When I started to understand that some people lived different lives! When did you know and what opened your eyes?

I remember watching Tv and films as a child and wondering why my parents didn't go to glamourous nightclubs, why we didn't have a big house and a nanny like families on TV did. I think my realisation that some people's lives are very different was a slow one.
When I went away to study I got my place despite the 'girls from where I live often leave due to being homesick' (I was a 30 train ride away) and also being told to lose my accent as it would put people off!

Kate1949,

I was twelve or thirteen when I realised something about my life was wrong, but until I was told the truth at fourteen I didn't realise that mum wasn't really my mother. Everything changed for me then.

foxie48

First names and I could always tell by the tone if they were angry with each other. Not a happy marriage, I'm afraid, but although my mother was one of the few in our road who worked, she stayed in the marriage as in deed did most women.

Mine called each other Mum and Dad! I never thought it was odd; obviously I knew their names because they both had siblings and friends who called them by their first names. 🙂

I grew up in a two up two down terrace in a rather poor area. No bathroom, outside toilet, no garden. My father didn’t earn much and though we ate well, we didn’t have much in the way of ‘mod cons’. A new girl came to our junior school and we formed a friendship. I walked home with her one day and saw that they lived in the only detached house in the area, and my goodness it was like a palace. A beautiful house with a bathroom with a coloured suite and gold taps, separate toilet, central heating and a separate dining room. And they had a fridge! We had a pantry with a marble slab to keep things cold. This in the late fifties and I had never seen such luxury. Her father owned his own wholesaling business and they were doing so well they used to go cruising every year! It was the cruising that made me realise what a different world they lived in. She used to show me the menus of what they ate on board. Her parents were lovely people, very welcoming and down to earth. We stayed friends, even after we left school, for a while.

Like Nanna8 I was bought up in London, 20 minutes to Marble Arch on the bus. My family was non conformist and life centred around the church. It was a big congregation in the 50s and 60s and included all kinds of people living in very differing circumstances. This included what is now called the Windrush generation. I was in and out of all kinds of homes from a small child.
My father was a professional person and my parents led a sort of double life. One minute the church kitchen making tea the next a dinner dance at well known London hotels. I realised years later that everything we did was on a shoestring, my mother used a discreet second hand clothes shop and made all our clothes. I know at one point she was offered an office job but my father said no. I was also blessed with a few unmarried aunts and they helped my mother with us, I observed their lives which were hard, society at large didn’t treat them well. It was a very different life.

Right from early childhood when I was taught by my parents not to comment if I saw a child at school wearing my or my sister's outgrown clothes. These went to the local church and were tactfully redistributed where they were needed.

PS no we weren't rich or even comfortably off but we had much more than some of my school fellows.

I was brought up in a council house in a one-parent family. Money was always tight. I first realised that others lived different lives when I went to Grammar school. Many girls (it was an all-girls school) could afford to go on school trips and had parents who owned cars! But the biggest realisation that some people were wealthy was when my DH and I (when we were 18 years of age and 'courting') were invited to the home of a member of my husband's rugby union team - it was a gorgeous Georgian detached Manor House with a huge garden, complete with gun dogs kept in an outside kennel. Another team mate held a party in his home which had a swimming pool in the garden. It was just another world - and I couldn't believe that people who lived in such houses could be so ordinary and nice!

I have known ever since I could understand stories. My parents never let me forget how comparatively fortunate I was , as did a lot of the children's stories I borrowed from the local public library.

My upbringing was in an army family with many moves, and no chance for lasting friendships, until we went to Germany when I was 11, for 6 years. I went to 2 Boarding and one British day school during that time but my best friend was German, whom I’ve sadly lost touch with. They had a lovely flat and no siblings at home, so it was an oasis of peace from my chaotic family.

I also stayed with a school friend occasionally and what an eye opener as her father was a Group Captain in charge of an RAF base, and they had an E Type jag we went riding and to Mess dinners with wine. This was mind boggling to a child like me from a working class background. I learned quickly how the other half live.

Secondary school for me. We were lower middle class, my dad working on the railway and my mum a cook until she married; after that a housewife with three children. I went to a girls' private school on an old LCC scholarship, but didn't really understand what that was. The other girls had fathers who were doctors or solicitors or MPs and lived in much nicer houses than our railwayman's flat at Clapham Junction. University was another eye-opener about how the other half lived. But I live like that that myself now. Well, not with manor houses and nannies and ponies but now solidly professional middle class.

I was brought up in a terraced slum in Birkenhead. No bathroom, outside toilet in the back yard, no hot water. As a child you don't notice but I went to a convent grammar school, many of my classmates came from better off homes I was the only one living in a slum area. But my parent were Irish and were never offered a new council house even when we all except my dad got TB 6 of us living in a 2 bedroom house. But my mum was a saver and made sure we all spent summers in her home village on an island off the west coast of Ireland. We were so lucky to have this fresh sea air and freedom for 6 weeks, and the adventure getting there! Many kids in my area were lucky to have a bus ride to the local seashore. The good old days mmmm!

Whiff, I’m so sad to read your post. You’ve had such a tough life. I just want to say how sorry I am you’ve been through all that. Life can be so unfair 💐

We were bought up by a divorced mother with no financial help from our father, and things were tight although I wasn’t particularly aware at the time. My sister and I made friends with another girl who had a horse and lived in a huge house at the expensive end of our village. We were there one day at lunch time and she got a whole cooked chicken out of the fridge and told us to help ourselves. I can still remember the astonishment of a. having a fridge, b. having a roast chicken to eat at will when a chicken was a very rare treat. They were a lovely family and didn’t look down on us slightly scruffy and constantly hungry children, and we stayed friends for a long time.

Whiff. Well done to you for your strength and perseverance.

Greyduster
I had relatives that lived like that. The only difference being, they were crooks 😂

As a child I always lived a divided existence without understanding why. My parents constantly rowed about money and I was often told no you cant have that because there isnt the money. On the other hand I had cousins who had "new" clothes while mine were second hand from the LIverpool market. When I visited my grandmother she lived in a detached house full of Victorian furniture (which I later inherited) and we had high tea with cream cakes and china cups.

Once I left my parents home I gradually transitioned into the middle class life and spending habits of a young professional and aquired the required cultural capital to pass among my peers.

My biggest culture shock (apart from journeys to third world countries) were when I gave up my professional job to go to university. I found myself in a council flat on one of the toughest estates in Manchester (now demolished) and surrounded by what are now called the underclass. Its fair to say that in 1980s Manchester many of the people who lived there had simply dropped out of mainsteam life and existed on a combination of benefit and begging. Drug dealing and crime were rife. It was a real eye opener. I can remember one neighbour saying scornfully "So you PAY rent?"

I do not know where the other inhabitants went to when the estate was demolished. I was offered a flat in a HA where I lived until I completed my doctorate..

I am the opposite of everyone so far! I had a wonderful early life, two wonderful, loving good-looking parents and an elder sibling. We holidayed abroad (1950's) and used to fly to France putting the car onto the 'plane. Holidays all over Europe as my parents loved travel. I had everything a child could desire until... MS struck my poor father and over a few years, our lives changed dramatically as my father was unable to run his business. My mother had quite suddenly to learn to drive and previously, 'just' a housewife, had to take over and run the business but it became too much for her.

Foreign holidays stopped, in fact most holidays stopped! For the very first time in my teens, I was aware of my mother watching how money was spent and can remember requesting a new pair of tights and being asked why I couldn't wear socks, not what a young teenage girl wants to hear. Life must have been horrendous for my parents, watching his health and their lives disintegrate but as a teenage girl, I only cared about my new clothes (or lack of them) etc. I cringe now. It was difficult to keep up with friends who were forever going on trips or buying new 'stuff'.

However, in a way, this experience did me good as I soon understood the value of good health and championed the disabled, valued what I did have and became less shallow.

Life became good again but I never forget what ill health can do to a family so to a degree I do know how the other half lives..

This is a most enjoyable thread. Thank you to all posters

I was brought up very poor in the sixties and certainly lived in an area that was not very nice. At school I didn’t really compare myself to others much until I was of an age to visit other children’s homes. The difference was striking. They had their OWN bedrooms and a real bathroom. Nice furniture and nice clothes and their parents seemed happy. I was brought up in a caravan from the age of seven, a rather cramped and shabby affair with no proper facilities. My parents rubbed along but money was mostly tight and my father, a difficult character, suffered from what I now think were deep depressive episodes where he wouldn’t work much. There were few benefits in those days and my parents didn’t claim what there was anyway. My mother kept the family together although she was often depressed too. The contrast between the happy, stable homes my friends mostly had, and my own left a lasting impression on me and has induced a well hidden (I hope!) sense of inferiority which I have felt all my life.

I was brought in a middle class family, father was a bank clerk and my mother didn’t work but did lots of voluntary church work. I realise now that there wasn’t much money available when we were small.But I had a very happy childhood in a large freezing cold house with plenty of homemade food and loving parents .When I went to grammar school a lot of the other girls were mainly from dockers families as we lived not far from the London docks. We had simple holidays in the UK but I loved them and have wonderful memories. I do remember coming home with a form to go on a school holiday trip and my father told me that if I went, there would be no holiday for the rest of the family. I didn’t go but all the girls from the docker’s families went !

Until I went to grammar school I had never met anyone who lived in a big, detached house. There it seemed everyone did. And it was only my Mum who went to bingo. Everyone at my new school seemed posh so I tried to disguise my country accent. I don't think I cared much about the difference between me and them. It was just an eye-opener but I was never ashamed or envious.

Whiff, you are right, your bullies most probably won't have missed one minute of sleep over tormenting you. Best to cut them out of your memory if you possibly can. Why children are so cruel, I will never understand.

I am very pleased that you now have a diagnosis - you have the last laugh on those hurtful ignorant children (who were probably jealous of you as you were cleverer or prettier than them!).

In primary school I went to my friends house for tea, I assumed they were very posh / wealthy, because her parents kept referring to the ' salt cellar' I really wanted to go and see it but dare' nt ask - just as well really!!