ABSTRACT
Working-class home life could be, then, surprisingly warm and kindly. Many working-class homes managed, in spite of privations, low expectations and often unappetising working conditions, to become quiet and affectionate oases. Working-class people were assumed by and large to stay with their roots, and most expected no more; 'abroad' was foreign and not to be trusted; the food rotten; and those people's ways probably no better than they should be. Many families all around gave their children more pocket-money 'than was good for them', let them have too much money for tooth-rotting cheap sweets, and for ice-cream whenever the van came round. Like the usual emotional preeminence of the mother within the family as a whole, seems more often true than not. The changes in general conditions, especially as to housing, patterns of work and of leisure—all these will encourage the nuclear rather than the extended family, and will alter some of the terms of neighbourliness.
