ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the die relationship between age, class and family relationships. It suggests that although class differences were always an important determinant of middle-aged relationships, they tended, if anything, to become less powerful during the course of the century. Generation upon generation of commentators claimed to identify the weakening of family ties in the face of growing prosperity, rising expectations, the burgeoning youth culture of the young and the increasing longevity of the elderly. On the other hand, family relationships always tended to be private and elusive, the middle aged never attracting as much attention as adolescents or the elderly, and family stability rarely proving anything like as newsworthy as family dislocation. Middle age was a traumatic time in many marriages, with husbands and wives separating, divorcing, launching into affairs and becoming increasingly embittered with one another. Middle age was a traumatic time in parent's relationships with their children.
