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.

burberry 'table manners are so important - who wants a business lunch or romantic date with a view of a mouthful of food for example.....' that's just common sense though - and yes probably important for business. I think OP is talking about unwritten rules - the little quirks.

Aetae 'being MC is largely about social climbing and guilt' - so true. Ironically though, the more lower middle class, the more social climbing.

I think for 15 years you have been trying to live according to someone else's rules and you have had enough and something within you wants to reassert itself. I don't see why having married into this family, the onus is on you to understand and adopt all their rules and tastes. I would pick and choose what you value from your childhood and what you value from dh's upbringing/ habits and make your own blend.

Do you really have to hold a lot of dinner parties? I remember when as a young student or later travelling and working abroad I invited friends over for a meal, it was relaxed and friendly and we had a lot of laughs over the cooking and the meal itself. A dinner party is a more formal version of the same IMO but if it is too formal, it wouldn't be me so when I have people over for meals, it is an adult (and more expensive) version of what I did when I was younger. It is hard to feel at ease as a guest too IMO if the host/ hostess aren't. If that isn't impressive enough for the people you invite, I would at least scale it down.If it is just family and friends, do something more casual. If they involve business contacts, go to a restaurant maybe. You want to enjoy your life as much as you can and when you're elderly not look back in regret that actually it wasn't your life but trying to conform to someone else's silly rules.

I wouldn't like to live the way your ILs do if they are always concerned with the right way of dressing and doing things. When do you ever really relax and enjoy yourself if you are always so concerned with what others think and how they judge you? I have one relative who is a bit like this. Underneath it all she has a brilliant dry sense of humour but I feel the real her hardly ever breaks out, she is living her husband's life (is elderly and has always been a SAHM and the woman behind the great man kind of thing). She does what she does very well but she didn't live her life and be herself. I find it a shame.

FormaLurker if you want to advise others on manners and be taken seriously it helps to do so politely.....

OP I think you should decide what things are important to you and what you consider bad manners. Personally I'd teach my children to wait for others before they start eating because I'd see it as more sociable but I wouldn't make a fuss if other people did things differently. My prejudices dont always have to be right. Eating more veg will make your children's lives easier when they are older but it's small stuff and it can be counter-productive to try and force it on them. Some things (like what you call your drawingroom/sitting room/living room/lounge) I'd see as unimportant and for pedants.

Sometimes the way we were brought up doesn't have to be the right way. There is certainly true of your inlaws, who sound rude, but perhaps the most comfortable thing for you is not the best for your children.

My kids have two sets of table manners....."at home" and then " with Grannie and Grandpa"!!!!

By the way, I never ever have dinner parties. Just don't enjoy them, hate cooking, much rather go out. The most I do is a picnic. I don't think they are compulsory and you shouldn't feel bad if you don't want to do them.

Haven't read every post but based on the first few from you I'd say your in laws are not that MC but aspiring to be MC. The manners thing cuts across all classes. It's not a MC thing.

My parents and grandparents were as WC as they come, but they had immaculate manners and would actually comment that 'posh' children were often unruly and spoilt.

Making people feel uncomfortable in your home is not something that anyone with any manners or 'class' ( in the broadest sense of the word) does.

Regardless of what your ILs do, your kids should be brought up to know how to eat 'correctly' and what good manners consist of. Manners are there to help relationships go smoothly- they are based on respect and caring for other people. That should be your guide.

I avoid anything that might smack of a dinner party. Luckily the snobby inlaws wouldnt invite us now we have a child with cerebral palsy who drools food. Clearly this is beyond the pale in MC table etiquette where what you look like is far more important than a warm family gathering. DD has far more fun at my family gatherings. Rug on the floor, kids running everywhere and people hugging and genuinely having fun. Oh, and dd cant manipulate a knife and fork to save her life. I guess thats boardroom lunch meetings out for her then!

I think we are MC but our family gatherings are all relaxed and the children can run around happy.

We expect some table manners, according to age, and politeness, but that's all.

I don't do dinner parties, (can't be bothered) and .meals with friends tend to be relaxed too.

Loving mrs.Frederick!! wish you would tell more.All this is so fascinating for us forriners. Glad not to have a dog in the fight.

Everyone will have things that they do differently from their in-laws, even if they are from the same "class".

I think you need to stop thinking about whether something is working class or middle class and just think about whether you want to do it always, sometimes, or never.

Decide for yourself.

For me:
Wait til everyone is at the table before starting eating - always
Eat cake with a fork - sometimes (depends on the cake)
Bother which way up a fork is when it is put down - never.

From what you've written I can't actually tell if your in-laws are being rude or if you are being overly sensitive about the fact that you do things differently.

I don't think your childhood was working class, I think it was deprived .
On the other hand, my dad was upper middle class and my Mum is working class who became middle class. They had both been brought up with similar manners and healthy food. My parents brought me up differently to how they'd been brought up-I too had manners for Grandmas that were different to home. We write thank you notes to the ones who care about it-ring the ones who don't-just respect I think.

I think you're conflating some things with class that are more like modern versus traditional parenting. The attitude to fussy eaters for example. I also think you're confused about the parties-parties are very different to the ones in the 70s/80s. I would just hand it over to the bowling alley or wherever to do. I separate relatives from these things and just have a separate slice of cake/visit with them.

The passive aggressive 'oh don't you do that?' needs a sharp rehearsed response, perhaps the mnet 'Did you mean to be so rude?'.

Lots and lots of people live in very different worlds to the ones they were brought up in. The ones who succeed are the ones that really believe that they are equal to everyone. If you had better self esteem you'd brush off the inlaws snobby ways. Do you think your childhood contributed to a lack of self worth? Perhaps you need to talk this through with someone?

I also never have dinner parties, despite my parents giving them all the time. I'd much rather meet my friends at the pub and I've never found pleasure in cooking. Inlaws are welcome to come for dinner, but they get what we're having and it's certainly not a dinner party.

Twisty, how horrid. Not what the Camerons did with Ivan, and Sam Cam is UC. And one of my colleagues is a bit awkward, but chooses things she can manage and it's just part of life, FGS.

But there were generations when eugenics were considered important and a whole lot flowed from that. My DM suffered as a result, as did my guardian and a close family friend.. so maybe your ILs are stuck in that.

V sorry they miss out so much. Poor you.

Gotthemoon, yes, it is all v perplexing.

We always had to remember with whom.you shook hands and who would be polluted by a female touch, that it was rude to have your hands under the table if the guests were French and rude not to if they were English, that in the 60s no nice women talked to a man at a cocktail party in Australia, even her husband, that no nice girl went into.a US bar in the 70s but could do sex and drugs, that in English society you never used your right hand to eat food with and in the Middle East the opposite but for the same reason.. as well as all the English rules.

Any more?

I do BBQs if there are children now, gets over the manners issue easily as no one is expected to be formal.

OP,

Just be yourself.. and take confidence in your own standards. Confidence and pleasure are very disarming.

I'm going to do a terrible thing... and post without reading the thread all the way through! (I'll probably be the one with egg on my face... fried egg of course. fried in lard )

I come from a working class background and married a toff (I'm allowed to say toff, ok). I was silent for 2 years, deeply ashamed of my cultural roots, terrified I would be embarrassed in some obvious way ormake an outrageous social faux pas.

Your ILs are in fact low class re The ILs don't criticise me directly - more passive aggressive "oh don't you do this" and general raising of eyebrows . They sound a bit socially insecure/climbing to me. Unpleasant tbf.

Perhaps you could approach it that you have married into a different culture. This isn't far from the mark - imo class social norms are cultural poles apart a lot of the time. The problem is that if you were say, german, and you were living in an english family, you would not hide it (and people would allow for it) - but you aren't coming out with it so people don't know. You're probably not coming out with it because you are ashamed of it, ashamed of your background.

But hang on: to come from such a deprived background and make your way to where you are, with a successful marriage and career, is stunning. You know it is, come on. You have done remarkably well and have nothing to be ashamed of - on the contrary, you have a lot to be proud of.

I eventually broke out of my self-imposed silence when I realised that I was witnessing a great deal of ignorance in the family I had married into, and realised that ignorance does not belong solely to the working classes. I wouldn't go so far as to say I am 'proud' of my working class roots, because I am neither proud nor ashamed. It is as it is. However, I will, if necessary, make it clear when my social/class norms clash with others'. The middle classes don't have all the answers though they think they do .

After a time of being out and proud, I have learned to tone it down. Class snobbery runs deep ime and I can't count the number of MC people who can never forget where I come from, making a comment about it Every. Single. Time. we meet. Tiresome. They are not rude about it, just can't get over it. A bit like being black back in the day I should've thought ie some people find it hard to get used to.

time to face and own your roots OP. If it makes you feel any better, I have a friend who is absurdly posh and hid it as though his life depended on it. It's not only those of us from the bottom of the pile who can be ashamed of our class roots.

I would say that you think they do, too. ie you think they have all the answers - to the point that you have conformed to their norms over yours.

Us working class people have a lot to teach the middle classes. Same vice versa, too. One isn't better than the other.

I feel for you if you have repressed who you are all this time - thoroughly EXHAUSTING! It was when I was in the playground at my kids' posh school and someone greeted me with a strong local accent, and I felt a GUSH of recognition and a feeling of home... that I realised all this holding myself in, trying to conform, was idiotic.

(sorry about that sentence. Poor education, terrible grammar )

People get really fucked in the head about this stuff.

In New Zealand (a classless society, in more ways than one), my weird de facto SIL seems to believe that I think I'm posh, just because I did very well at a top school (state school, which my mother chose for me- I couldn't have cared less where I went at the tender age of twelve). She also thinks I put on an English accent- I don't, it's just that my always-soft city accent has been influenced naturally by years abroad and five years of being with and married to a Pom. Oh, and I'm white, which is apparently a problem.

In her head, it's class wars, because she is Maori (although she also went to uni and stuff, having taken advantage of the many scholarships available to Maori children), grew up "in poverty" (a few blocks from me, in the same neighbourhood, in the same type of comfortable little bungalow, and indeed with a mother receiving the exact same benefits as my mother did) and has a tattoo (which she got in her 30s and talks about endlessly in a painful look-aren't-I-working-class way, yet has in a discreet place lest it affect her social standing or job opportunities or whatever).

Odd, because she has a public sector, ultra-middle-class admin-type job, and blogs incessantly about wines and posh cheeses and chai lattes and stuff that bores me senseless.

Me, I love salad cream, married a gobshite from Luton and am a mad football addict. Yet according to her I'm a "laa dee daa" social climber. I don't care what she thinks, but it's hard to see how much wrong-er she could be.

Confession: I have, in the past, corrected the grammar in her blog.

Love both Springy' s and the maltesecat's reactions. Think we are all saying the same thing. Ie follow your instincts, without all out warfare. You could raise eyebrows too if you must. But far better just to smile and say, ' oh don't you ? ' or, ' yes, that's one way .' And leave it at that, secure in Fgs knowledge you are nicer, more talented, better bought up and better behaved.

Maltesecat, may I ask why you chose the name?

I can't count the number of MC people who can never forget where I come from

Same the other way around, too. eg some ignorant members of my family never let my husband forget where he came from.

The phrase I was looking for is 'class shame'. You can get it regardless which class you belong to.

I'm from a WC background although my parents would probably be considered lower middle class now. We didn't have dinner parties or side plates or pasta or skiing holidays when I was growing up. I now work in an environment where I occasionally have to attend business meals with people from the upper classes and I do sometimes feel a bit out of my depth, socially, but I try my best not to come over as fake or pretentious.

I think there is a distinction between "good manners" and "etiquette". "Good manners" can be summarised as consideration for others. So not eating with your mouth open (because it's not pleasant for other people to have to look at half-masticated food), not waving your elbows around when eating (because it's rude to inadvertently dig your dining companion in the ribs), putting your knife and fork together neatly to signal you've finished (because if someone else is serving you, it makes it easy for them to see that they can take your plate and also less likely to drop the cutlery while carrying it away) are all "good manners" as there is a clear benefit to others by doing so. The number one example of "good manners" would be not commenting on other people's manners, because to do so could potentially make them feel embarrassed or uncomfortable and is therefore rude.

"Etiquette" seems to refer more to the unwritten rules that the OP refers to. Complicated rules for cutlery depending on the type of food, certain things being seen as 'infra dig' often for seemingly arbitrary reasons. They act as a club, a means of keeping out the uninitiated. It's not coincidence that the true upper classes wouldn't dream of correcting someone's social 'faux pas' whereas someone from the middle classes, particularly someone who would probably be considered 'nouveau', is so proud to think that they understand the rules that they often fall over themselves to demonstrate that THEY'VE cracked it and YOU haven't, without realising the irony that by doing so they are displaying the exact opposite of actual good manners - just as the OPs ILs are doing here.

MrsFrederickWentworth, I agree with your conclusions. Just be yourself- it winds them up unspeakably!

My Mumsnet handle is taken from the marvellous short story of the same name by Rudyard Kipling. No need to ask where your username comes from! :)

The number one example of "good manners" would be not commenting on other people's manners, because to do so could potentially make them feel embarrassed or uncomfortable and is therefore rude.

Always makes me think of the phrase Scout uses in To Kill A Mockingbird when she exclaims at their guest at the dinner table, "What the sam hill d'ya think you're doing!" and being bustled out by Cal (or Atticus - one of them anyway) for bad manners.

Select - your last paragraph sums up a few of the school mums - so true!

I agree with everything you have written middleagefrumpty.

I just don't understand why would anyone would want to live their lives by a set of arbitrary rules.

Because of MN, I follow a lot of lovely MC ladies on twitter. Sometimes their conversations baffle me though, their need to conform and 'fit in', almost as if free choice is removed from their lives.

I mentioned this once. And I received a tweet back saying 'free choice is the preserve of the WC and the UC'. So they are aware of how restricted their lives are.

Its fascinating to read though.

Does anyone remember when the fishy one used to fill MN with threads stating rules that people shouldn't do;

              'Ladies stop wearing mum boots. Gavel'. 

And then a whole thread would be filled with her adoring MC fans who would be so grateful for yet another rule to follow.

What a way to live!