Manual Labor: Urban to Suburban

The article that I found was Life-Style Differences among Urban and Suburban Blue-Collar Families. I had searched for "suburban life", and this was one of the first article to come up that caught my eye. The first few seemed bland, and I wasn't sure if they would be simple rundowns of suburban life. This article seemed more like a specific comparison on two areas of living between a specific group of people.

Blue-collar workers and their families live in both urban and suburban areas. This article talks about the differences in lifestyles and other aspects vary. The author talks about how suburban life is consistent, and typically have the average family of young parents with a large family. It also talks about how the social class of the suburbs are also typically the same, middle-class. The close-nit social atmosphere within the suburbs is another point the author uses to compare to urban living. The terms "social intimacy" and "voluntary social participation" are used to illustrate the social bond shared within the suburbs. These points are portrayed using studies that the author talks about and elaborates on.

Most of the author's descriptions seemed to be focused on describing the bonuses of suburban life, which I felt made the article seem very lopsided. There were hardly any points that were allowing a debate, but rather a one-sided show that the author was running. Although many of the criteria used by the author seemed unique, the introduction of the article made it sound as though it would be more of a comparison than a one-sided debate. One of the criteria that caught my eye was religion, and how the church activity was higher amount blue-collar suburban families. The down side is that this criteria seems rather biased towards one religion, which makes it seem to lose credibility.

By: Stephen Sealy