How can Kate Middleton be middle class?

Question

I heard she came from a privileged background. So it means even if you are a billionaire in UK but you aren't an Aristocrat then you are still middle class?

Answer 1

Jillot has summed it up really, in the UK you are born into your class. Class in the modern sense is seen as the ideals and morals installed in you as you grow up and this can be dramatically different depending on your social circle. It cannot be changed, its part of who you are.

Kate's parents are working class and were an airline pilot, and an air stewardess. They didn't even start the business that made them millionaires until Kate was 5 meaning that for most of her childhood Kate would have been brought up in a working class environment. It was the money allowed them to give Kate a good education where she would mix with the elite and pick up the habits of the upper-classes. Thus leaving her not quite a member of either class.

Answer 2

Actually, I know many "middle class" Americans who would be considered "privileged."  

Answer 3

In the UK, class depends on your background as much or more than how much money you have.  It is possible to be upper class and be poor, and to be middle class and wealthy.  

I personally don't see it as any worse to judge someone's class by their background than by their wealth.  That there should be any classes at all is inherently unfair, but life is unfair.  There is a great deal of overlap between the classes nowadays, so I don't really think it matters all that much.

I see no particular virtue in considering someone as upper class simply because they are rich, any more than there is in considering someone as upper class because of the family they were born into.  Both systems are unfair, but that's life.  

However, it is not true that people cannot move from one class to another.  In 'Emma' by Jane Austen, for example, written at a time when the class system was far more significant in English life than it is now, we have the example of Mr Weston, who has been in trade, but who has purchased a modest estate and is now moving on equal terms with the upper class families of Highbury.  Likewise in 'pride and Prejudice', the Bingleys have made their fortune in trade, but they are now living on equal terms with the haughty Mr Darcy.  And indeed Mrs Bennett (although she is not the happiest of examples) comes from a middle-class background, but has married the upper-class Mr Bennett.

It was possible even in that very strongly class-conscious age, for a person to move from one class to another.

Answer 4

The British class system is totally undemocratic - in that you cannot move from the middle class to the Upper Class or Aristocracy. That right is reserved for those born into it -that is how it managed to survive for so long. It is only recently that the house of Lords - the upper house of government, was changed to allow 'life peers' or Lords who had been made a Lord because of their acheivements rather than their birth, to sit and make laws. Previously it was full of aristocrats who had done nothing more than been born to the right parents!

So Ket Middleton, whose parents are self made millionaires through business achievements will never be considered Upper Class or Aristocratic, though her children will if she married William. Crazy system! (and entirely undemocratic!)

Answer 5

It has nothing to do with money.

Before her parents were wealthy, her father was an airline pilot and her mother a flight attendant.

Answer 6

"Upper class" in Britain still generally means titled.  It's synonymous with "nobility."  Money does not by nobility.  So yes, billionaires are still commoners, which could be called middle class (although more often I see "commoner" used).

Answer 7

There are multiple "Aristocracies" of looks, wealth, power, talent, as well as social position. Elizabeth Hurley, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdock, and Anthony Hopkins are "Aristocrats" by Merit, just as the Prince of Wales is an Aristocrat by Birth. (It is a hopelessly middle class point of view to suggest that Merit is somehow a more ethically rigourous basis for advancement).

The Upper Class are actually a tiny number of super-rich titled international jet-setters, plus a slightly larger number of titled inbred inter-marrying pot-headed "Trustafarians", without gainful employment, living off the last generation of Trust Funds, who sustains a Notting Hill-centric Cannabis lifestyle.

If you have money to burn, and you think it is an appropriate use of your vast wealth, your children could become Upper Class if they are educated at the right boarding schools, and you buy the right Money Pit to live in.

They will of course be embarrassed by (in no particular order); your background, family, table manners, pronunciation, consumption pattern, clothing, choice of holiday location, etc. You will be teh butt of snippy little comments about being without style, and new-money. They will cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to maintain in a style to which they have become accustomed; and give you precisely nothing in return.

I'm having trouble thinking of an appropriate descriptor which isn't "parasite". Most multi-millionaires aren't impressed enough by a social system to want that much resentment from their children.

It is incredibly difficult to become a traditional Aristocrat as in "titled monied and landed", because it is a mindset derived from upbringing. You can marry into the Aristocracy, but this tends to be posh girls marrying multi-millionaires (to keep up the Country Estate going for another generation), and the posh blokes marrying pretty girls (good breeding stock). Kate Middleton may fall into this catagory.