Levitating over the Abyss

Middle-class families are haunted by their origins—or rather by the fear of falling back into them. Back into the labouring job, the hardscrabble farm, the shame of lower status. This is often not a conscious fear but flits atavistically in the background of domestic life, part of the generalized anxiety that expresses itself in the chafings of marriage and worries over the kids’ future. The solid middle class is forever levitating over an abyss.

This is particularly true these days, when major shifts in the economy have cut so many loose. In North America, the middle class’s share of national wealth is shrinking, as the numbers of both rich and poor increase. The resulting polarization of society has been much commented on: it is bad for general financial health, social stability and democracy. But long before this came to notice, young middle-class families were struggling in a way their parents did not have to. In the decades after the Second World War, a single...