Life-Style Differences Among Urban and Suburban Blue-Collar Families

Blue-collar couples from a working-class suburb and from a working-class urban district are compared on a number of life-style variables. Suburban families are more likely than urban families to adopt life-styles resembling the middle class as indicated by measures of local intimacy, social isolation, family organization, church activity, orientations to social mobility and political perspectives. Controls for background variables and social-class identification do not appreciably alter these relationships. The analyses also reveal differential adaptations by husbands and wives to suburban residence—thus illustrating some of the problems in generalizing from findings that do not systematically account for sex of respondents. In conjunction with previous research the findings underline a need to reassess the frequently reported assumption that class values are the prime determinants of life-style regardless of residence.