Abstract
The present article focuses upon the much-neglected topic of white working class youth — the children of “another other America.” Based upon the available literature as well as upon a recent program of ethnographic research, the institutional settings — community, family, school — within which working class youth grow up are examined with particular emphasis on their climate and values. Attention is paid to the heterogeneity contained within this segment of the population pointing to four distinct types: collegians, greasers, hippies, and those encapsulated in family life. The article points to factors that promote a potential increase in residential social class homogeneity that, in turn, promotes class values, social and personal expectations, and modal relationships that increasingly diverge from the norms of an urban-industrial middle class society and that in considerable measure either contribute to a growing conservative alienation from the larger society or make adjustments to that society more problematic for its youth. The emergent picture of white working youth in part resembles that of youth in general, but in a more significant measure is much different from that found in either higher or lower social strata.
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This research was supported by USPHS-NIH Contract 70-511 and USPHS-NICHD Grant No. 04156.
Received Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Research interests include post childhood socialization, social change and deviance, and urban social studies.
Received Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Main research interest is social change and deviance.
Candidate for Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. Main research interests are social stratification, youth, and social change in an industrial society.
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Simon, W., Gagnon, J.H. & Buff, S.A. Son of joe: Continuity and change among white working class adolescents. J Youth Adolescence 1, 13–34 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01537062
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01537062