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.

What a fab thread, op I'd say you're staunchly MC.

I've just found out I'm established middle class, which is nice considering I'm sat on the floor sharing microwave chip and orange cheese with the dog.

I do have RP though, accent and no dialect. But that's because I fell out of a vagina into the Oxford Triangle.

Oh and I own a few factories so can swank about being the bourgeoisie and all that. But I'm probably eating the wrong cheese to do it properly.

I'm proudly downwardly mobile. My family are certifiably posh. I know they'd like to think Upper Middle. Everyone went to expensive public schools (proper ones, not newfangled hippy dippy shit), from my grandfather's generation down to mine.

My friends at home were either from wealthy farming families or titled gentry. My first boyfriend was heir to a baronetcy and that was considered perfectly normal in our circle. Friends only caught up during school holidays as we were all at Harrow or Stowe or Edinburgh Merchant Schools or Gordonstoun etc.

I hated the pretension and social climbing of the MC and UMC. I was a secret socialist in a Tory world. I refused to have the plummy voice and the other various affectations. It makes me cringe to think of it all.

I left home and disowned them all very young. It's incredibly freeing not to have to aspire to be something or other, or continue to live up to some social label that was acquired through the pure fortune of which womb you dropped out of. I've spent my adult life just being myself.

No fish knives left, we sold them with the rest of the family silver)

If your family had been really posh, they would not have had fish knives - or forks - in the first instance!

The class system is bonkers nowadays. People migrate, move, change professions, marry into a "different" social class. years ago, you had generations of working classes (like miners etc). 3 generations or more working int he same industry. Its rare now with improvements in education, people moving away from where they lived and grew up etc. So at anyone time you could change your class status.

Labels......................ugh!

For me your background would put you well in middle class bracket. Because your likely to benefit financially from your parents position you will in time live a middle class lifestyle.

It's funny because it's ridiculous. I'm fully middle class. Yet my dh is 100% working class until he went to uni, got a professional job, got an MA and now he's middle yet his parents and grandparents are working! I don't know what our kids are and I'm not that bothered!

We have fish knives and cake folks. His parents just eat cake, my famiky wait for the folks 😂😂

nina2b

Yes dear.

I left home and disowned them all very young. It's incredibly freeing not to have to aspire to be something or other, or continue to live up to some social label that was acquired through the pure fortune of which womb you dropped out of. I've spent my adult life just being myself.

Agreed, but you 'dropped out'/disowned your family with all the social, cultural and educational capital your privileged upbringing gave you. I'm not saying you should regret this, even if there was any point that regret I wish there were more secret socialists at the heart of the Establishment! but I don't think that 'just being yourself' can be extricated from all the various kinds of capital you accrued in your early life.

You make too many assumptions LoneCrone. What exactly do you think my privileged upbringing gave me that brings advantages? Nice manners? Anyone can have those, they are free and easy to learn. A good education? You can get one of those in state schools.

I moved to the other end of the country where nobody knew me. I gained nothing on the back of my family name or the old school tie (that system only seems to work for men anyway).

Trust me. I have gained no capital whatsoever. Unless you consider chronic post traumatic stress capital?

You're definitely working class.

Today 13:12 SoNouveau

nina2b

Yes dear.

Oh goodness, your attempt to be patronising is hardly original!

It is a fact, though. Fish knives indeed...

The very first noteworthy interaction I had with a university was going to an open day and seeing a privately educated pupil go up to a lecturer, declare his network, ie the private school he went to, and then have that reciprocated by the lecturer recognising the school and before moving onto a more detailed exploration of how their common networks intersected. It hit me straight away that there were forms of leg-up that others had that would never be available to me no matter what I did.

You could say you come from a middle class background.... but like you said you're not even really bothered.

Nina2b

Lol.

Dedicated to Nina2b.

classsystem.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/phone-for-fish-knives-norman.html

Ploppy, I think it's difficult to think about the various kinds of capital you accrue from comparatively privileged upbringing,and I think you're being disingenuous about the extent to which 'nice manners' and a 'good education' can be acquired by any one, of any social class.

I mean cultural and social capital in Bourdieu's sociological sense - you chucked your economic capital, I assume when you disowned your family, but even if you didn't trade on family associations/old school network stuff (and I agree that's heavily gendered), the other stuff stays with you -- accumulations of knowledge, skills, learned behaviours, a way of speaking, which are prized in our society.

You will have benefited from that privilege any time you interviewed, met someone for the first time, had your CV with your name and details of your education chosen over another candidate's for a position in which certain types of self-presentation and 'tribal' knowledge are required, and which definitely aren't generally taught in state schools.

I don't mean to sound in the least accusatory -- you couldn't get rid of that stuff if you wanted to. But I think it's disingenuous to pretend it's not a form of privilege, however unhappy your childhood was. (I say this as someone who had an unhappy childhood, too, but with well-meaning but non-coping parents who weren't literate, were very poor, and weren't able to pass on the rudiments of basic hygiene, teeth-brushing etc etc. I was still figuring out some of that stuff in adulthood.)

There was a long-running thread on Mn not too long ago, whose name I forget, but which was very interesting -- from an aspirational parent who wanted to try to give her children what she viewed as the 'soft skills' she associated with people educated at public schools.

Today 14:02 SoNouveau

Dedicated to Nina2b.

classsystem.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/phone-for-fish-knives-norman.html

Oh John Betjeman! I love his poetry so much. I raise you this classic...

In Westminster Abbey by John Betjeman

Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England's statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady's cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered
Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I'll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
Join the Women's Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.

Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr'd.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.

Lol again Nina2b.

Doesn't cover those common fish knives though does it?

@SoNouveau

True! Anyhow, fish knives are practical....

@LoneCrone

Again with the assumptions.

Trust me. You are wrong. Your generalisations are, frankly, offensive.

I am autistic. I do not have the social skills you describe. I don't speak or behave in the way you assume.

I don't deny my upbringing was privileged. But it has very little to no bearing on the life I have had since leaving all that behind. I am insulted that you would assume any success I have had in job interviews etc were on the basis of the name of my school. In truth nobody south of Newcastle would ever have heard of the place.

Please don't continue to insult me.

OK, Ploppy. You are misreading my posts, in which I have specifically said on more than one occasion, that my intention is not in the least to blame you, or anyone else, for the effects of privilege you didn't sign up for. I am certainly not 'insulting you'. If you're not familiar with the concepts of social/cultural capital, I suggest you read up on them, so that you will see that viewing someone as possessing them, whether or not they are conscious of it, is not 'insulting'.

Or, my bad -- you did not benefit from your wealthy, minor aristocracy-and-landed-gentry, public-school educated background at all. You would have been far better off with my overcrowded, impoverished home, failing school and parents whose literacy was so poor that I had to write my own sick notes.

rollonthesummer

I find it odd that you asked that - I would hope a Graduate Scheme leads to career progression! If it doesn't then my generation really is screwed!

@LoneClone

Really, it's not insulting to suggest I succeeded in job interviews solely based on the name of my school bumping me up above other candidates.

Don't bother. You clearly don't understand a word of what I have said.

Re. Australians and their "non-class" system, I have only one word to add to the discussion: bogans.
They have it all right, they just don't like to admit it.