What social class am i? :/

[user1499695642]

This is something that really bothers me. I feel like i'm slipping and not following my parents' example.

I wish class didn't but I've been made to feel out of place before. What social class would you guys say I 'fit into'? I know it's shallow to ask, please don't judge me for asking. I'd just like to know what you guys think based on some info.

Age: 23
Ethnicity: Mixed race
Occupation: Graduate officer in local government
Salary: £20K
Live: With parents in (owned) 4 bed detached house in home counties (average price in village - £1.5m)
Parents: Civil Service Director/Housewife - just one went to (Russell Group) Uni
Education: Non-selective, comprehensive academy then Oxbridge (2.1 (2015))
Accent: More standard south-eastern than 'posh' (e.g. Joanna Lumley)
Hobbies: Museums, art galleries, theatre, TV
Social: I only made a couple friends at uni so my social group is very small. I only know 1 or 2 people in influential/ 'elite' professions

Am I middle class or does the following make me working class?:
Non-private/grammar education
Low salary/career sector
Non-house ownership
Social group
Accent

Does my parent's social class affect mine a lot or not so much?

Again, please don't judge me for asking. I'm genuinely just curious to know what others might think.

As you are currently living with your parents, your father presumably is Head of House and Chief Income Earner, He has a degree therefore you would be in the socio-economic group known as AB. This is the top of the range.
Once you move to your own property you will still be an AB as you have a degree. If you are married and your husband also has a degree you will retain the AB. If your husband is a tradesperson such as electrician but earns more than you this will make you a C2.

On this scale the type of house as in style of property or whether it is rented or bought, or wholly owned has no bearing.
This also applies whether you are English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish.

A pp said you cant be posh if you are Scottish. There are several Dukes in Scotland with their castles and dukedoms, there are Baronets, there are also landed gentry and the self made. You can only be forced into assuming that Scottish are not posh if you believe information which is easily disproved. I cant quite see a Duke signing on at Unemployment Office. I recently met a Duke. I was not aware of his position but I could tell he wore very good clothes and shoes and he spoke well. It was not until I saw a painting of the man that I realised who he was exactly. Being exactly who he was he did not have to bum on about his position. Class is not something that money can buy, it is a way of life.

Thanks jemsywemsy

Thanks. I feel, I have done myself proud with getting onto a local government graduate scheme.

I suppose you're right, about feeling like a fish out of water at uni. I think part of the problem is my determination to continue to be an alumni, go back, socialise and not 'not bother' because I sometimes 'feel out of place'. I'm just as entitled to be there as UMC/UC people. If people, like me, don't go, then it just perpetuates the idea that Oxbridge is for a privileged UMC/UC elite?

Gosh, bit of deep there.

Hi OP, I really didn't mean to offend you. I thought you were unhappy because you felt out of place. I'm also an Oxbridge graduate and met all sorts of people when I was there and was never made to feel uncomfortable by anyone. I was the first person in my family to go to university and came from a state school so I don't think I arrived reeking of privilege. And I can't remember using fish knives at dinner !

ILikeyourHairyHands

It was only a matter of time MaQueen.

Do clarify...

Thanks Categoric. That adds context and I understand!

This fish knives business! I am literally going to have to check the fish course next time I'm at formal hall!

According to the quiz I'm Emergent service workers. I'd be middle class based on my friendships and hobbies if soy I was richer. Well that's unlikely...

It will be Nina, never let it be forgot.

At what point do you stop being the same class as your parents? If you are born to working class parents and earn a low wage at 23, still living at home-but then marry a rich accountant at 40 and move to their big house (but never work yourself) and your kids have ponies and private school education-do you become middle class at 40? But your sister who still lives at home with w/c parents remains w/c? Is it dependent on who you might marry? At the point of marriage? Or do you remain w/c but your children are m/c and your sisters aren't?

The OP earns £20k and her parents sound comfortable-does it depend on her earning potential as to her class or is it decided? Is she earns £20k forever and doesn't marry, that's one situation. If her career progresses well (is that likely, op?) and she earns £50K, is that different? Or if she marries well?

Or is it not about salary-but like a poster said, to do with lifestyle-visiting galleries and listening to radio 3?

Jilly Cooper mentions the 'nouveau riche'-plenty of new money, but no class!

It's a minefield!

Does hacking the system to cheat on ones degree make one faux middle class?

Does hacking the system to cheat on ones degree make one faux middle class?

It certainly makes one enterprising. It also makes me want to ask, hack the system how???

At what point do you stop being the same class as your parents?

I don't know, but I think if you still live with the middle class parents who brought you up I struggle to see how one could be working class.

Unless identifying as working class is a thing. Actually, looking at this thread I think it must be.

Oh I love these threads, how posh can I pass myself off as?
My parents ended up with more money than they started off with.
Dad retired as a Major in the Army, Mum didn't work.
Not what Orficers wives did in those days y'ou know.

As for the no posh Scottish people, are you mad?
My Dad's family (upper middle I'd say ) own land in Aberdeenshire, lots of it and they throw the best wedding bashes ever, my Uncle used to toss the caber ( really ) in the Highland games.
Sadly DP and I are not posh.
(No fish knives left, we sold them with the rest of the family silver)
We are hairy toed hobbits from Scotland and Rutland.

OP in the nicest possible way, I have no idea what 'class' you are and don't care - and don't understand why anybody else would either. Shouldn't the 'class' system have been left behind long ago?

I have no idea what 'class' I would fall into and do not aspire to any of them. What's the 'prize' we're all supposedly aiming for anyway? Upper class? No thank you! When I was growing up the term 'middle class' was bandied around as a snobbish insult as much as anything else.

All that concerns me about my 'status' is that I know I am very lucky to have a home I love that belongs to me (well, DH and me!), and that we have enough money to enable us to live a comfortable life with our DC.

I imagine the the kind of people who would be judging our 'class' would be the kind I wouldn't pass the time of day with anyway.

Oh I love these threads, how posh can I pass myself off as?

Exactly.

Shouldn't the 'class' system have been left behind long ago?

Well, of course it should, but it hasn't. Mn is intermittently obsessed with social class markers (sofa/settee/couch, what/pardon, what you call your evening meal, toilet/loo/lavatory, living room/sitting room/drawing room etc etc) but those are irrelevant to the larger problem, which is that social class does still matter, and, perpetuated by the education system, continues very often to dictate people's educational levels/aspirations./careers/health/even life expectancy.

And it's ironic that while some posters are criticising the thread for being essentially 'How posh can I pass myself off as?', others are criticising people for 'identifying as working class' when the poster criticising them clearly views them as middle-class.

MaQueen are you the same poster as LaQueen ?

Wanders off, off topic.

I find it quite worrying that some people has clearly spent a lot of time working out where they sit in this ridiculous class system. Why is it so important?

If I were to go through it, I have been working class, middle class and now bottom of the heap class. Does it matter? Do I care? Not a jot. I have mixed with the lowest of the lowest (not what I would call them, but people worried about "class" would describe them like that) and I have mingled and made friends with very wealthy, middle and I suppose upper class people. Thankfully I have never felt negatively judged wherever I have been, but then that could be because I really don't care and people can tell.

I am me. I will not define myself or my child by outdated notions of where we sit within a ridiculous system, and I would certainly not entertain people within my own social circle to whom "class" is an issue. I do find that people who chose to define themselves as being in some sort of "higher" class, whether they got there by birth or luck are generally the ones that are happiest to sneer and look down on the little people. Not something that I would aspire to.

I was working class. I am now middle class (just about). Therefore I think it's ridiculous when people who have been raised in the middle classes and still seem to be there, not just the OP, claim to be working class. Jarvis Cocker is with me: