ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have described the attitudes and experiences of two generations in one area of South East London. This concluding chapter summarises the major themes which have been raised and is divided into four sections. The first briefly describes the nature of change in the national context from the 1960s to the present day. It describes the way ‘youth’ was treated as a distinct and separate phenomenon that influenced the focus of research in post-war years, and clouded the crucial importance of continuities in generational experience. The second deals with aspects of generational persistence in attitude, where the past experiences of Del and his contemporaries in both education and offending are used to illustrate how parents, particularly fathers, unwittingly provide the necessary assumptions and context for similar experiences in the next generation. The third returns to the question of punishment and its relationship to behaviour. The picture, as I have illustrated throughout, remains one of continuity rather than change. With this in mind, the final section considers ways in which we might intervene to prevent the repetition of attitudes and experience in subsequent generations.
