A bold question.

Maybe being a "Trad" is more to do with your Grandfather than your Father?

- Or trying to work your way towards the Father/Grandfather you'd wished you'd had?

We really need a "Trad" to help us here.

J.

My father (City of London Accountant, Property investor) was an English "Trad" and so is my younger brother (London Solicitor).

Same clothes to my eye, same world view too.

And yet...

There is a difference in class between them somehow.

And I've dropped even further in class by being such a scumbag too...

My family is heading down. Yours?

J.

I speculate that he who tries to imitate the "Trad" lifestyle is it is portrayed hereabouts would remain the same class regardless of what he did superficially.

However, if living the lifestyle meant checking the OPH boxes with his children (ie sending them away to school, lessons in all the 'appropriate' sports and avocations) maybe they would in fact end up having friends from different classes.  However, this would 1) be rather Pavlovian and 2) wouldn't be guaranteed to work, as they might refuse to comply with one's pre-determined criteria for how they will speak, eat, dress, and live, and run away from you, thereby leaving their class entirely to chance.  It would be most likely to work, I think, at least aesthetically, if they saw the parent as a role model and made "OPH" type choices not to please you but in order to imitate you.  But I think this would require an investment in the wardrobe and the proposed lifestyle that was far less shallow than the mere urge to function as a role model for your children to advance a class and was rather based on a legitimate desire to learn and be good at living various aspects of an "OPH" lifestyle for their own sake. IE not being good at it but really wanting to learn sailing, so buying the boat, taking the lessons, being shitty at it but the kids come out with you and then they decide independently to take lessons when they are young and so its natural to them just as it is NOT to you.

Hopefully nobody on AAAT actually tries to "OPH" their children.

The upshot of the above is that moving classes takes several generations, I would think, of learning behaviors different than that of those who came before you, whether these be of higher or lower status than your forbears had.

Last edited by Coolidge (2008-03-26 12:24:48)

Horace, 
I keep reading over here how the AAAT trads are obsessed with class.  It is the bastards, not the trads that have that obsession.  Anyway, in the US cash trumps class so who cares.

For the Trad who wants to aspire to the days of yore, behold this from our friends on the 'Bay

http://cgi.ebay.com/1960s-YALE-UNIVERSITY-total-trad-BLUE-FLANNEL-BLAZER-42_W0QQitemZ380010802734QQihZ025QQcategoryZ3002QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

My kid is not being OPHed.  His war cry is "I hate shirts with buttons and collars!"

My own class standing is something I've never been able to figure out.  My dad was an upper-middle WASP, my Irish Army brat mom very lower-middle.  She was a bright, vivacious, and strikingly beautiful young woman.  We lived well and stylishly while dad was alive.  After he died, we ran out of dough.  Mom got eccentric, staying up for days on end, wearing the same Neil Diamond t-shirt and sweat pants, chain smoking and doing crosswords.  Our lifestyle changed dramatically.  She earned a master's degree and became a teacher and guidance counselor.  She made very little money.

I went to fancy pants schools, but on scholarship.  My friends were rich.  I felt comfortable in their world, but had anxiety about my reduced means.  I now have a semi-glamorous, cushy job in "the arts" and make no money.  Married a Jewish girl who fled Russia with her family in the early 80s.  They were penniless.  She also went to fancy pants schools (we met at one) on scholarships.

What class am I?  What class is my kid?  I dunno.  Maybe that's part of the reason class is such a sticky subject in the US--families here are so heterogeneous and circumstances so variable that it's hard to tell where you stand.