ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4, we suggested that young people vary in how they respond to questions about the future and how they envisage adulthood in the future. We put forward three ideal-typical ways. Some (younger) young people (still in vocational training) suggest that they live very much in the present and orientate themselves to their present status as ‘young people’. In so far as they take a longer-term view, they make assumptions about adulthood which typically take for granted the old order of their parents’ lives and their own childhoods. Some (older) young people (in higher education and in graduate employment) speak about the future in terms of how they will fulfil both their ambitions for employment and family life, but think that it is very much ‘up to them’ to work out ways of achieving it by making short-term plans according to changing circumstances. Yet other young people (particular groups of young men) are set on more clearly charted (male breadwinner) courses into adulthood.
