The demise of certainty: Shifts in aspirations and achievement at the turn of the century

(2013) - Andreas Cebulla, Wojtek Tomaszewski

Journal: International Journal of Adolescence and Youth
Link:: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02673843.2013.767743
DOI:: 10.1080/02673843.2013.767743
Links::
Tags:: #paper #Aspirations #Attainment #NCDS #BCS
Cite Key:: [@Cebulla2013]

Abstract

The analysis of two British cohort studies (of people born in 1958 or 1970) and one British panel study (of people born in the early 1980s) tracked the educational, employment and marital preferences of three generations of young people between ages 16 and 23/26. It found a steady decline in young people achieving their ambitions. Supporting evidence from in-depth interviews with parents and their children suggested that the perceived need, ability and opportunity to disconnect from tradition and to engage in autonomous decision-making had become the main drivers of aspirations. Although this autonomy was greater for current than previous generations, it remained socially inequitable, with parents and their children accepting the widening gap that separates past and present transitions to adulthood.

Notes

“It found a steady decline in young people achieving their ambitions. Supporting evidence from in-depth interviews with parents and their children suggested that the perceived need, ability and opportunity to disconnect from tradition and to engage in autonomous decision-making had become the main drivers of aspirations. Although this autonomy was greater for current than previous generations, it remained socially inequitable, with parents and their children accepting the widening gap that separates past and present transitions to adulthood.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 141)

“Current generations of young people expect to be able to ‘experiment’ with different choices, such as career options, relying on the accessibility and flexibility of the British educational system and labour market to provide multiple (re-) entry opportunities – both to sample options and to return to the mainstream following experimentation” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 141)

“late modern society has created new, frequently ‘flexible’ forms of social and economic life, but also maintained many of society’s traditional inequalities (Blossfeld & Hofmeister, 2005; Blossfeld, Buchholz, Hofacker, & Kolb 2011).” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 142)

“These shifts result in greater individualisation, the process whereby the traditional framework of support that structures the individual’s life-course weakens, and ‘your life becomes in principle a risky venture’ (Beck & Beck Gernsheim, 2002, p. 47). The increased diversity of lived experiences does not inevitably reflect greater choice, a growing ability to select from options to choose the one that is most desired. Choices remain structured from the outset as they are limited by what is perceived to be personally achievable or, indeed, socially acceptable; and structured in terms of outcomes as societal barriers continue to define the extent to which social trajectories are permitted to deviate from established paths” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 142)

“The structural uncertainty that defined late modernity changes the parameters within which decision-making takes place and within which personal biographies are crafted.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 142)

“the greater uncertainty experienced during transitions from youth to adulthood, which were considered by the Globalife project and are the focus of the present study, has profound repercussions for young people’s life-choices, as extended education, delayed marriage and family formation, and flexible partnerships replacing firm relationships confirm (Blossfeld & Hofmeister, 2005).” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 143)

“Using data from UK cohort and panel studies, we estimate the propensity of young people ‘constructing their biographies’; that is, achieving their aspirations and ambitions, specifically with respect to the preferred educational paths, their employment choices and their partnership formation aspirations.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 143)

“All three studies asked participants, at the time they were aged 15 (BHPS) or 16 (NCDS, BCS70), about their aspirations for: (i) further or higher education, (ii) their preferred work after completing education, and (iii) whether and at what age they would like to get married.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 144)

“we also needed to consider whether the time periods covered by the data were suitable for testing the risk society hypotheses of increased uncertainty. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002, p. 48) refer to the individualisation process ‘reaching back to the 1970s and 1980s’ and sharpened by ‘the precarious conditions of a capitalism without work’ in the early 1990s. Giddens characterises risk society as emerging in the ‘late twentieth century’ (1994, p. 5). The data used in the study covered the period between the mid-1970s and early 2000s, and therefore offered an adequate coverage of the key time span (Table 1)” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 144)

“uncertainty was measured with respect to three life-decisions that young people need to take: the decision whether to remain in education after completing compulsory education, the preferred job choice, and their preference for forming a partnership, measured in terms of the preference for married life. In each case, we calculated the match between aspiration and outcome, independent of the nature of the aspiration (e.g. whether a young person preferred to marry or not to marry).” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 145)

“In the case of young people’s partnering expectations, a binary indicator was created to indicate whether a person wanted to get married by the age of 25. We had to select this age because, unlike other surveys, in the NCDS marriage aspirations were recorded in age ranges. The latest age that young people could suggest for their marriage aspiration, and whose outcome could still be observed, was the age of 25.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 146)

“This decline in the proportion of young people achieving their objective was strongly affected by the general decline in early school-leaving. Whereas young people who wanted to leave school at age 16 were almost certain to do so if they were born in 1958, they were just as likely to do so as they were to stay on at school if they were born in the late 1980s.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 147)

“The decline in the proportion of young people achieving their original objectives was even more marked with respect to their job outcomes. Among the 1958 generation, 37% and 36% of young people in employment at age 23 had aspired to advanced or other nonmanual ‘first jobs’ seven years earlier. In the end, 21% and 44% of these young adults worked in advanced non-manual or other non-manual occupations.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 147)

“Across all aspirations and outcomes, 60% of the generation of 1958 but only 39% of the late-1980s generation had achieved their job objectives at the time they had turned 23.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 147)

“We pooled the separate evidence of the aspiration – outcome matches to create an indicator of uncertainty, which we defined as the propensity of a young person meeting one, two or all three of their original aspirations. Summing and comparing aspirations with outcomes, the analysis highlights the marked social changes across the generations, as measured by comparing the aspirations expressed by young people with the ‘achievement levels’ corresponding to those aspirations.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 148)

“Thus, whereas the generation born in 1958 had a one-in-three chance of achieving all three of their aspirations, this reduced to one-in-six of the generation born in the late 1980s.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 148)

“Among the 1958 generation, women were more likely to achieve their aspirations (and a greater number of them) than men” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 148)

“This said, sustained inequalities to navigate uncertainty remained evident as lower (working)-class men and women found the scope for and scale of alternative pathways curtailed by structural opportunity or personal aspiration.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 154)

“Uncertainty has changed the probability with which aspirations, previously deeply rooted in traditional concepts of learning, working and marriage, can be achieved as they had originally been intended.” (Cebulla and Tomaszewski, 2013, p. 154)