Allison J. Pugh in Aeon:
When Gary Gilbert lost his job, it was devastating. A tradesman, he had joined his employer’s company only because he thought it offered a bit more security than endlessly chasing the next gig as a freelance operator, and that he could then provide a better future for his son. The layoff came without warning. ‘I was crushed,’ he recalled. ‘Oh God. I’ve cried at night about it.’
While the layoff shattered his hopes and, Gary believes, was unwarranted, he refused to blame his employer. ‘I had no reason to take that job,’ he explained. ‘I thought I was going to make a more stable environment, you know. And I was wrong, you know, but that – that was my fault. I shouldn’t have done it. I never should have let my guard down. I never should have put my livelihood in somebody else’s hands. It was the biggest mistake I ever made.’
Gary’s response is not untypical; recent research shows that Americans are more likely to blame themselves for job insecurity, even when it results from structural changes in the economy. I interviewed 80 people up and down the class ladder, and with varying experiences of job precariousness. I found that we do a lot to keep our strong feelings away from the employer – we shrug our shoulders in resignation, we talk about layoffs as new opportunities for growth, we even convince ourselves we are glad not to keep working there anyway. Most of all, we blame ourselves. And while that blame can be corrosive for both men and women, there is something unique in the scarring that results for men, who often see work as a primary measure of masculinity.
For working-class men, it is something of a crisis. There’s a lot of critical talk about the moral character of working-class men – generally conceived of as those with less than a college degree – and most of it revolves around work, reflecting some latent anxiety about who is shirking and who is carrying. We know they watch more television and do less childcare than working-class women, and are less likely than more affluent men to work long hours. Working-class men themselves value ‘being hardworking’ among the qualities they prize the most; for the white working-class men who march in the reserve army of US talk radio, working hard is highly prized, and deeply respected. It forms the bedrock of their outrage at those who, talk-radio culture likes to say, ‘refuse to work’.
More here.