Class Matters, Distinctively
The overarching theme of the book is one that seeks to dispels many myths about modern-day Americans. America has long prided itself in relation to Old War aristocratic Europe as being a classless society where such social divisions have little to no impact on the way people live or are treated. Instead, class is America has always meant exclusively division according to a wealth divide. The text argues against this presumption by revealing a substantive divergence in basic philosophical attitudes existing between blue-collar and white-collar classes. Regardless of a change in the status of their economic class, those raised in working-class and poorer environments trend toward a less rigidly discipline attitude to daily life. On the other hand, even if those born into a higher-class white-collar environment fall below this status in adult life, they still tend to adopt a lifestyle that is reliant on management techniques favoring organization and scheduling.
Cross-Class Marriage: Opposites Attracting
The specific issue addressed in the title explores the nature of marriages between those of two different classes, seeking to understand the fundamental explanations for how they occur. The finding here reveals that it all comes down the age-old trope that opposites attract. However, this opposition mechanism is not tied, generally speaking, to personal preferences. In other words, a blue-collar person marrying a white-collar person is not simply like an introvert being drawn to an extrovert or an indoor person to an outdoor person. Instead, it is the mechanics of class that create the opposites which result in the attraction: a lower-class spouse often brings a greater appreciation of family to a upper-class spouse who didn’t enjoy a close-knit familial relationship. Likewise, enchant for management of a white-collar spouse appeals to the desire of the blue-collar spouse searching to avoid the financial instability they experienced growing up.
Class Dictates Emotional Psychology
One of the more controversial themes explored in the book is that social class often dictates the emotional psychology of an individual. This flies in the face in the modern psychology theory that locates emotional responses being unpredictable even within family members raised in the same environment. The proposition here is that the very same environmental conditions of being raised in a white-collar class which engenders that propensity toward management and organization also applies to emotions: members of this class are more likely to make well-considered and intellectualized emotional decisions. The reverse is true of those raised in blue-collar environments: they tend to be more emotionally impulsive in their emotional decision-making.
