“If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle class. My mother and father were separated, so he doesn't count.” IfsMotherFatherClassMiddleMy FamilyMiddle ClassMother And Father Author:Dave Van Ronk
“I'm sure everything has a bearing on what I'm doing. My family is a lower-middle-class family, there's lots of children, seven brothers, two sisters grew up together, fighting with each other, went to school. My mother went to school up to 4th grade. My father went to school up to 8th grade. So that's about the education level we had in the family.” ChildrenTwoSchoolTogetherMotherFightingFatherLevelsClassMiddleBrotherGrewGrew UpMy FamilySevenGradesMiddle ClassMiddle Class FamilyTwo Sisters Author:Muhammad Yunus
“I come from a wonderful family. My mother was a pianist and my father was a salesman. They were very middle-class, very middle-Western.” MotherFatherClassWonderfulMiddleWesternMiddle ClassSalesmanPianistWonderful Family Author:Charles Kimbrough
“I don't want to know about the constitution of the rapist--I want to kill him! I don't care if he is white or black, if he is middle-class or poor, if his mother hung him from the clothesline by his balls: I only want to kill him! Any woman who has been raped will agree.” IfsKnowsWantHas BeensCareMotherBlackWhitePoorClassMiddleBallsConstitutionAgreeDon't CareI Don't CareMiddle ClassHungClotheslines Author:Diamanda Galas
“And, oh God, in my misspent youth as a housewife, I, too, used to bake bread, in those hectic and desolating days just prior to the woman's movement, when middle-class women were supposed to be wonderful wives and mothers, gracious hostesses.... I used to feel so womanly when I was baking my filthy bread.” FeelsUsedMotherClassWifeWonderfulMiddleMovementYouthBreadSupposed To BeMiddle ClassGraciousBakingHousewifeFilthyCookeryHecticWomanlyWives And MothersHostessesMisspent Youth Book:Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings Source: Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.” ChildrenMadeHomeMotherGirlBlackClassBoysWifeMiddleCenturyFlowerClothesDaughterDressesWarmCirclesMiddle ClassItalianArtificialProtectedCoalNineteenth CenturyCottonLaundryMiningWelshMother And ChildBlack GirlMiddle Class FamilySweatshopsArtificial Flowers Author:Stephanie Coontz
“Navajo infants get so attached to cradleboard that they cry to be tied into it. Kikuyu infants in Kenya get handed around several"mothers," all wives to one man. . . . Mothers in rural Guatemala keep their infants quiet, in dark huts. Middle-class American mothers talk a blue streak at them. Israeli kibbutz mothers give them over to a communal caretaker . . . Japanese mothers sleep with them. . . . All these tactics are compatible with normal health--physical and mental--and development in infancy. So one lesson for parents so far seems to be: Let a hundred flowers bloom.” MenGivingSeemsMotherParentDarkSleepClassWifeMiddleCryFlowerDevelopmentLessonsQuietNormalHundredBlueMiddle ClassOne ManTiedInfantTacticsIsraeliInfancyKenyaCompatibleStreaksHutsBlooming FlowerCaretakersGuatemalaNew Parents Author:Melvin Konner