ABSTRACT
Most American youth stay in high school through graduation. Their common compulsory presence behind school walls and daily rounds in classrooms give an institutional sameness to their lives for many years. Yet this shared school existence gives little hint of the enormous divergence shortly to come in their lives. Educational studies have shown that, in fact, young people have quite different experiences in school (Carnoy and Levin 1985; Metz 1978), but it is not until they leave school behind that their different destinies, suddenly highly visible, are played out. They make choices which lead them in very different directions. They are no longer found in the same institutional settings. Some go away to college and live the privileged life of the campus; some shuttle between community college classes and night-time jobs, trying to get skills for jobs above minimum wage; and some (a large proportion) immediately put student life behind them and take on the full burdens of adult life. This sudden divergence in young people’s lives is most pronounced among young women. While some merely continue their adolescence in college and the protective family home, others almost immediately take on the adult burdens of work, marriage, and motherhood. Those with the fewest resources take on the greatest burdens, since the divergence between young women’s paths is by no means random. Their lives are shaped by their class positions. Because middle-and working-class women’s lives diverge so greatly in this period when adult choices can be made, it is a crucial period to analyze and to understand.
