vague sense of MC guilt)!