TBR: Fear of Falling
Today’s book, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, by Barbara Ehrenreich was published in 1989. I picked it up because I read a reference somewhere that made me think that Ehrenreich might have made the connection I’ve been trying to draw between high-intensivity parenting and the increasingly competitive economy.
Ehrenreich does argue that middle class parents are highly insecure about their ability to pass their class status on to their children, but doesn’t really go with it in the direction that I’m interested. Rather, she suggests that middle-class status is largely a function of the willingness to defer gratification, whether in the form of extended education and low-paid entry level jobs or in the form of the savings needed for homeownership. Parents are anxious because there is little they can do to assure these values among their children. Ehrenreich argues that this is why the 60s were so unsettling to middle class adults — their children were rejecting the very values that made them middle class.
While the book made some interesting points, overall, it was so dated as to be of little interest. Fundamentally, Ehrenreich is trying to explain the shift to the right of American politics in the 1980s. She rejects the idea that it was due to a significant shift of the working class (the Reagan Democrats) and argues instead that it’s because the upper middle class chose to identify with the upper class corporate elite, rather than joining in solidarity with the middle and working class. I find that an unconvincing argument.
I also think it’s absurd to talk about the increased appeal of investment banking and law to college graduates in terms of an ideological shift without any acknowledgment of the increased burden of student loan debt. And as a Gen X-er myself, I found myself irritated by her idealization of the 60s without any acknowledgment that the boomers didn’t exactly live up to their youthful promises to build an egalitarian society. Ehrenreich also discusses the middle-class "discovery" of poverty in the 60s without any mention of the role that poor people played in the war on poverty.
So, I can’t recommend the book. But I don’t regret taking the time to read it. I found parts of it very interesting, especially the discussion of how the media hyped the idea that blue collar workers were opposed to the social activism of the 60s, and downplayed the role of unions in progressive coalitions.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
That book is on my shelf, one of the few books I own that I haven’t read, and I haven’t read it for the dated issue you mention. I just started her newest book about collective joy today though, and am really, seriously enjoying it so far.
Thanks for the article link, too!
January 16th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
I agree that the increasingly competitive economy and the loss of the security that previously was found in life-long slogs up the career ladder contribute to the heightened level of anxiety in parenting these days. Another important factor, though, is the media saturation we are all subject to – we hear every bad thing that happens, see traumatic video footage over and over, are privy to every detail of kidnappings, molestations and assaults on children – not to mention 9/11 and the everyday occurrences of war, starvation, and terror. The illusion of safety just can’t withstand that kind of assault and we haven’t figured out how to parent without it.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:07 am
I’m not going to read this book, and Thanks! for reading it for me. The Fear of Falling concept, it seems to me, is very useful: people’s worries can well drive their actions, even in directions which seem opposed to their economic interests. I posted a couple of times at your http://www.halfchangedworld.com/2006/09/tbr_the_great_r.html Great Risk Shift post about how lightning can strike even a middle-upper-middle family. ‘Passing on class status’ is an interesting formulation – I do want my kids to have the diligence, education, deferred-gratification habits which I think can protect them from want after I am gone, and am not sure how best to inculcate. Does this drive my politics? I am at least irritated at floppy-nostrum school theories displacing rigor in their education, and I look at proposed public programs to see if the incentives go in the wrong direction for the wealth and adaptability of the culture.
Anna – I started reading the San Francisco Chronicle in the late 50s and I remember what seemed to be an unending string of axe murders reported from Georgia, and the long appeals battle of Caryl Chessman to escape execution. So the world seemed pretty violent and worrisome to 8-year-old me, I don’t think this is new.
January 19th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Yes, but the fact that you remember the names and details from the late 50’s, to me, actually proves my point. I don’t think an eight year old learning to read right now will carry the same specificity into adulthood. When you were growing up, there were no live police chases, no 24 hour cable news, no beheadings a mouse click away, no hangings brought to you by cell phone. The delivery of negative news and information is vastly different now, in its immediacy (check it out on You Tube!), and its inescapability. You remember the incidents in the 50s because they stood out. Now, nothing stands out in the long traumatic blur.
January 20th, 2007 at 6:59 am
More on middle-class anxiety: in my neighborhood, an ordinary-ordinary house costs $600000. So, someone who wants to live here – it’s a nice place, but not on anyone’s list of most posh – think about a couple of people who want to live here with children, and each goes to college and grad school for couple-three years and gets into some sort of appropriate employment and they save like crazy for a ten per cent down payment. They worry that they will never get into a house if they have children too early and start the endless day care payments or one not working. And, bang! they get their dream house and start to try and have kids but they are 37 and it doesn’t work. Deferred gratification comes back to bite you. So your description of Ehrenreich’s take on middle class values seems right on to me, but the result can well be that there are no children to whom to try and pass them on.
My kids have a number of friends at school who are onlies, and whose parents seem wistful when they see larger families, so this makes me more confident in this just-so tale of middle class woe.
January 21st, 2007 at 7:49 am
Althouse posted on Hillary Clinton’s announcement at http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/01/analyzing-text-of-hillary-clintons.html#comments and pointed out: “1. “Basic bargain” seems to be her key slogan:
[I]t is time to renew the promise of America. Our basic bargain that no matter who you are or where you live, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can build a good life for yourself and your family.
I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America, and we believed in that promise.
I still do. I’ve spent my entire life trying to make good on it.
Whether it was fighting for women’s basic rights or childrens’ basic health care. Protecting our Social Security, or protecting our soldiers. It’s a kind of basic bargain, and we’ve got to keep up our end.
The repetition of “basic” jumped out at me. The phrase “basic bargain” appears twice, and “basic” reappears, connected to women’s rights and children’s health care. The idea of a bargain repeats in the word “promise,” which is used twice, and the phrases “make good on it” and “keep up our end.” So what is going on here? I’m sure these words were very carefully chosen. I think the “bargain” idea is a way demonstrate a commitment to social welfare policies without appearing to support handouts. People have to “work hard and play by the rules” and they have to have the right goal: to “build a good life.” These are middle-class values for Middle America, you’re supposed to see…”
and this seems to me to tie in very nicely with the anxiety about middle class values – are they rewarded? How to we keep them advantageous? Maybe nobody else needs to read Ehrenreich, but it looks like Hillary may have!