Working-class men sacrifice pleasure and leisure to hold middle status.

Evidence

The men I talked to were not at the bottom of the scale; not at all. They were stable breadwinners, churchgoers, voters, family men. They achieved this position in life through hard work and sometimes bitter sacrifices. They are distinguished from the lower classes through their initiative, zeal, and responsibility, their willingness and ability to postpone pleasures or to forego them entirely. In their control of impulse and desire they have absorbed the Protestant ethic. At least six of them have two jobs and almost no leisure. In answering questions on “the last time you remember having a specially good time” some of them must go back ten to fifteen years. Nor are their good times remarkable for their spontaneous fun and enjoyment of life. Many of them do not like their jobs, but stick to them because of their family responsibilities—and they do not know what else they would rather do. In short, they have sacrificed their hedonistic inclinations, given up good times, expended their energy and resources in order to achieve and maintain their present tenuous hold on respectability and middle status. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2260

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Max Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis and to the status-respectability literature; also echoes the ‘marxist false consciousness’ debates in the same book.
• SHARE: The detail that some men must search 10-15 years back for a ‘specially good time’ would interest anyone studying working-class psychology or leisure studies.