The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages
Jessi Streib
Abstract
This book advances the notion that intimate life—marriage and ideas of how to best live—is closely linked to the class in which individuals were raised. Arguing against the notion that class is a meaningless category or that college degrees erase childhood inequalities, this book describes the ways that the class of individuals’ past influences their identities and marriages. Drawing on interview data, the book reveals that not only are adults’ class origins linked to their ideas of who is a desirable spouse, but class origin is also tied to ideas of how to use money, attend to work, engage in ... More
This book advances the notion that intimate life—marriage and ideas of how to best live—is closely linked to the class in which individuals were raised. Arguing against the notion that class is a meaningless category or that college degrees erase childhood inequalities, this book describes the ways that the class of individuals’ past influences their identities and marriages. Drawing on interview data, the book reveals that not only are adults’ class origins linked to their ideas of who is a desirable spouse, but class origin is also tied to ideas of how to use money, attend to work, engage in leisure, organize time, divide household duties, raise children, and express emotions. Couples in which each partner was raised in a different class must then contend with their different ideas of how to live—ideas that they rarely realize are related to the class of their past.
Keywords:
blue-collar,
class,
culture,
different-origin marriages,
interview,
laissez-faire,
managerial,
marriage,
upward mobility,
white-collar
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199364428 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199364428.001.0001 |
