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Breadwinners and dependants: working-class young people in England, 1918-1955
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Todd, Selina (2007) Breadwinners and dependants: working-class young people in England, 1918-1955. International Review of Social History, Vol.52 (No.1). pp. 57-87. doi:10.1017/S0020859006002781 ISSN 0020-8590.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020859006002781
Abstract
The prevailing linage of twentieth-century English "youth" is as a triumphal signifier of affluent leisure consumption. By contrast, this article demonstrates the importance of young working-class people's economic role as wage-earners in the mid-twentieth century. This shaped their treatment by the family and the state and the life histories of the adults they became. Juveniles were crucial breadwinners in interwar working-class households. However, the consequences of high unemployment among adult males helped redefine youth as a period of state protection and leisure in the post-1945 decades. Nevertheless, personal affluence remained limited, and young people's economic responsibilities high, until at least the mid-1950s. The history of twentieth-century youth is best understood as one in which young working-class people's fortunes were closely linked to their family's circumstances and their importance as a supply of cheap labour. Social class thus formed, and was formed by, the experience and memory of being young.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | International Review of Social History | ||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||
ISSN: | 0020-8590 | ||||
Official Date: | April 2007 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.52 | ||||
Number: | No.1 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 31 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 57-87 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0020859006002781 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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