Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class 0394556925

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Fear

ailing The Inner Life of the

Middle Class ^^^^^*^*N^S

Barbara Ehrenreich

\

c

lass

no longer America's

is

dirty

little

In the last three decades, Ameri-

secret.

cans have "discovered" the poor, the

working

new

class, the

derclass. But

class, the

attention has

little

un-

been

who have done

paid to the people

the "discovering"— the professionals,

media personnel, managers, and lectuals—who

make up

intel-

America's real

middle class. In Fear of Falling, Barbara Ehrenreich dissects the inner

life

of this

class— from the liberal elite of the six-

the yuppies of the eighties— and

ties to

reveals, for the first time, the enormous

power

it

wields over our culture and

our very self-image as a people.

Drawing on a rich variety of sources— from films and child-rearing manuals to the thousands of "class cues" built

our clothing, furniture, shopping

into

habits,

and tastes— Ehrenreich exposes

way we

the prejudices that shape the

see or

fail

to see each other. With dev-

astating wit

myth

and

insight,

after myth: the

she shatters

myth

of middle-

class permissiveness (no class

on

is

harder

young); the myth of hard-hat

its

conservatism

(the

working

class

is

more liberal than the middle class); the myth

of yuppie

more

guilt-ridden

hedonism (no group

and puritanical— for

them, consumption work).

And she

is

is

a new form of

traces these

myths to

(continued on back flap)

FEAR OF FALLING

ALSO BY BARBARA EHRENREICH of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment

The Hearts

Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex (with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs)

Own Good: 150 Years of Advice Women (with Deirdre English)

For Her

to

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: a History of Women Healers (with Deirdre English)

Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (with Deirdre English)

The Mean Season: The Attack on

the Welfare

Fred Block, Richard A. Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven)

State (with

FEAR OF ING THE INNER LIFE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

BARBARA EHRENREICH

mill

PANTHEON BOOKS New York

Copyright

©

1989 by Barbara Ehrenreich

under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. All rights reserved

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

The American Scholar: Excerpt from "Confessions of a Reluctant Yuppie" by Peter Baida. Reprinted from The American Scholar, vol. 55, no. 1 (Winter 1985/86). Copyright © 1985 by Peter Baida. By permission of the publisher.

New

York Times: Excerpt from "By Land and Air They Got to May 30, 1987. Copyright © 1987 by the New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

The

the Forbeses" by Patricia L. Browne,

Newsweek, ber

Inc.:

Excerpt from "Troubled Americans" from the Octo© 1969 by Newsweek, Inc.

1969, issue of Newsweek. Copyright

6,

All rights reserved.

Simon right

Used by permission.

Schuster, Inc.: Excerpt from DO IT! by Jerry Rubin. Copy1970 by Social Education Foundation. Reprinted by permis-