Originally published in 1985, Anthea Holme focuses her study on Bethnal Green in East London and Wanstead and Woodford in outer East London, the areas covered by Michael Young and Peter Willmott in their celebrated books Family and Kinship in East London and Family and Class in a London Suburb. Her aim was to discover how things had changed in the twenty-five years or so since the publication of these classic studies. She makes a four-way comparison, between then and now and between two neighbourhoods of the present, a relatively prosperous outer London suburb and a London East End district carrying its full quota of inner-city problems.
The book takes as its starting point a crucial event in a family’s history – the birth of the first child. Housing may contribute to the happiness or the stress of the family at this time. The author looks at the present housing and the housing history of families who have just had their first child and discusses their satisfactions, problems and aspirations. She draws attention to the contrasts in housing – in tenure, dwelling type, condition, surroundings and in the opportunity to acquire a home in the first place – already evident twenty-five years ago. She also shows that while in many ways – in patterns of consumption, for instance – change has brought the two places together, housing has driven them further apart. Owner occupation dominant in Woodford, and council tenancy dominant in Bethnal Green, are rapidly becoming the respective symbols of the have and the have nots. Anthea Holme concludes that in the present political, economic and social climate this division can only grow wider unless or until housing is regarded as the vitally important component it is in inner-city life.