Some Social Trends

Apart from the help of fellow members of the DPU Group and its advisors, I am also indebted to my colleagues at the Institute of Community Studies, particularly Richard Mills, Michael Young and Sheila Yeatman. Useful comments on earlier drafts of the paper were made by Herbert Gans, David Grove and Phyllis Willmott.

In Britain Revisited ( Gollancz , 1961) Tom Harrisson describes his impression, in comparing the Bolton of I960 with that of 1936, of how much 'unchange' was mixed with 'change', pp. 25-45.

Guy Routh , Occupation and Pay in Great Britain I906-I960, Cambridge University Press, 1965; see especially Table i, pp. 4-5.

Occupational Changes I95I-I96I, Manpower Studies No. 6, H.M.S.O., 1967.

The American experience so far seems to suggest that the likely effects of automation have been exaggerated. See Daniel Bell in 'Towards the Year 2000: Work in Progress', Daedalus, Summer, 1967, p. 676, particularly the reference to the President's Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress.

D. V. Glass (Editor), Social Mobility in Britain , Routledge, 1954.

Ibid., p. 188.

S.M. Lipset and R. Bendix , Social Mobility in Industrial Society, Heinemann , 1959, pp. 33-38.

P.M. Blau and O.D. Duncan , The American Occupational Structure, John Wiley , 1967, p. 424.

P.R. Kaim-Caudle , 'Selectivity and the Social Services', Lloyds Bank Review, April 1969, pp. 28-29.

Higher Education, H.M.S.O., 1963, Appendix I, p. 54.

J.E. Meade , Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property, Allen and Unwin, 1964, p. 27.

Guy Routh , op. cit., Chapter II.

J.L. Nicholson , Redistribution of Income in the United Kingdom in I959, I957 and I963, Bowes and Bowes, 1964. See also John Hughes , 'The Increase in Inequality', New Statesman, 8 November 1968.

Richard M. Titmuss , Income Distribution and Social Change , Allen and Unwin, 1962, Chapter 8.

W.G. Runciman , reviewing changes in class, status and power in Britain from 1918 to 1962 concluded that 'inequality of status (i.e. prestige) was diminishing'. Relative Deprivation and Social fustice, Routledge, 1966, p. 118.

T.H. Marshall , Citizenship and Social Class, Cambridge University Press, 1950, Chapter I.

Mark Abrams , 'Consumption in the Year 2000', in Michael Young (Editor), Forecasting and the Social Sciences , Heinemann, 1968, p. 37.

Meade , op. cit. ; see also Hughes , op. cit.

Abrams , op. cit., p. 38.

D.C. Rowe , 'Private Consumption', in W. Beckenman, et al., The British Economy in 1975, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 180.

David Donnison , The Government of Housing, Penguin, 1967, p. 194.

Quoted from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, by Daniel Bell in 'Towards the Year 2000: Work in Progress', p. 643 and p. 937.

John Burnett, Plenty and Want , A social History of Diet in England from 18 I5 to the Present Day, Penguin, 1968, p. 16.

See D. Elliston Allen , British Tastes, Hutchinson , 1968.

See e.g. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Editors) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology , Routledge, 1948 , p. 187.

John H. Goldthorpe , David Lockwood , Frank Bechhover , and Jennifer Platt , 'The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement: some preliminary research findings ', Sociology, Vol. I No. i, January 1967. See also their The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour; Cambridge University Press, 1968; The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour, Cambridge University Press, 1968.

R. Dubin , 'Industrial Workers' Worlds', Social Problems, Vol. 3, No. 3, January 1956, pp. 131-42.

See Goldthorpe et al., 'The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement', pp. 19-20.

Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour, pp. 11-19.

See e.g. David Reisman 'Leisure and Work in Post-Industrial Society ', in Eric Larrabee and Rolf Meyersohn (Editors), Mass Leisure, Free Press, 1958.

Among recent British studies, see Hilda Jennings , Societies in the Making (Bristol), Routledge , 1962; C. Rosser and C. Harris , The Family and Social Change ( Swansea), Routledge , 1965; Goldthorpe et al., op. cit See also, among American studies showing the rôle of kin and neighbours, Herbert J. Gans , The Urban Villagers, Free Press, 1962 ; M.B. Sussman , 'The Isolated Nuclear Family—Fact or Fiction? ', in Selected Studies in Marriage & the Family, R. F. Winch , R. McGinnis and H. R. Barringer (Editors), Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962; M. Axelrod 'Urban Structure and Social Participation', in Cities & Society, P. K. Hatt and A. J. Reiss (Editors), Free Press, 1963.

Bennett M. Berger , Working Class Suburb, University of California, 1960; Peter Willmott , The Evolution of a Community (Dagenham), Routledge 1963; Herbert J. Gans , The Levittowners , Allen Lane The Penguin Press 1967.

Goldthorpe et al., 'The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement' pp. 22-23.

Peter Willmott and Michael Young , Family and Class in a London Suburb, Routledge, 1960, p. 122.

Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour, pp. 49-62.

Ibid, pp. 74-75. Also Family and Class in a London Suburb, op. cit., p. 115.

Runciman , op. cit. , p. 192.

See William J. Goode , World Revolution and Family Patterns, Free Press, 1963; Dorothy R. Blisten , The World of the Family, Random House, 1963.

P.R. Cox , 'Marriage and Fertility Data of England and Wales', Population Studies, Vol. 5, November 1951, p. 140.

Registrar General's Statistical Review for I964, Part III, Commentary , H.M.S.O., 1967, p. 31.

Ibid, p. 17.

These calculations were kindly made by P. R. Cox.

This term itself could be criticised. Since, as noted earlier, more young people stay in education until a higher age, in one sense there is a contrary trend-children are economically dependent on their parents for longer than in the past. Even so, most are socially independent, or largely so, after about 15, and, as I argue later, this is likely to continue and to extend to residential independence.

Richard Titmuss , 'The Position of Women' in Essays on the 'Welfare State' , Allen and Unwin, 1958.

Quoted in S.R. Parker , et al., The Sociology of Industry, Allen and Unwin, 1967, p. 50.

Colin M. Stewart , 'The Employment of Married Women in Great Britain', Paper to International Union for the Scientific Study of Population , London, 1969.

This pattern is described and discussed by Rhona Rapoport and Robert N. Rapoport 'The Dual-Career Family: A Variant Pattern and Social Change', Human Relations , Vol. 22, No. i, February 1969, pp. 3-30.

Michael Young and Peter Willmott , Family and Kinship in East London, Routledge, 1957, pp. 6-15; F. Zweig , The Worker in an Affluent Society, Heinemann, 1961, pp. 30-32 and pp. 207-8; John and Elizabeth Newson , Four Years Old in an Urban Community, Allen and Unwin, 1968, pp. 522-4.

Charles Winick , 'The Beige Epoch: Depolarisation of Sex Roles in America', The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 376, March 1968, pp. 18-24.

Mark Abrams , 'The home-centred society', The Listener, 26.II.59; Young and Willmott , Family and Kinship in East London, op. cit., p. 119 and pp. 127-36 ; Zweig , op. cit., pp. 206-9; Josephine Klein , Samples from English Culture, Routledge, 1965, Vol. I, pp. 283-8.

Young and Willmott , Family and Kinship in East London, op. cit., Chapters I and X.

Willmott and Young , Family and Class in a London Suburb, op. cit., pp. 21-27.

Edmund Leach , A Runaway World ?, BBC, 1968, pp. 42-46.

Rhona Rapoport and Robert N. Rapoport , op. cit.

Leach , op. cit., p. 45.

The South East Study, H.M.S.O., 1964, p. 24.

Registrar General's Statistical Review for I962, Part III, Commentary , H.M.S.O., 1964, p. 50.

This kind of interpretation has been challenged in a recent article-Judith Blake, 'Are Babies Consumer Durables?', Population Studies, March 1968. See also a thorough discussion of the reasons for differential fertility, including hypotheses of this sort— Geoffrey Hawthorne and Joan Busfield , 'A Sociological Approach to British Fertility', in Julius Gould (Editor), Penguin Social Science Survey 1968.

New Society, 14 December 1967, p. 847.

B.C. Roberts and J.L. Hirsch , 'Factors Influencing Hours of Work', in B. C. Roberts and J. H. Smith (Editors), Manpower Policy and Employment Trends , London School of Economics and Political Science, 1966, pp. III-13.

H.L. Wilensky , 'The Uneven Distribution of Leisure', Social Problems, Summer, 1961, p. 39; this shows that half his (middle-class) sample worked 45 hours or more a week and one in five worked an average of eight hours or more at weekends.

H. Swados , 'Less Work: Less Leisure', in Larrabee and Meyershon (Editors), Mass Leisure, op. cit.

H.L. Wilensky , op. cit.

Statistics on Incomes, Prices, Employment and Production, September 1968, H.M.S.O., p. 65.

Many of the senior civil servants, top managers, architects and doctors who work a 50- or 60-hour week have a complete break of a month or more each summer.

At present about 5% of households in Britain own second homes or caravans, according to the BTA/Keele survey of leisure ( British Travel Association/ University of Keele, Pilot National Recreation Survey, Report No r, 1967, pp. 21-22). But rapid increases are reported in particular areas and in some villages (Blackeney, Norfolk is one example) the second homes account for as many as a third of all dwellings.

Quoted in Mark Abrams , 'Britain: The Next 15 Years', New Society 7 November 1968.

Melvin M. Webber , 'The Urban Place and the Non-Place Urban Realm' in Melvin M. Webber et al., Explorations into Urban Structure, University of Pennsylvania, 1963, and Melvin M. Webber 'Order in Diversity: Community without Propinquity', in Lowdon Wingo Jnr. (Editor), Cities and Space, Johns Hopkins , 1964.

Herbert J. Gans , The Levittowners, op. cit.

Peter Willmott , 'East Kilbride and Stevenage', Town Planning Review, January, 1964, pp. 310-11; Hilda Jennings , op. cit. , pp. 145-6; London County Council , Survey into Design Aspects of Expanding Town at Huntingdon, Haverhill and Thetford, LCC, 10 January, 1964, p. 2.

Herbert J. Gans , The Levittowners, op. cit., p. 222 and p. 246.

This possiblity has been suggested by David Grove : 'Physical Planning and Social Change', Forecasting and the Social Sciences, op. cit., pp. 93-94.

See Peter Willmott , 'Social Research and New Communities ', AIP Journal, November 1967.

See Ruth Glass's discussion of the process of 'gentrification', by which middle-class owner-occupiers are displacing working-class residents: Ruth Glass , 'Introduction', in Centre for Urban Studies, London: Aspects of Change, MacGibbon and Kee, 1964, pp. xviii-xix.

See Ruth Glass , op. cit.: 'the impression remains—and often it is the dominant one—that there is increasing segmentation' (p. xxii).