ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the complexity of middle-class leisure, not as a problem to be resolved by simplification, but as a principal argument. It suggests that a major division among middle-class youth at leisure – indeed, one of the main breaks in the entire class structure – separates students who continue full-time education until their early or mid-20s from the rest. Neither has anyone adopted the other extreme position and postulated clear and rigid boundaries between social strata. There is much greater diversity among middle- compared with working-class youth cultures. Middle-class youth weave pop with numerous political, religious, intellectual and artistic strands. Middle-class youth may not be a problem group to the wider society, but they experience problems. They are privileged, like earlier generations, but middle-class adolescents are rarely complacent. Radical students are renowned for their opposition to nuclear arms and war between nations, and also for their support of internal strife, even terrorism.
