frequency from what is found in the working class. This again is another difference between middle class and working class. There may also be different motivations to committing acts of delinquency (Cohen 1955 p165-167).
“Male delinquency in families which are culturally middle class is primarily an attempt to cope with a basic anxiety in the area of sex role identification; it has the primary function of giving reassurance of one’s essential masculinity. The motivation to working class delinquency is more complicated. The primary problem of adjustment is in the area of ego-involved status differences in a status system defined by the norms of respectable middle class society. The delinquent subculture of the working class boy can more easily succeed, and second, enabling him to retaliate against the norms at whose impact his ego has suffered, by defining merit in