by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: December 05, 2009

It may appear that manners have gotten up and left the building a long time ago, but the reality is that manners are changing to accommodate an increasingly diverse, ever changing, and polarized society. Those who live in poverty all of their lives have their own system of etiquette which involves acts of kindness, showing respect, pooling resources and helping to support members of their immediate and extended family and neighborhood in ways that they can.

Those who live in working class circumstances have work etiquette and personal manners that work in their interactions with people. The middle class may have time to involve themselves in the finer points of manners, but find life to chaotic and hectic to control the emotional upheavals and survival urges that lead to bad manners. The upper classes and the leadership are the role models for the lower classes as they go through their public activities. With the odd and highly publicized exception, they demonstrate the highest form of good manners that are adopted by the rest of society.

With wildly increasing diversity, an individual in a developed country may encounter individuals from a multitude of cultures, each with it's own norms, in the course of a single day. As a result, handshakes might be declining, hand signals that have been fine for decades are now possibly offensive, and ethnic restaurants serve food that is traditionally eaten with a particular hand or with other implements than forks and knives.

The handshake is commonly known to have originated as a demonstration that there were no concealed weapons. Men or servants opened doors for women when women wore such billowy and elaborate gowns that they could not open a door on their own. Now, women are irritated and upset when a strange man jumps in to interfere with something that they can do by themselves.

The origin of titles that identified women's marital status, but not men's came from discrimination in making sure that available women were identified, while men could conceal their status. Men used to walk on the building side of the woman when strolling to prevent the woman from being attacked or snatched. Now, threats from the street side of a stroll are as likely.

In looking at how some of our most well known traditions came to be, it becomes easier to understand that manners are norms. Norms are special forms of social control in that they are used to keep people in compliance with actions and behaviors that demonstrate refinement, social

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