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This article is an update of the paper of the same title that was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy in 1958 (Spiegel 1959). The assignment id challenging, for it imposes upon me the obligation to answer at least three questions: 1) What did I say in 1958 that makes it worthwhile to take another look at the subject matter, which was concerned with the influence of cultural values in the treatment of working-class ethnic groups? 2) In what ways have the turbulent social changes of the last decade altered perceptions of ethnicity, and how is the new climate of opinion reflected in the professional literature and in professional practice? And 3) what changes have taken place in my own thinking in the interim?
In the original, 1958 paper, I was attempting to report some aspects of work being carried on at the Children's Medical Center in Boston, and in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, in the study of ethnic families. With Florence Kluckhohn, whose skills combined sociology and anthropology, and with the cooperation of an interdisciplinary team of psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, clinical psychologists and sociologists, the investigation focused on transactions in Irish-American, Italian-American, and Yankee families, all at the working-class level.
We were interested in distinguishing the effects of acculturation stress in ethnic families from the more general effects of working-class membership in a society dominated by middle-class values. This was the reason for comparing working-class families of recent