ABSTRACT
The final chapter draws together the preceding discussions and examines several transitions to adulthood simultaneously (e.g. leaving school and entry into the labour force, employment, relationships and leisure, family, marriage and parenting). There is merit in illuminating the interface of multiple transitions (rather than examining them separately, as much prior work has done) since young adults’ experiences in these transitions are often interlinked: for example, women’s decisions about their work are closely related to their domestic situations in marriage and parenting (Thiessen and Looker 1999: 62). In so doing I ask the following questions. How did young working-class women conceive the transition to adulthood and what adulthood entailed? How were their trajectories to adulthood shaped by individual decisions and actions on one hand, and by structural conditions on the other? We saw in Chapter 4 how young women experienced entry into full-time
employment from high school and learned to manage what many saw as a radical departure from 12 years of schooling. This included finding meaning in mundane work, managing workable relationships with colleagues and planning their future. Chapter 5 revealed how they made sense of their experiences of employment and unemployment, and how their understanding of employment altered over the period. The next two chapters turned to the young women’s private lives. We saw how they developed romantic relationships and decided on permanent partners, and how they negotiated relationships with their husbands and in-laws in the marriage, and in some cases in separation and divorce. We also learned how they maintained relationships with their natal families throughout these experiences. I will first discuss the women’s subjective understanding of young adult-
hood; and then examine their trajectories to adulthood in terms of individual decision-making, actions and external circumstances (including institutional factors). I will then attempt to show how their trajectories to, and understanding of, adulthood are guided by urban working-class status and, for some, ethnic minority status.
