Children On The Way To Youth

It is only recently that much research has been done that is relevant to the latent role of social class in peer groups. For the working class in particular, youth sub-cultures provide chances to break the weak links in the socialization process in the family or the schools and, therefore, to create discontinuities in the transmission of culture to the next generation.

Within the constraints of time and money working-class boys strive during their brief adolescence to fulfill their longing to be the daring, tough and fun-loving men that they see as the ideal for males. Within the space, by convention still somewhat more restricted, available to them girls try to create a style that will win them their man and found a secure family of procreation.

Ironically, the attempt to create discontinuity often does little more than overemphasize characteristics of the culture of the older generation and, even if a small measure of discontinuity is achieved, this is a temporary situation that works to ease later movement of the younger generation into its inevitable position as the next parental generation.

By the stage of adolescence it may well be that the social class of aspiration rather than that of origin largely influences behavior. The adolescence group can be divided into three sub-groups: the 'middle class', the 'working class' and the 'rebels'. Each group had very different attitudes, learnt at home and at school, which governed their response to their environment and particularly the sort of life to which they aspired. Members of each category seemed to have a different style of leisure activity. Those with middle-class aspirations had a best friend who more often lived outside and expected to marry later than those in the other two categories. The 'rebels' had low occupational aspirations, related more closely to the local area, and were more approving than the other adolescents of fighting. Some young people, however, may not be deeply involved in any of these local sub-cultures and they are more likely to opt for official youth clubs or for some aspects of the commercially provided national teenage culture.

Middle-class youth sub-cultures seem more diffuse and individualistic and, hence, less centered in well-articulated groups. Many hobbies, particularly those attractive to middle-class youth, are of a type that can be practiced alone or with close friends rather than in peer groups. When middle-class youths do join groups they are more likely to become members of such approved groups as Scouts or Guides.

Just as much expected behavior may differ by social class, so may misbehavior, and the very different social situations of the social classes do seem to result in differing types of deviance. Stealing and pilfering are quite usual activities in a working-class area, though adolescents are fully aware that this behavior is seen to be wrong by those with authority. The deviant behavior of middle-class adolescents is more often associated with the two characteristic differences in their structural position, namely their greater wealth - for example drug taking; and their lengthier exposure to the educational system - for example 'dropping out'. Similar arguments can be used to explain the fact that most politically radical students have been middle-class. In all these cases, whether amongst the working or middle class, such deviance is seen by agents of respectability as part of the current crisis in authority and, since youth is seen in this respect as the source of possible social breakdown, repression is often felt necessary.

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