Money Matters
Most of the working-class parents valued education and wanted their child to act according to his or her own wishes. In some cases, however, the family’s financial situation limited the young people’s alternatives.
In this section, I explore the influence of the family’s economic resources on the young people’s decision-making. Vocational education was usually free of charge—or the schools had only a nominal sign-up or tuition fee—but the students potentially had to pay for textbooks, work clothes, and equipment. The biggest ‘expense’ for the family, however, was that a young person engaged in studies did not usually bring home a wage. Although young workers’ wages were low, even a small income could constitute an essential addition to the family’s livelihood or at least compensate for the housing and food costs. A vocational school student could apply for student benefits or a loan. In theory, this system was progressive and modern, but in practice, its effect was negligible. The benefits were small and strictly means-tested; very few students were considered eligible (Mattlar 1954, 236–239; KM 1973, 19, 2–4).The importance of financial resources was also recognised in the forms the parents filled in as part of the personal vocational guidance. Parents were asked whether they could cover the expenses for their child’s potential formal education completely, partly, or not at all.12 Not all parents replied to this sensitive question: a quarter of the boys’ parents and four out of ten of the girls’ parents left the section blank. There could be several reasons for this. Some parents might have dismissed the question because they did not know how much the studies would cost. Others perhaps did not want to reveal the precarious financial situation of the family, especially if they viewed education positively.
The parents’ replies did not depend on the sex of the child.
They regarded education as an important investment for both boys and girls. Instead, another factor divided the parents’ opinions. Working-class parents were not as willing or able to cover education costs as the middle-class parents were. More than a fifth of working-class parents said that they could not pay for further education at all, whereas only eight percent of the middle-class parents responded in this way. On the other hand, four out of ten working-class parents planned to pay the costs entirely, but this answer was even more popular among the middle-class parents, of whom six out of ten promised to cover all the expenses. These differences are statistically significant.13 The middle-class parents had both the will and the ability to invest in their children’s education.The family’s adequate economic resources usually translated into the parents’ will to educate their children. In these cases, the decision-making was also more relaxed. The parents surely encouraged their children to acquire an education, but the boys and girls were free to make the final choice. They were not pressured or hurried into making decisions (e.g. elementary schoolboys, numbers 9, 48, and 58; elementary schoolgirls, numbers 35, 53, 60, 65, and 70). In several other families, a lack of money guided the young people’s reasoning. Some parents noted that their financial situation was so tight that their son or daughter should find employment rapidly, even though the parents valued education. For example, one boy and his mother had previously planned that he would apply to vocational school to become a car mechanic, a career that greatly interested him. However, because the family’s finances had taken a turn for the worse, the mother advised her son ‘to search for any reasonable job’ (elementary schoolboy, number 35).
The working-class families were particularly vulnerable because demanding physical labour and inadequate occupational safety caused occasional disabilities.
The working class was also more susceptible to unemployment resulting from seasonal and economic fluctuations. In some cases, it is explicit why additional earnings were so desperately needed. One girl was forced to find employment as soon as school ended because her father had lungs problems and temporarily could not work. The girl’s aspirations for vocational schooling were put on hold (elementary schoolgirl, number 29). In the interview, a boy reported that his father, who was a dockworker, had very irregular employment, and his older brother had to surrender all his wages. The boy himself was expected to start working straight away after school finished. The family seemed to be investing in one of the family’s three brothers. He attended secondary school with the aim of taking the matriculation examination (elementary schoolboy, number 85).The type of family could also influence the economic resources available and therefore also the decision-making. For instance, it was one boy’s duty to begin working as soon as possible because he was the firstborn and had five younger siblings (elementary schoolboy, number 4). Lone-parent households frequently had difficulties in making ends meet. A quarter of the elementary schoolgirls and a fifth of the boys were living in one-parent families, almost all of them with their mother. The death of a parent and the break-up of the parents’ relationship were equally common as the cause of lone parenthood. The young people finishing elementary school in 1960 were born in the mid-1940s, and the divorce rate was exceptionally high for the couples who had gotten married during or soon after the war in a rush to try to catch up for the ‘lost’ years.