ABSTRACT
Family life trajectories in the 1990s are complicated. Relationships rarely stand still: parents move away from grandparents, parents separate, families are split and reconstituted. However, the educational life histories suggested that for many girls, particularly from rural working-class families, traditional forms of femininity are still rewarded and high levels of female academic achievement are often viewed with ambivalence or antagonism, especially by the older generation. As a result, working-class girls often discuss their educational success in terms of doubt and uncertainty (they ‘suppose’ they ‘might’ carry on); in terms of ‘proving’ themselves (sometimes to friends and teachers, sometimes to the family itself); and in terms of earning (or forcing?) family acceptance: ‘I want to make them proud of me’. However, girls acknowledge that ‘appropriate’ levels of
academic achievement are welcomed. GCSE success may be considered momentous, the cause of excited family telephone calls: ‘My mum rang my dad at work then my grandparents and aunts’. Indeed, as family pioneers in further education, some working-class girls plot their success as an important, potentially catalytic contribution to the wider family circle: ‘I was the first child and grandchild in the entire family to take A levels so it was automatically me who was to go through everything first!’ However, ideas about higher education might be a cause for alarm: ‘No one in the family has ever gone to university and I am not expected to be the first’.
