i would like to talk about this subject.

By middle class values I mean rites of passage, the statistical number of children, a work ethic, being prepared for a fall-back career, getting married because it's expected of you, taking your kids to Sunday School, even formal schooling. Also included in this is the idea of :king and country" family genealogical line, the "right" address, conforming names, generally conforming to the 'rules' of society, and so on.

Where do you stand on these? Do you have some 'middle class' values? If so what are they?

It seems to me that people like to not conform and that most people don't think that they do conform, until they have kids and then they conform to 'set an example' and that young adults expect their parents to conform. Also that kids don't like to be different so having a mum and dad who have a peculiar lifestyle makes them not fit in at school and that kids like to \fit in' at school. Let's talk about this and see where it goes.

I'd like replies from both believers and non-believers please.

Hopefully I will not have to conform, but if it will happen I am sure I will be able to reason my "conforming" to my satisfaction. That is what we, humans, do all the time - reason, thus justify - lie to ourselves or fall to self-deception. Other than that abnormality, as you said, is often "punished" by society and my explanation for it is that hairless monkeys just cant help themselves.

I hear what you're saying but is it important. I have friends who do everything exactly the way society dictates: kids driving at 18, going to the end of school dance, studying all the 'right' subjects, wearing the 'right' clothes etc. They are so boring.

Maybe it's be but I find non-conformists so more interesting.

Fuck society and its fucking rules. I could elaborate, but this sums it up for me.

Agrippina wrote:i would like to talk about this subject.

By middle class values I mean rites of passage,

I'm not sure what this means.

the statistical number of children,

I only have one, whereas I understand that it is most usual in the UK to have 2. It certainly seems to be convention to have more than one, and indeed when I explained to a relative that there would be no more for us, I was told 'you can't just have one child'. I can do what I want, thanks.

a work ethic,

Well I am currently unemployed while studying, and I have noticed a real urge to get out and contribute both in terms of money and effort. I feel a bit 'useless' about not being able to. However I consider myself redeemed slightly because I do voluntary work. I think this is the area in which I conform the most - but is this a middle-class value? I'd call the work ethic a working-class value.

being prepared for a fall-back career,

My parents and some others cannot understand my 'whatever' stance on money. I'd like more than I've got, but it's never been much of a primary motivator for me. I don't care if I make something of myself according to what others regard as a high-flying career. Such expectations have been a source of great stress for me in the past. So I've done all sorts of 'menial' jobs for which I am a great deal over-qualified on paper.

getting married because it's expected of you,

I'd not be easily swayed on this, but it has been suggested to me more than once on the old forum. It's true that marriage is a conventional way to express one's love for someone I suppose.

taking your kids to Sunday School,

Hahaha............................................no.

even formal schooling.

This isn't so much about values as the law. You can be imprisoned here if your child misses too much school. Home schooling is really not done to any great extent and I wouldn't do it myself, I'd rather leave it to the professionals. Even though there is one in our household.

Also included in this is the idea of :king and country"

Pff...no.

family genealogical line,

I'm not sure about what this means.

the "right" address,

I like living in a nice house (one without things growing on the walls), but there'll be no moving house to make sure little Petunia goes to the 'right' school.

conforming names,

My daughter has a fairly straightforward Welsh name (we're not Welsh), but she has 4 of them,which I am led to believe is slightly uncommon. She has her first name, then the name she was going to be called if she had not arrived a month earlier than planned, then the Latin version of my own name, then her surname. She's indicated that she would like to go by her second name, and we've told her that we have no problem with that - or with her wanting her surname to be different because ours is a tad - ah - unusual. However, this strikes me as quite a middle-class outlook. Sticking to your given name seems more working-class.

generally conforming to the 'rules' of society, and so on.

I tend to kick against some of these, but there's only so much kicking one can do when one has to rub along with other quite rigid individuals. Let's see - I swear in front of my daughter (not AT her), she's allowed to watch selected films which are cert 15 (she's 9), she writes on her bedroom walls as a means of expression, she runs around the house naked (self-consciousness hasn't kicked in yet), we ALL run around the house naked, I have literally no concerns about her turning out to be gay, whether she drinks, smokes or uses drugs will be entirely her own (informed) choice, I keep rabbits inside the house, if I don't feel like cutting the grass I won't and it will get waist high, I routinely catch the train without paying, my daughter calls her dad 'Tony', not 'dad' (although calls me 'mum' most of the time) ...but again, a lot of this seems like quite middle-class behaviour to me. Is this the kind of stuff you mean, or something else?

Where do you stand on these? Do you have some 'middle class' values? If so what are they?

I think I do, but I'm aware that in my culture, 'middle-class' probably means something quite different from what it does in yours.

It seems to me that people like to not conform and that most people don't think that they do conform, until they have kids and then they conform to 'set an example' and that young adults expect their parents to conform. Also that kids don't like to be different so having a mum and dad who have a peculiar lifestyle makes them not fit in at school and that kids like to \fit in' at school. Let's talk about this and see where it goes.

I'd like replies from both believers and non-believers please.

I'd say having a child has not made us conform. Actually, it seems that the reverse is the case. We've really stopped bothering much about what people will think if we act a certain way. You'd have to ask my daughter what her experience of this is.

It's not intentional, but I often find myself bucking societal standards.
I don't drive [and I live in the suburbs, so that's pretty bizarre], I dropped out of college, I have no plans on having kids.

Oh, I don't drive either. Forgot that one.

Yes you see you do get it.
According to the Protestant idea of conformity, 'the right' people don't do the things we all regard as normal.
If I may use some personal experience here, I didn't think it odd that my kids didn't want to go to their school-leaving dances. I also didn't think it odd that they didn't play sport because they said it was stupid, although two of them did row (long boats) at school, but they didn't watch sports until the families of the women they became involved with got them to watch. But even then, when I'm around I sense a disdain for the habit of Saturday afternoon sport and Sunday 'braai."

On the genealogy thing, it seems that lineage is terribly important to these conformists. They want to be able to trace their families to the whatever settlers, or William the Conqueror or David or the Hapsburgs or something and they're shocked when I say that my ancestors probably couldn't write, or that they were just nobody and I don't care. To me what the hell difference does it make if your dad is the Prince of Atlantis, with five PhDs to his name, it's what you are and what you do that counts, and it only really counts to you.

On the home thing, my homes have always looked 'lived in' I don't live in a magazine, I have personal junk next to my favourite chair and my favourite books by my bed. I have my dogs' beds in the middle of the floor and they stay there all day if the dogs want to lie down and if visitors come, they have to put up with it, even if the dog does fart. It's their home!

On the morality thing. Middle-class protestants with their perfect jobs, perfect homes, and perfect children, don''t allow 'swearing' in their homes and they frown if people put their elbows on the table or eat with their hands. i like eating chips with my fingers and I like using a fork the way it's comfortable. I know how to hold a knife and fork, English-style, but I don't fuss when people of other ethnic origins sit at the table and pick up their food with their fingers, but I've heard the comments about "did you see them eating with their hands!"

On the school thing. We're allowed to home school except that in order to get into university, kids have to have achieved the standard required, but if I was raising children now, I'd home school most of the things they need to know and send them to school to get the government requirement, but then I did that anyway. I don't think kids, or adults need to conform to dress codes of their peers or their society, unless the dress code is part of a society they choose to join. If you take a job in an office, and the job requires a suit, then wear one. But if you like walking around nude inside your own home, that's great.

Reminds of a joke:

At the International Non-conformist Annual meeting, the chair asks: "Are all here non-conformists?"

A guy at the back raises his hand and answers: "No, I'm not."

If there's one thing that sends me over the edge, it's the phrase: "But it's always been tradition.... "

My mum's so middle class. She reads the Daily Mail and thinks all gay people are paedophiles. She's obessesd with how everything looks to the neighbours. I can barely stand to be in the same house as her. I take more after my (working-class) dad, but I'm in this awkward social stratum of not working enough for working-class, but not posh enough for middle-class..

Bookmarking for a possible future post...

I thought being middle class was just owning more than one type of olive oil. Reminds me of this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFfCF09NMo[/youtube]

Anyway, "middle class values" are always going to be a pretty vague concept. I think there are obviously parts of it that are very positive. I sometimes wish more working class people had the same emphasis on and respect for educational achievement. However, I also think that the sharp-elbowed obsession with giving their children every advantage is a negative thing. You often hear, "I just want the best for my kids." It sounds reasonable. It sounds like the most natural thing in the world. But when you actually break it down, what you're actually saying is that you want your child to have an advantage over other kids from the start. So you get middle class parents buying up all of the housing around a good school, or spending a fortune on private education (often at huge sacrifice to themselves, because these aren't the really rich people). And I think this can get to the level where that sort of pressure might be detrimental to the child's happiness, and is certainly detrimental to the kids whose parents can't afford all of these advantages.

I do think that middle class values tend to revolve around families and children. And I think it's largely a fairly successful set of values to adopt (parents getting involved with the school, for example), but you do get the odd stupid thing off the back of it. The insane obsession with safety. The whole "think of the children" line on all sorts of issues from censorship to vaccine scares to the internet, which can be extremely annoying to anyone who isn't a parent. And in terms of the clip I just posted, this tendency to be ultra competitive, constantly comparing yourself and more importantly your kids to others, and place a huge emphasis on the image you're giving off to others.

I'd be very interested to hear from people from the non-English nations though, because I suspect the culture is somewhat different, and the class definitions less clear.

I'm With Stupid wrote:I thought being middle class was just owning more than one type of olive oil. Reminds me of this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFfCF09NMo[/youtube]

Anyway, "middle class values" are always going to be a pretty vague concept. I think there are obviously parts of it that are very positive. I sometimes wish more working class people had the same emphasis on and respect for educational achievement. However, I also think that the sharp-elbowed obsession with giving their children every advantage is a negative thing. You often hear, "I just want the best for my kids." It sounds reasonable. It sounds like the most natural thing in the world. But when you actually break it down, what you're actually saying is that you want your child to have an advantage over other kids from the start. So you get middle class parents buying up all of the housing around a good school, or spending a fortune on private education (often at huge sacrifice to themselves, because these aren't the really rich people). And I think this can get to the level where that sort of pressure might be detrimental to the child's happiness, and is certainly detrimental to the kids whose parents can't afford all of these advantages.

The trouble is that the 'best' they want for their kids is not for the kids to be the next great scientist, the guy/girl who discovers a way through worm holes, but the next great plastic surgeon, or to get a job with the towns biggest accounting or law firm. They don't want their kids to spend years working for Green Peace or Medicins Sans Frontiers, that's not a real job. But if the kids do and they become famous then the parents get all "I know he/she's such a maverick!" and coy about it and make comments about how they couldn't bathe while they were in Africa and when they got home the first thing they did was get them to shave off the beard.

I do think that middle class values tend to revolve around families and children. And I think it's largely a fairly successful set of values to adopt (parents getting involved with the school, for example), but you do get the odd stupid thing off the back of it. The insane obsession with safety. The whole "think of the children" line on all sorts of issues from censorship to vaccine scares to the internet, which can be extremely annoying to anyone who isn't a parent. And in terms of the clip I just posted, this tendency to be ultra competitive, constantly comparing yourself and more importantly your kids to others, and place a huge emphasis on the image you're giving off to others.

Yes and the idea that "the internet" and television are bad for kids. They say stuff like: "I allow my kids to watch TV but I'd never let them have a TV/computer in the bedroom, they have to read books."

when my kids were growing up and I'd mention to other parents that they all had TVs and computers in their bedrooms and that I never went into their rooms or made their beds, they'd say "it's my house, I can go anywhere I like and if I don't make them clean their rooms, they'll never be able to live on their own!" Idiot, it's because you leave them alone to deal with their rooms themselves that they can live alone successfully. Their friends are more likely to make them want to clean their rooms than you are. If you leave the TV on documentary channels all day and have a vast library of non-fiction in your house, your kids are more likely to be stimulated into learning than if you make them read Moby Dick because "they should read the classics you know!" Agh! I just hate people like this.

I'd be very interested to hear from people from the non-English nations though, because I suspect the culture is somewhat different, and the class definitions less clear.

It's funny how we have two types of these people: they all send their kids to the most expensive school they can afford, then get the education I described above. They vote for the Democratic Alliance, and if they speak English, they all claim that their ancestors were 1820 settlers and they have British passports. They also have bank accounts in the UK that they use to pay for stuff they buy there and when they go on holiday and they use their retirement to go to stay with family there on holidays. They don't travel in the UK, or Europe, they stay with friends and family and if they do go anywhere, it's to a show in London. The Afrikaans-speaking ones, also vote for the DA now, they used to vote for the Nats. They believe that the ANC is going to tun the country into Zimbabwe so they claim roots in the Netherlands and they all want to go back there. Or they pack for Perth, or the Southern States of the USA. And they talk about 'black' people as 'green people' and use other euphemisms for how they're ruining the country. And all of these want the WC to fail so they can say that the country has been made to look like a failure because "they" can't do anything right. These people have "Black" and "Coloured" and "Indian" middle class friends who are the parents of the children their kids know from school, otherwise they are work colleagues but not people they would take on holiday with them. They think it's avante-garde for their kids to marry out of the race line but they don't socialise with the 'other' in-laws.

The working class are either very political and very left-wing ANC more PAC supporters or if they're white, they hope for a revival of the ultra Conservative Afrikaans parties. They refuse to mix the races, are horrified at the thought of their kids dating across the colour line.

Then you have the liberals, these are ex-hippies and their kids who love the ANC despite their corruption, who don't care about who's the next Miss SA or whether their friends think the WC is going to be a failure, they just love that SA is hosting it and they join in all the hype even if they don't like football very much. They don't notice what colour the guy next to them is and if their friends bring home a friend of another race, they don't make efforts to provide ethnically correct food, they feed them the same meal everyone else is eating. These people try to protect the environment but recycling (for real not pretend) or they don't recycle at all. They don't pretend about anything. They're either super-educated in the strangest subjects or work for themselves doing whatever job they're best at. When they travel they go to strange places like Macchu Picchu and carry only one bag that they stow in the plane with them. They drive old cars or they take taxis and they either get married or not, who cares!

Wiðercora wrote:My mum's so middle class. She reads the Daily Mail and thinks all gay people are paedophiles. She's obessesd with how everything looks to the neighbours. I can barely stand to be in the same house as her. I take more after my (working-class) dad, but I'm in this awkward social stratum of not working enough for working-class, but not posh enough for middle-class..

Our middle classes think it's very daring to have a gay friend that they introduce to their other friends as an oddity, and the gay friends are usually as middle class as they are. If their own kids are gay, they don't introduce the kids friends or talk about the kid being gay to their friends. They just pretend the kid isn't terribly interested in socialising and they usually send them off to live overseas.

I like people who aren't "posh enough for middle-class" and who dont "work enough for working class" they're my kind of people!

I'm With Stupid wrote:The whole "think of the children" line on all sorts of issues from censorship to vaccine scares to the internet, which can be extremely annoying to anyone who isn't a parent.

And to some of us who are, who had their kids stuck with hypodermics at the earliest opportunity, think that life nowadays is just as dangeours or safe as it's always been and understand that the internet can also be a valuable tool. Middle-class 'oh won't somebody think of the children!' types are also extremely annoying to many parents. And it's not just the middle-class ones either. The mother of a child in my daughter's class, who also has a 4 year old in pre-school, has kept her younger child off school (and in a pushchair at 4 years of age) 4 times this term already and we're only in the first half of it. The reason? 'She's quite tired, and also she cries when I take her in'. Well hellooo. That's because she knows that if she does so, you'll whisk her out of there before you can say 'I never let my kids play out the front'.

Fallible wrote:

I'm With Stupid wrote:The whole "think of the children" line on all sorts of issues from censorship to vaccine scares to the internet, which can be extremely annoying to anyone who isn't a parent.

And to some of us who are, who had their kids stuck with hypodermics at the earliest opportunity, think that life nowadays is just as dangeours or safe as it's always been and understand that the internet can also be a valuable tool. Middle-class 'oh won't somebody think of the children!' types are also extremely annoying to many parents. And it's not just the middle-class ones either. The mother of a child in my daughter's class, who also has a 4 year old in pre-school, has kept her younger child off school (and in a pushchair at 4 years of age) 4 times this term already and we're only in the first half of it. The reason? 'She's quite tired, and also she cries when I take her in'. Well hellooo. That's because she knows that if she does so, you'll whisk her out of there before you can say 'I never let my kids play out the front'.

Bloody idiot.I knew one who was still breast-feeding and sent her kid to nursery school with a bottle when she was 5.

She goes so far as to 'subtly' question my own parenting (and that of others), as though she can't manage to keep her stifling behaviour confined to her own two. She's constantly picking other parents apart for how their children are dressed, etc. I walk a mile to school with my daughter every morning and sometimes she wears a waterproof in case it rains. This was the case the other morning, and when we got to school my daughter took it off and gave it to me to take home. This woman pipes up 'oh, is she not taking her coat in?' Me - '...no'. Her - 'Oh...oh right..' Me - '..?' Her- 'my Jonny says they're not allowed out to play if it rains and they don't have a coat.' Me - 'oh, right.' There followed a 30-second silence during which she seemed to expect me to call my child back and give her her coat. I ignored her out of sheer bloody-mindedness. The fact is no child is allowed outside to play if it's raining, coat or no coat. Keep your molly-coddling to your own brats, thanks.

Fallible wrote:She goes so far as to 'subtly' question my own parenting (and that of others), as though she can't manage to keep her stifling behaviour confined to her own two. She's constantly picking other parents apart for how their children are dressed, etc. I walk a mile to school with my daughter every morning and sometimes she wears a waterproof in case it rains. This was the case the other morning, and when we got to school my daughter took it off and gave it to me to take home. This woman pipes up 'oh, is she not taking her coat in?' Me - '...no'. Her - 'Oh...oh right..' Me - '..?' Her- 'my Jonny says they're not allowed out to play if it rains and they don't have a coat.' Me - 'oh, right.' There followed a 30-second silence during which she seemed to expect me to call my child back and give her her coat. I ignored her out of sheer bloody-mindedness. The fact is no child is allowed outside to play if it's raining, coat or no coat. Keep your molly-coddling to your own brats, thanks.

She's an idiot. I would do the same thing, just out of 'bloody-mindedness'

One "middle-class value" that's always particularly annoyed me is the irrational obsession with lawns and the apparent fact that they absolutely need to be short and uniform at all times otherwise THE NEIGHBORS WILL SEE (ZOMG ). And the the entire idea of "weeds". I mean, I pull out thistles and stuff 'cause they hurt and all that, but some plants that people have randomly decided are undesirable look just fine to my eyes.

Chrysostomus wrote:One "middle-class value" that's always particularly annoyed me is the irrational obsession with lawns and the apparent fact that they absolutely need to be short and uniform at all times otherwise THE NEIGHBORS WILL SEE (ZOMG ). And the the entire idea of "weeds". I mean, I pull out thistles and stuff 'cause they hurt and all that, but some plants that people have randomly decided are undesirable look just fine to my eyes.

This one particularly anal couple that I know have perfect lawns always. They plant them and then weed as they plant and they employ people to go down on hands and knees to remove weeds and if they can't get help they do it themselves. The feeding of the lawn and it's perfection is a major part of the daily house maintenance. For me, a garden service mowing twice a month does it, weeds and all, as long as it's green I don't care. These people honestly care that the neighbours and everyone who goes to their house admires the perfection of the garden, bitch that I am, I look for something wrong and point it out.