Who wants social mobility?

A group of professional women will be eating cakes, showing off their toddlers and discussing whether their progeny are watching too much TV.

"It's OK to let them watch a bit," the group will agree. "It's the ones that dump them in front of telly on all day and never read to them that have got the problem."

Whether the subject was cooking meals or having swimming lessons, I found the group, in the nicest possible way, would find solace in being better than those of a lower social class.

I was always taken aback by this, not least because one of the many thing I enjoyed about being a mother was feeling solidarity with women from different social backgrounds.

I felt very moved in hospital, on the bus, in the baby clinic to notice that whatever our class and culture, us mums were all feeling that same tiger-like love towards our young.
We would look each other in the eye and smile in what I experienced as warm recognition.

It was only in the exclusively middle class gatherings that the civilised hostility came to the fore.

Given that, I wonder how much most well-educated people on good incomes really want the divide between the rich and the poor to narrow.

Do those with something to lose really want justice and social equality or do such things fade into ignorable grey concepts in the face of the red-blooded urge for their own kids to stay ahead?