Young people's aspirations for education, work, family and leisure

Abstract

Young people are arguably facing more 'complex and contested' transitions to adulthood and an increasing array of 'non-linear' paths. Education and training have been extended, identity is increasingly shaped through leisure and consumerism and youth must navigate their life trajectories in highly individualised ways. The study utilises 819 short essays compiled by students aged 14-16 years from 19 schools in Australia. It examines how young people understand their own unique positions and the possibilities open to them through their aspirations and future orientations to employment and family life. These young people do not anticipate postponing work identities, but rather embrace post-school options such as gaining qualifications, work experience and achieving financial security. Boys expected a distant involvement in family life secondary to participation in paid work. In contrast, around half the girls simultaneously expected a future involving primary care-giving and an autonomous, independent career, suggesting attempts to remake gendered inequalities.

Full text

Corresponding author:
Paula McDonald, School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, PO Box 2434, Brisbane Qld
4001, Australia
Email: p.mcdonald@qut.edu.au
Work, employment and society
25(1) 1–18
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0950017010389242
http://wes.sagepub.com
Young people’s aspirations
for education, work, family
and leisure
Paula McDonald
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Barbara Pini
Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Janis Bailey
Griffith University, Australia
Robin Price
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Abstract
Young people are arguably facing more ‘complex and contested’ transitions to adulthood and
an increasing array of ‘non-linear’ paths. Education and training have been extended, identity is
increasingly shaped through leisure and consumerism and youth must navigate their life trajectories
in highly individualised ways. The study utilises 819 short essays compiled by students aged 14–16
years from 19 schools in Australia. It examines how young people understand their own unique
positions and the possibilities open to them through their aspirations and future orientations
to employment and family life. These young people do not anticipate postponing work identities,
but rather embrace post-school options such as gaining qualifications, work experience and
achieving financial security. Boys expected a distant involvement in family life secondary to
participation in paid work. In contrast, around half the girls simultaneously expected a future
involving primary care-giving and an autonomous, independent career, suggesting attempts to
remake gendered inequalities.
Keywords
aspirations, employment, expectations of work and family, gender and work, leisure, transitions to
adulthood, young worker, youth
Article

2 Work, employment and society 25(1)
Introduction
Young people are arguably facing more ‘complex and contested’ transitions to adulthood
than ever before (Jeffrey and McDowell, 2004: 131) and an increasing array of ‘non-
linear’ paths (Wyn and Dwyer, 1999: 5), although the extent of this complexity, and
whether non-linear paths are in fact recent phenomena, is contested (Goodwin and
O’Connor, 2005; Vickerstaff, 2003). Those who support the increased complexity argu-
ment highlight structural changes to industrialised economies, with the rise of the service
sector and increased flexibility and insecurity in employment (Golsch, 2003). Education
and training have been extended, identity is increasingly shaped through leisure and
consumerism and youth are expected to plan and navigate their life trajectories in highly
individualised ways (Giddens, 1991; Gordon et al., 2005; Nilan et al., 2007).
A key motif of these and other contemporary perspectives on social change is the
‘fact’ of changing gender relations (Thomson and Holland, 2002). The rise in women’s
employment, the demise of the male breadwinner model and the increasing uncertainty
of the labour market have meant that traditional notions of male adulthood are increas-
ingly redundant, while new notions of female adulthood are still emerging (Brannen and
Nilsen, 2002). As Beck (1992) acknowledges, however, while ‘gender fates’ are less
prescriptive than previously, traditionally gendered identities and life courses have not
disappeared in practice, but rather are less visible because the consciousness of change
outstrips material changes.
Understanding how the journey to adulthood unfolds in gendered ways requires atten-
tion to the way youth understand their own unique positions and the possibilities that are
open to them, as well as the resources upon which they can draw as they shape their
futures (Sanders and Munford, 2008). The principal objective of this article is to examine
the ways in which young people anticipate their future employment, family life and lei-
sure activities. In addressing this objective previous work is extended in a number of
ways. First, data were collected from both boys and girls attending the same schools,
thereby enabling a contrast of gendered perspectives while holding socio-demographic
factors constant. Written rather than spoken text, derived from short essays, was also
analysed, offering a potentially more authentic picture of youth expectations without the
interviewer scrutiny that occurs in interviews and focus groups. The approach also pro-
vided a much larger sample than usual in qualitative studies, thereby allowing a high
degree of confidence in the broader conclusions. The findings yield important insights
into anticipated life courses for a cohort of contemporary adolescents in an Australian
context. In particular, empirical evidence is provided which supports and, in some cases,
contests, several ambiguous themes in the youth transitions literature. These contribu-
tions include the extent to which the ‘consciousness of change’ in expectations of future
gender roles is evident (Beck, 1992), whether youth prefer to embrace or defer central
work identities (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002), the defining features of traditional versus
detraditional anticipated biographies (Ball et al., 2000) and how young people express
notions of autonomous and relational futures (Sanders and Munford, 2008).
Youth pathways and transitions
It has been argued that relations between youth’s social structure and their passage
through the lifecourse are being transformed and, indeed, have been fractured (Brannen

McDonald et al. 3
and Nilsen, 2002; Wyn and Wright, 1997). Status passages, such as leaving home,
marriage, parenthood and entry into the labour market are no longer linear, but may be
reversible, blended, synchronic or deferred (Du Bois-Reymond, 1998; Nilan et al., 2007;
Skrede, 1999). In essence, there is no clear timetable to govern young people’s navigation
through the multiplicity of life’s pathways (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997). In the following
section four central, inter-related areas of literature are explored which are important in
understanding the context in which adolescents’ choices and decisions are made and in
which their expectations are shaped. These four themes (identified by Ball et al., 2000)
provide a framework for the subsequent analysis of empirical data because they illustrate
the ambivalent and problematic ways in which the category ‘youth’ is constructed by
different groups and institutions with vested interests (e.g. educational elites, politicians,
marketers and the media). Consistent with the aims of the study, the focus was also on
the way in which gender intersects with these broader themes.
Individualism and individualisation
Youth transitions are shaped by theses of individualisation and detraditionalism – the
notion that each young person must consciously tailor his or her own life trajectory to
achieve predictable and successful adult citizenship (Giddens, 1991). Individualisation,
which implies a ‘do-it-yourself biography’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 3), is
increasingly emphasised in neoliberal politics and changing patterns of consumption
(Gordon et al., 2005). The culture and ideology of individualism interpenetrates – feeds
and is fed by – social changes which encourage greater reflexivity (Ball et al., 2000).
However, while the thesis of individualisation is a dominant discourse in the politico-
cultural context, it has been critiqued from numerous perspectives, including a gender
perspective which highlights fundamental contradictions in the individualisation thesis.
First, adopting a gender lens leads to awareness of the paradox that, while the ascend-
ancy of individualism has profoundly influenced youth’s preferences and decisions,
these same choices are criticised because they are at odds with traditional, heteronormative
markers of adulthood such as marriage and childbearing. An example is that young
women bear the brunt of social and political anxiety about falling fertility rates because
they are the targets of media rhetoric about the public good being corroded by individual
selfishness and a lack of responsibility; a phenomenon encapsulated in the term ‘child
ambivalence’ (Crawford, 2006: 121). Meanwhile, structural factors such as paid maternity
leave, childcare and workplace flexibility are minimised as issues that may significantly
affect fertility choices (McDonald et al., 2006). Further, little or no attention is given to
the role of males in fertility decision-making and ‘failure’ is blamed on individuals rather
than socio-economic conditions and policies (Hockey, 2009).
A second gendered contradiction in the thesis of individualisation is the variance
between expectations of gender equality and the reality of inequality. Beck (1992) argues
that although there has been an ‘equalisation of prerequisites’ in education and law, the
spheres of employment and domestic labour are sites of continuing inequalities. Young
people espouse the principles of equal opportunity, but career aspirations remain gen-
dered and expectations of egalitarianism in future partnerships by females and males are
mismatched (Pocock, 2005; Tinklin et al., 2005). A third gendered contradiction at the

4 Work, employment and society 25(1)
heart of individualisation is that socialisation orients females into a relational, rather than
an autonomous, individualised stance (Sanders and Munford, 2008), the latter being the
hallmark of discursive constructions of what it means to be a successful adult (Gordon
et al., 2005). Sanders and Munford’s (2008) study of young, middle class women in New
Zealand, for example, showed that young women recognised that relationships and inde-
pendence required balance, which they reconciled by segmenting their responses into a
present that was relational and a future that was occupational and independent.
In summary, contemporary youth are expected to individually tailor and navigate their
pathways to adulthood, while simultaneously being the targets of (often) traditional
societal prescriptions of what ‘responsible adulthood’ entails, all within a myriad of struc-
tural uncertainties and inequalities, often highly gendered in their impact, that affect their
choices. However, it is not clear how the contradictory pathways play out in different
contexts, including the ‘interdependencies’ of race, ethnicity, class and gender (Furlong
and Cartmel, 1997: 113–114). It is to the issues of class and gender which we now turn.
Social and economic polarisation
Critical scholars have long argued that the ideologies of economic individualism and of
individualisation obscure the continuing class-based nature of structural inequality (Ball
et al., 2000). As Beck (1992: 131) argues, ‘class differences and family connections are
not really annulled … they recede into the background relative to the newly emerging
“centre” of the biographical life plan’. Hence, while young people no longer derive
strong primary identity from social class membership, this does not mean facts of existence
(such as class or gender) do not continue to shape their lives (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997;
Shu and Mooney Marini, 2008).
The way young people think about and narrate their futures unfolds differently for
youth situated in different social locations and by the extent of resources and opportunities
(Brannen and Nilsen, 2002; Nilan et al., 2007). Indeed, the discourse of choice may in
reality be relevant only to the privileged few who have the necessary social and material
capital that allows life choices (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002). The current study explores
this issue by examining how high school students in Australia conceptualise their futures
with respect to employment and family life and, consequently, reveals how disadvantage
is reproduced yet obscured by discourses of choice and individualisation.
Consumerism, leisure and identity
Another central, yet contested theme, important to understanding how youth expecta-
tions and choices are shaped, is their role as consumers in neoliberal markets. At the
micro level, it is argued, young people’s identities can be established by judicious con-
sumption of consumer goods and fashion trends (Nilan et al., 2007) which give them an
essential gateway to social inclusion by conferring belonging, power and friends (Pocock
and Clarke, 2004). Critical studies of youth consumption argue, however, that while
young people may be conscious consumers, they show a sophisticated understanding of
the codes of media culture (Crawford, 2006; Ransome, 2005). A recent and salient

McDonald et al. 5
example of gender-based consumer identity that has entered popular consciousness is
the notion of ‘girl power’, which suggests that a youthful feminine and resistant identity
is something to be embraced and celebrated (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000; Mitchell
et al., 2001) and/or used to sell music and fashion to girls (Thomas, 2008). However, the
idea that girls can re-write the rules of conventional femininity through consumerism or
other identity-shaping practices has not gone unchallenged. For example, Currie et al.’s
(2006) study of the self-construction of ‘empowered girls’ found that their opposition to
conventional girlhood does not necessarily bring with it transformative agency, but
rather can incite them to act competitively while concealing the actual barriers to achieving
changes in their lives.
The above discussion illustrates that research on the ways in which young people
understand, acknowledge and expect to negotiate gendered identities and roles is
expanding, but there are gaps in research regarding the perspectives of young men and
there are still contested debates about the relationships between youth identity, behaviour
and consumption.
New work and labour market identification
It is clear that new generations of young people are making an early entry to both work
and consumption (Pocock and Clarke, 2004) and understanding young people’s work
identities – as well as their consumption identities – is important. While in general
occupation, status and identity are inextricably interwoven – we are what we do – and
not to work is in many ways to become a ‘non-person’ (Ball et al., 2000), young people
may not place as much importance on occupational status and work as their adult
counterparts – recognising that the interpenetration of occupational status and identity
may be primarily a middle class phenomenon (Ball et al., 2000). Instead, as was suggested
earlier, other sources of identity deriving from music, fashion and leisure may be more
central to how youth think about themselves. Many post-adolescents may try to ‘postpone’
or keep their work identities ‘on hold’ (Du Bois-Reymond, 1998), by means of a ‘model
of deferment’ (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002: 520), whereby they focus on enjoying an
extended period of youth characterised as a time of possibilities, variety and excitement,
while delaying ‘adulthood’, which they consider boring and routine.
Ball et al. (2000) also argue that the relationship between work and identity affects
young people through the ‘rhetoric and reification’ of a skilled, technologically liter-
ate and flexible workforce. This rhetoric is embedded in policy terms like ‘life-long
learning’ and the view that qualifications are the key to obtaining work (Ball et al.,
2000). This debate has two gendered dimensions. Firstly, women may be ideal reflex-
ive subjects – and thus subject to particular disadvantage – in this deregulated, flexi-
ble, knowledge-intensive labour market because they are willing to adjust to part-time
work and to respond to downsizing, retraining and irregular hours (Harris, 2004;
Nilan et al., 2007). Secondly, theories of masculinity suggest men have experienced a
loss of power in the workplace and in other spheres such as education; such theories
have themselves been extensively critiqued (see Heartfield, 2002; Morgan, 2006;
Nayak and Kehily, 2007).

6 Work, employment and society 25(1)
Study context and objectives
The themes described previously contain inherently ambivalent and paradoxical
elements. For example, individualisation is about both ‘choice’ and ‘risk’ (Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 205); the relationship between consumerism and labour mar-
ket behaviour is emphasised more strongly for younger people than it is for adults, yet
the justification for this emphasis is not well developed (Crawford, 2006); and while
youth labour market participation rates have increased markedly in the last two dec-
ades, it is argued that young people defer work identities (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002).
Furthermore, limited evidence is available to support or refute these various positions.
The current study seeks to address some of these debates by addressing the following
research questions:
1) How do young people conceptualise their adult identities and project themselves
into the future with respect to employment and family life?
2) What contextual features, including notions of individualisation, social and econ-
omic polarisation, new work and labour market identification and consumerism,
leisure and identity, influence youth’s orientations?
3) To what extent does gender and social position shape young people’s agency in
negotiating their pathways into adulthood?
The data reported here were derived from a larger research project investigating
young people’s social and industrial citizenship, which focused on the understanding and
experiences of paid work for high school students in the state of Queensland, Australia.
Field work for the broader study included surveys and focus groups conducted in 2008
with students in years 9 and 11, in 19 schools from metropolitan Brisbane, regional
towns and remote locales. This study reports on a single open-ended question on the
survey, which asked students to write about the issue: ‘Looking back at my working life’,
with the following advice given:
Pretend you are about your parents’ age. Tell us about your working and family life: what
you’ve done as a job (or jobs), what you’ve achieved, and how you have tried to attain a
reasonable income, fair treatment at work, and a balance between work and family. Be as
creative as you like, but try also to be realistic.
This methodological approach has been applied to a range of similar subjects, such
as gendered expectations of domestic roles, fertility and other lifecourse decisions (e.g.
Bulbeck, 2005) and anticipated pathways to education and work (e.g. Sanders and
Munford, 2008), as well as more diverse topics including ageing (Patterson et al., 2009).
The Australian educational, labour market and socio-political environments are
relevant to the interpretation of the study findings. As in other industrialised countries,
between a third and a half of Australian secondary school children are engaged in paid
work (NSW Commission for Children and Young People, 2005). School students pre-
dominantly work in retail and service industries. Youth employment patterns have
changed in recent years in response to the relative abundance of casual jobs in retail and

McDonald et al. 7
services, driven by the growth of deregulated trading hours, the low cost of youth labour,
increased consumerism, changes in government policies such as youth welfare allow-
ances and a long-term boom in the Australian economy driven by the resources sector
(Campbell, 2000; Langer, 2005; Lloyd, 2008).
While class as a social category is contested, the student sample was considered to be
predominantly ‘working class’, based on a number of factors. The schools themselves
included state-funded high schools (SHS) (N = 16) and (relative to many non-government
schools) low-cost Catholic high schools (N = 3). In Australia, only 61 percent of high
school students attend state-funded high schools with the remainder attending fee-paying,
non-government/private schools (ABS, 2008). Fourteen of the schools were located in
provincial and rural towns where tourism, mining and agriculture were often the major
employers and the five metropolitan schools were located in low to medium socio-
economic areas. Additionally, responses from teacher interviews suggested that stu-
dents at their schools were relatively disadvantaged compared to those who attend
non-government/private schools, with respect to family income and future educational
and resource opportunities.
Methods
Sample
The adolescents who participated in the research were born in the early 1990s and
included 579 year 9 students (aged 13–14 years) and 313 year 11 students (aged 15–16
years); mean age 14.6 years. Year 9 and year 11 students were sampled to contrast know-
ledge and experiences of paid work among a younger cohort who were infrequently
employed, with a cohort who were more likely to be employed (35% year 9s employed;
80% year 11s employed). After excluding 63 responses that could not be coded, 819 nar-
ratives were available for analysis. Of the respondents, 64 percent were girls, 7 percent
were from a non-English speaking background and 3 percent were Aboriginal or Torres
Strait Islander. Consistent with the ethical requirements of the universities and education
authorities, only students whose parents had returned a signed consent form participated
in the research. This requirement limited sample size relative to overall student numbers
and has been raised as a methodological concern elsewhere (Munford and Sanders, 2004).
The jobs in which young people were employed were almost invariably in the hospitality,
fast food and retail areas, as well as in family businesses, including farms. Individual
school selection was both ‘purposeful’, in that regions of the state with industry and geo-
graphic diversity were selected, and ‘convenience’, in that some schools initially contacted
in each region declined to participate and other, similar schools were substituted.
Procedures
Participating students were requested to attend a pre-designated area of the school (e.g.
library, empty classroom) and the research team outlined the purpose of the study and
what participation involved. The written topic (‘Looking back at my working life’) was
structured to be as non-directive as possible and to allow for participants to write about

8 Work, employment and society 25(1)
subjects, within the defined parameters, that were spontaneous and salient for them
individually. This approach also avoided what Sanders and Munford (2008) refer to as
typical repertoires designed by young people to satisfy frequently asked questions by
adults, such as ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Students had 20 minutes
to complete the written question. Responses varied from a single line to a full A4 page
of text.
Analysis
The analysis began using Ball et al.’s (2000) four inter-related, contextual themes as
broad a priori categories, searching for evidence of how the young people’s present time
world and the possibilities they saw for themselves (Sanders and Munford, 2008) were
reflected in written descriptions of their future work and family lives. Initially, with the
assistance of NVivo, an attempt was made to identify segments of text as aligning with
and illustrating one particular theme (e.g. individualism, social/economic polarisation
and so on). However, as coding continued, it became clear that many fragments of text
initially identified often cut across a number of a priori areas identified by Ball and
colleagues. As a result, and in order to preserve the integrity of the original data, the results
are grouped and presented as three emergent areas for discussion. Not all participants
provided information pertaining to each area and in each section the number of relevant
excerpts available for analysis is reported. Disconfirming data was also actively sought
(Stake, 1995). Consistent with the research objectives, the way both boys and girls imag-
ined their futures was explored. The data were also examined to ascertain whether themes
varied across other socio-demographic categories, including age (as a proxy for develop-
mental maturity) and geographic region. The analytic approach concurred with Nowotny’s
(1994) assertion that the notion of planning for the future may be altered by the experi-
ence of the present and followed Sanders and Munford (2008) who argue that young
people’s expectations of the future are not predictive, but rather express their understand-
ing of their present time world and the possibilities they see for themselves.
Results
Detraditionalism or traditional biographies?
Clear examples of detraditionalism – the idea that traditional markers of adulthood have
been rejected or substantially modified by young people – were scarce in the data.
Around half (N = 393; 48%) of the full sample provided information on anticipated
biographies which included marriage, property ownership and/or family. Of these
respondents, the majority (94%) cited traditional expectations of some combination of
marriage, children and property ownership. Girls (52%) were more likely than boys
(20%) to specifically suggest family size, the gender of future children and even their
names. Typical of these narratives was one from a year 9 girl from a rural SHS: ‘At aged
23 I had my first child named Jasmine. Then followed the last three children with each
one being a 2½ age gap. Their names were Jasmine, Samuel, Josh and Ashley.’

McDonald et al. 9
While traditional markers of adulthood featured prominently in the essays, there were
22 narratives (12 girls, 10 boys) from students who stated they did not plan to have any
children and/or did not wish to marry. A year 11 boy from a metropolitan SHS: ‘I don’t
have any children because I feel like they’d only get in the way of what I wanted to do –
travel’ and a year 9 girl from a provincial SHS: ‘I have no children and I’m not married
because I can’t commit.’ With the exception of one girl who indicated she wanted to
marry a female partner in California because ‘it is legal there’, all reflected heteronorma-
tive expectations. There were also 56 cases (14%) which revealed modified traditional
biographies in the sense that there were expectations of travel and career development
before ‘settling down’ to marriage and children. Apart from these exceptions, assumptions
of a traditional biography involving future family were the norm.
Alongside traditional notions of family and heteronormative adulthood were expecta-
tions of property ownership. This is not surprising in the Australian context where, despite
some of the highest property prices in the world relative to median income (ABS, 2007;
Cox and Pavletich, 2009), the expectation of owning a detached house remains strong
(Crawford, 2006). Where property ownership was mentioned it was often referred to
using salubrious descriptors: ‘five bedrooms, a theatre room, a pool, big back yard’
(male) and ‘a two-story house with tennis courts, pool and helicopter pad’ (female).
The tendency to describe future property as large and expensive was consistent with the
many descriptions of relative financial wealth. Over one-third (35%) of the total sample –
approximately equal numbers of boys and girls – referred to their future financial posi-
tion; with only two exceptions that referred to limited incomes, students said they would
achieve wealth and security through, as Giddens (1991) puts it, an individualised and
consciously tailored life trajectory which leads to adult citizenship. Narratives often
suggested that financial prosperity would occur via clever investing and/or successful
careers: ‘I am now a vet and I make enough to basically buy whatever I want and need’
(male, year 9, rural SHS). There were many examples of income cited, varying from
wildly unrealistic to conservatively optimistic. While financial success was mostly
achieved through employment, a few girls suggested they would achieve wealth by
marrying wealthy men.
Nearly one in five narratives (18%) of the total sample cited expectations of overseas
travel, with no discernible distinctions between boys’ and girls’ responses. At first glance,
high expectations of travel reflected in the essays might suggest elements of detradition-
alism and support for the model of deferment, whereby young people focus on enjoying
an extended period of youth (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002). Importantly though, the
sequences of expected lifecourse events revealed that travel was anticipated in varying
stages between gaining educational qualifications, employment, family formation and
retirement, not in terms of an extended period of time when responsibilities could be
abandoned in favour of leisure. For these students, extended overseas travel was fre-
quently directly linked with, or followed, training, the achievement of qualifications or
employment experience. In seven cases, plans for travel were timed after children had
left home and retirement was imminent.
Both boys and girls expected to delay childbearing until they were financially secure,
such as a year 9 girl from a rural SHS who wrote: ‘I am 36 and have now got enough

10 Work, employment and society 25(1)
money to raise kids and start a family’. However, delaying family formation was related
to income security rather than an extended period of fun and excitement.
The data indicates, therefore, that while young people’s expectations for the achieve-
ment of adult status passages are indeed more synchronic, deferred and perhaps even
reversible (Du Bois-Reymond, 1998; Nilan et al., 2007; Skrede, 1999) than traditional,
linear pathways, they are nevertheless conscious and purposeful. In contrast to previous
work which suggests that young people attempt to extend the period of youth as a time
of variety, fun and excitement, before adulthood, young people in the current study
were more likely to associate the post-school/early adulthood period with hard work in
gaining qualifications and work experience. Typical of these responses was a year 11
boy from a rural SHS:
I slowly worked my way up the ranks to be one of the top metallurgists at the company. That
process took many years of hard work. Here I am today, earning $33.50 an hour and living life
the way I wanted.
The emphasis on economic security and employment and relationship stability appears
to reflect the backdrop of structural and institutional uncertainties against which youth
must navigate the more central ‘biographical life plan’ (Beck, 1992: 131). Therefore,
like Hockey (2009), who studied young employed adults in the UK, elements of both
standardised and destandardised, or postmodern, approaches to anticipating futures
were found, as well as inherent tensions between them.
Work identities
Around two-thirds (N = 571; 64%) of respondents indicated they intended to pursue at
least one of almost 100 different future professions, careers or jobs. As expected,
given their relatively lesser exposure to vocational information, year 9 students were
less likely than year 11 students to report the specifics of future careers and/or to
describe their post-school educational pathway. Almost all year 11 students described
a future work identity. Some highly feminised or masculinised jobs were, as expected,
exclusively or predominantly noted by girls/boys respectively such as (for girls) teachers,
childcare workers, nurses and hairdressers/beauticians and (for boys) pilots and trade
jobs such as mechanics, electricians and carpenters. However, while no boys indicated
feminised occupations, 25 girls anticipated a desire to take up a stereotypically mas-
culine job, such as defence force personnel, mining-related professions and engineers.
There were few discernible differences in job expectations across geographic regions,
except for doctors/surgeons and lawyers/barristers, which were identified almost
exclusively by urban students.
Multiple career trajectories and qualifications were described in 125 (15%) essays.
Some narratives described multiple job-holding, such as a year 9 girl from a provincial
SHS who wrote: ‘I would like to be a piano teacher as well as working in the mines or
owning my own hairdressing salon’. Others suggested different employment futures
would occur sequentially, such as a year 9 girl from a metropolitan SHS who wrote:
‘accepted a job as a microbiologist. After about five years or so at work I settled down

McDonald et al. 11
with a family … after that, I went to work as a science teacher’. Some aspirations for
multiple employment and career options appeared to reflect current indecision in career
choice or uncertainty about the likelihood of achieving in a chosen area. For example, a
year 11 girl from a rural SHS suggested she would like a career in the health sector, but
was not certain about the specific job: ‘I went to university to become a nurse, then pur-
sued a career as a doctor.’ Also supporting this possibility were narratives which reflected
aspirations for high status sports or arts careers coupled with more stable occupations in
the professions or trades. Other narratives explaining multiple career pathways expressed
a view that having a single career throughout adult life would be narrow and limiting. For
example, a year 9 boy from a rural SHS wrote, ‘Doing a job for 30 years would be boring
but I think I would quit one job after a certain amount of time and go to another’.
Incongruously, references to financial security and even wealth were commonly cited
alongside jobs and professions that attract relatively low salaries. Participants frequently
referred to their future occupation as business owners. Indeed, of the 532 responses indi-
cating an identifiable occupation, 75 (14%) suggested they would operate their own busi-
ness. Young people also expected that high incomes would allow for leisure time, travel
and child rearing, in stark contrast to the evidence that high income earners and the self-
employed typically work very long hours (Ng and Feldman, 2008). It seems that by age
16, students have not only internalised notions of occupational identity, but in their
expectations of multiple qualifications and jobs had done so in a way that is consistent
with labour market changes of the last two decades (Ball et al., 2000; Kelly, 2006; Nilan
et al., 2007).
Only five girls (0.01%) and no boys saw gender as potentially having an impact on
their experiences in the workplace. One girl cited the benefits of paid maternity leave for
maintaining employment continuity, while the other four girls indicated potential diffi-
culties in male-dominated professions. However, girls believed they could easily over-
come whatever hurdles arose, for example: ‘I finished my diploma at the defence force
and served my time in the air force as a photographer … gender didn’t matter. The only
thing that mattered was how well you did’. (Female, year 11, urban SHS)
In summary, expectations of future employment were characterised by a multiplic-
ity of pathways and optimistic prospects for financial security. Occupational choice
was also largely gendered, although gender was mostly perceived as unproblematic in
employment.
Work and family roles
Of all the themes examined, the way in which young people expressed the work-family
nexus was the most obviously gendered. Of 196 essays which referred to work-family
boundaries, four-fifths were written by girls. The 41 boys who referred to the work-
family nexus were far less likely than girls to suggest a prioritisation of family over
work. Around half the boys who wrote about work-family issues acknowledged that their
work commitments were likely to interfere with family life and to preclude being an
involved spouse or father. For example, a year 11 boy from a metropolitan SHS wrote:
‘Due to the distance travelled to work and the hours on the job I rarely get to enjoy quality
time with my family.’

12 Work, employment and society 25(1)
The other half of the boys’ responses indicated that a balanced life could be achieved.
However, the notion of ‘balance’ favoured the ‘employment’ sphere over caring and
domestic responsibilities. For example, boys suggested they could exert personal control
over working hours, work night shifts, outsource labour in their own businesses (one boy
suggested his wife would take over the business on weekends so he could spend time
with his children), keep in contact with family while travelling overseas and join their
families on holidays. While three girls mentioned shared caring responsibilities with
their partners and another three suggested their partners might be the primary care-
givers, no boys presented these options.
Future work-family balance scenarios for girls were very different. A few girls
acknowledged the difficulties they were likely to face in balancing paid work and family
responsibilities, without resolving this dilemma. Typical of these responses was a year 9
metropolitan SHS girl: ‘I work long hours each day and my kids have to catch buses to
and from school and have learned to cook their own dinner.’ In the vast majority of
narratives, however, girls expressed confidence that they could successfully balance paid
work and family life.
Unlike many of the boys, for whom ‘balance’ meant a distant involvement in family
life that was secondary to paid work, almost all the girls envisioned ‘balance’ through
the prism of primary care-giving. The prioritisation of family over employment was
mentioned repeatedly in the narratives, including ‘family comes first’, ‘my kids are my
priority’ and ‘putting family before anything else’. Many girls also mentioned taking a
career break during family formation and reducing working hours from full-time to part-
time. Being a ‘stay at home mum’ was mentioned in 10 narratives. As a year 11 girl from
a provincial SHS explained, ‘I took five years off working to look after my children.
Once my children started attending primary school, I opened my own business and
worked suitable hours as the mother of my family.’
While still assuming a primary care-giver role, other girls were silent on career
breaks and part-time working, describing ambitious, high status full-time employment
throughout child-rearing years. These girls cited strategies that they would use to exercise
control over their jobs, such as alternative work scheduling, careers (particularly teaching)
that fitted in with children’s school hours, outsourcing work to others in their own
businesses or working from home. They also highlighted the importance of individual
efforts and commitment to family as a strategy for work-family balance. As a year 9 girl
from a metropolitan SHS wrote: ‘I sometimes find it difficult to spend time with my
family, but I always put in the effort and find the time’.
While this study is not the first to identify gendered differences in future trajectories
(see, for example, Fenton and Dermott, 2006; Hockey, 2009; Pocock, 2005), through
the direct comparison between girls’ and boys’ narratives, some additional insights are
provided around the challenges adolescents identified (or not) in domestic and employ-
ment roles and how they were reconciled (or not). In summary, while the potential for
work-family imbalance was salient for many of the girls and some of the boys in the
sample, their narratives, like those related to employment and property ownership ear-
lier, reflected substantial agency in addressing any hurdles, resulting in a largely
uncomplicated future. Both boys and girls expected an autonomous, independent future
with reliable and satisfying employment. However, in contrast to Sanders and Munford’s
(2008) study of middle class girls which found that young women segmented a relational

McDonald et al. 13
present and an occupational, independent future, around half of the girls in this study
expected a simultaneously relational and autonomous future. These girls expressed
expectations of satisfying, demanding, often professional careers, alongside primary
care-giving and a range of other traditional domestic tasks. The inherent tensions associ-
ated with this scenario were rarely expressed. This belief, that demanding careers and
‘always putting family first’ were compatible, is suggestive of notions of resistant,
feminine identities (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000; Mitchell et al., 2001). It also sug-
gests that many young women will be engaged in balancing acts between traditional and
detraditional notions of gender (Gordon et al., 2005), attempting to remake gendered
inequalities within changed conditions and a new language of choice (Adkins, 2002).
The other half of the girls acknowledged that combining autonomous, demanding
careers and primary care-giving was problematic. These girls had resigned themselves to
‘fragmented careers’ (Fenton and Dermott, 2006: 217–218) and cited strategies such as
career breaks and reductions in working hours, abandoning autonomy in favour of a
period of dependence while children were young. These expectations were in contrast to
boys, who expressed a clearly autonomous future and an awareness of the tensions
between a demanding career and a deep involvement in family life. No boys referred
directly to expectations of primary care-giving or of sharing care. These gendered views
of future care arrangements are in contrast to the Australian adolescent boys and girls in
Pocock’s (2006: 129–130) study. With a smaller but more heterogeneous sample, Pocock
(2006: 131) found that 40 percent of both boys and girls held expectations of ‘shared
care’, however, shared care was contingent on financial positions and ‘preferences’ of
future partners. Hence, the findings of both Pocock’s (2006) study and the current
research, emphasises the ‘default position’ of female care.
Conclusions
This research examined written narratives of young people’s expectations of lifecourse
trajectories, revealing rich and complex patterns of young people’s expected journeys to
adulthood and their understandings of the possibilities open to them. The data revealed
a strong discourse of choice and agency about their futures, suggesting that the policy
and public rhetoric of choice has been internalised not only, as Brannen and Nilsen
(2002) suggest, by the privileged few, but across the social divide. However, there is a
tension between the rhetoric which emphasises responsibility for individually and self-
consciously navigating pathways to adulthood and high expectations of choice, and the
reality of available opportunities and imposed constraints – factors which have an
impact, but are beyond the control of any individual. This tension may lead to increased
frustration and the marginalisation of some groups, as well as deeper divisions between
those whose opportunities align with dominant discourses and those whose experiences
do not measure up to them. Hence, the way young people view their futures needs to be
seen through the lens of the dual epistemology of agency as well as structure (Brannen
and Nilsen, 2002).
The findings partially support the assertion made in some previous work that adoles-
cents have adopted a ‘model of deferment’ (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002: 520) by delaying
certain markers of ‘adulthood’. However, the adolescents did not anticipate postponing
or delaying work identities (e.g. Du Bois-Reymond, 1998) in favour of an extended

14 Work, employment and society 25(1)
period of youth (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002). Instead, the data suggest young people
only intended to delay adulthood with respect to family formation, with post-school
intentions firmly focused on gaining qualifications and work experience in order to be
financially secure.
The gendered patterns of expected domestic/employment roles found in the data
support Beck’s (1992) assertion that the ‘equalisation of prerequisites’ in education have
not extended to employment and domestic labour, even for these 14 and 16-year-olds
who have grown up in a world steeped in gender-neutral rhetoric. There are several
possible consequences of these expectations of domestic and employment roles. It is
likely that for young women who embrace femininity (Gordon et al., 2005) and who
expect to sacrifice career opportunities by working part-time or leaving the labour market
altogether, few contradictions are likely to arise. Inequality will persist unchallenged.
However, contradictions are likely to be acutely felt where women embrace some aspects
of changing gender relations, such as opportunities for continuous careers, while retain-
ing other, more traditionally gendered roles, such as primary care-giving. This tension
may threaten a ‘sense of life control’ which, along with social relations, is a powerful
determinant of life satisfaction for both men and women (Khattab and Fenton, 2009: 22).
For material changes to catch up with the consciousness of change (Beck, 1992), women
may be faced with one of two choices. They may either abandon the idea of an independ-
ent, autonomous future, as many do, especially when they encounter unexpected structural
barriers such as systemic discrimination or harassment in their workplaces. Alternatively,
they may relinquish notions of neo-traditionalism, especially primary care-giving, while
actively pursuing egalitarian household roles. For the young men, the status quo of gen-
der relations was largely uncontested.
Even in a relatively large sample of adolescent narratives such as those examined in this
research, only certain insights can be offered into the way youth expect to navigate their
pathways to adulthood. First, the sample was a relatively homogeneous one in terms of age
and class. This focus provided a useful contrast with previous studies of middle class and
mixed class students (e.g. Bulbeck, 2005; Pocock, 2005; Sanders and Munford, 2008) with
its emphasis on youth most likely to be vulnerable in the ‘new economy’, and it allowed
for a nuanced examination of gender differences while holding class constant. However,
the approach did not support an analysis of how class impacted the themes identified. The
lack of evidence for young people wanting to vigorously pursue leisure time in the post-
school years may reflect that few students have access to family resources to purchase an
immediately gratifying lifestyle. The ‘life will be easier when I’m older’ scenarios
described may also reflect the relative disadvantage of the sample in terms of class and
rurality. However, at the time the data was collected, in 2008, the (then) booming mining
sector offered substantial opportunity for employment and prosperity for many of these
students. In different economic circumstances, the self-conscious ownership of future
pathways (Ball et al., 2000) and the strong sense of agency identified in the data may be
diluted, consequently making more visible the tension between aspirations and reality.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project Funding
scheme (project number LP0774931).

McDonald et al. 15
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Paula McDonald is a senior research fellow in the School of Management at the Queensland
University of Technology. She graduated with a PhD in the area of organisational psy-
chology and human resource management in 2004. Paula conducts research in the broad
areas of employment relations, addressing the quality of working life, with specific inter-
ests in the social context of work, gender and organisations, workplace discrimination
and harassment and youth employment. Paula has been awarded three major competitive
grants from the Australian Research Council and has published 30 journal articles in
the field.
Barbara Pini is a professor in the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University.
She has an extensive publication record in the fields of gender, rurality and gender
and organisations. Her first book, Masculinities and Management in Agricultural
Organizations Worldwide was published by Ashgate in 2008 and will be followed by the
co-authored book (with Lia Bryant) Gender and Rurality (Routledge) and the edited
books Women and Representation in Local Government: International Case Studies
(with Paula McDonald, Routledge) and Gender, Class and Rurality (with Belinda Leach,
Ashgate) in 2010. Address: John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University,
GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6845, Australia. Email: b.pini@curtin.edu.au
Janis Bailey works in the Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources,
Griffith University, Gold Coast campus, Australia. She teaches various undergraduate
courses, including the third year ‘capstone’ course, Employment Strategies in Action, and
until recently was director of the Department’s postgraduate programmes, including its
distance learning initiatives. Her research interests include union strategy and culture, the
use of visual data in research, and the employment relationship and vulnerable groups of
workers. She is a former union industrial officer. Address: Department of Employment
Relations, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, QLD 4222, Australia. Email: j.bailey@
griffith.edu.au

18 Work, employment and society 25(1)
Robin Price is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Queensland University of Technology
in Brisbane, Australia. She has researched and published in the areas of youth
employment and employment relations in the public sector and the service sector, with
a particular focus on the retail industry. She is currently working on an ARC funded
project investigating school students’ experiences of work and another project compar-
ing the strategies of retail industry trade unions in the UK and Australia. Address:
School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, PO Box 2434, Brisbane
Qld 4001, Australia. Email: r.price@qut.edu.au
Date submitted May 2009
Date accepted April 2010