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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I find the butter discussion fascinating! I had no idea that you are not supposed to butter your whole piece of bread :)[/quote]

Really? You are either young (under 35) or not raised UMC.[/quote]

Not that poster, but I'm 36, and my Dad was a law firm partner, so we were comfortably upper middle class. And yet I butter my bread wrong. If I ever heard of it before, I've totally forgotten. Maybe people have been secretly judging me all this time. Oh well. Frankly I think the focus on etiquette as a marker of class may be somewhat regional. My DH's family can be weird and formal about stuff like that even though in many respects they are far more working class than my family. But they are from up North. I'm from the South, and people don't generally focus on formalities as a sign of class status. Politeness and chivalry are a pretty big deal, but politeness is judged by how you relate to others, not table manners and knowing where to put a spoon.[/quote]

It may be regional, but I think you're from a different part of the South than I am.  My southern family was not rich, but very focused on table manners (including the bread/butter thing), and formalities as a sign of class status. It was drilled into us.  [/quote]

Yes, this is true.

My DH was raised very wealthy in the posh suburbs of NYC and his table manners are atrocious.  He eats fast and finishes before everyone, holds his spoon in a babylike way sometimes, and [b]eats "Continental" because it is "more efficient."  True but he does not need to be any more efficient.  He will also walk out ahead of me unless he's thinking about it, and I'm not a dawdler.[/b]

I have come to accept most of it but wish his parents had taught him better manners so he didn't have to be so conscious to remember to eat slowly and walk beside other people.  By the time you send them off to college, this stuff ought to be automatic.  It makes everything so much easier when manners are just there instead of having to try and remember them all the time.[/quote]

Just out of interest, I'm from the UK and so I eat "Continental" style (which I assume means knife in one hand, fork in the other, cutting and eating as you go?) Is this style of eating considered lower class or bad manners in the US? I'm not planning to change, just interested!  Where I'm from, I'd say the US style is considered either bad manners or, if the person doing it is American, then it would be excused as "American", but still not considered the proper way to eat. Interesting, I think, because I think it highlights that the really important aspects of class and manners are in how to treat other people, and that is probably international and universal, although there are differences as to what is considered courteous and polite in different cultures. But table manners are very cultural - e.g. the way one would eat in Japan and appropriate table manners are very different to those in Europe and the US[/quote]

It would depend.  In an area like Washington, people would just assume you did not grow up in America and are using your native manner of doing things.  Perfectly fine.  If you were American doing it I think it would just be considered unusual and/or an affectation.  This style of eating as far as I know is not associated with the lower class in the US, nor is it necessarily considered bad manners--just not the right manners for an American.[/quote]

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