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Sociology
Copyright © 2002
BSA Publications Ltd®
Volume 36(3): 513–537
[0038-0385(200208)36:3;513–537;025044]
SAGE Publications
London,Thousand Oaks,
New Delhi

Young People’s Time Perspectives:

From Youth to Adulthood
■ Julia Brannen
Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London

■ Ann Nilsen
Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway

A B S T R AC T
The article examines three bodies of theory: individualization, the lifecourse, and
concepts of time. It interrogates these theories with respect to the following
questions: how young people speak about the future; and the bearing of young
people’s situations and time perspectives upon the way they envisage the
transition to adulthood. It draws upon empirical research from a five-country
European study, in particular material from focus group discussions conducted
with young people in two west-European countries, Britain and Norway. It analyses
variations in young peoples’ ways of thinking about their future lives, and proposes,
as a basis for further research, three ideal typical models.

K E Y WO R D S
adulthood / lifecourse transitions / time and the future / work and family life /
young people

All of us are doomed to the life of choices, but not all of us have the means to
be choosers.
(Bauman, 1998b: 86)

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Introduction

I
ndividualization has become a key concept in theories of social change in
Western societies. Closely associated with this is the idea that the lifecourse
is undergoing fundamental changes, involving destandardization and de-
sequencing; the standard biography is thought to be replaced by ‘choice bio-
graphy’. These theorizations invite debate about the concept of time since they
occur over time and within time. They also require an orientation to time. In
this article we examine theories of lifecourse process and change and concepts
of time with reference to the research questions: how do young people think
and speak about the future; and what bearing do young people’s situations and
time perspectives have upon the way they envisage the future and the transition
to adulthood? We draw upon empirical material from focus groups conducted
with young people in two West European countries, Britain and Norway.1
Our main purpose in this article is to develop a theoretical discussion about
young people’s time orientations as they emerge in group discussions, and to
present our tentative attempts to apply theory to empirical data. We explore
variations in young people’s ways of thinking about their future lives, on the
basis of which we propose three ideal typical models. The models suggest a
greater variety in ways of thinking and planning for the future than the
individualization thesis and its emphasis on ‘choice biography’ imply.

The Destandardization of the Lifecourse

It is widely asserted that the relation between social structure and the individ-
ual’s passage through the lifecourse, in terms of a set of prescribed social tran-
sitions (Bertaux, 1981; Elder, 1985) is being transformed (Beck, 1992, 1994;
Beck-Gernsheim, 1996; Buchman, 1989; Furlong and Cartmel, 1997). The life-
course is said to be undergoing a process of destandardization, both in terms of
the prescribed order of its phases but also in terms of the linearity of its
progress. Thus, it is assumed that some people may choose to omit particular
stages of the lifecourse altogether while others will change the prescribed order
or return to an earlier lifecourse phase.
The lifecourse is no longer so clearly gendered. Before the decline of
unskilled and semi-skilled manual jobs in manufacturing, notably in Britain but
also to some extent in Norway, working-class young men left school, went into
work and anticipated adult responsibilities, albeit at the same time wanting to
continue to be ‘one of the lads’. By contrast, from an early age young women
expected to have a job first and then become mothers; employment was tem-
porarily located before and after motherhood (Martin and Roberts, 1984). As
women expect increasingly to participate in the workforce whatever their
family obligations, they combine two lifecourse phases – motherhood and work
– as two simultaneous careers (Brannen et al., 1997). For many young women,

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employment and occupational careers which promise economic indepen-

dence are novel possibilities which were not available to many of their own
mothers.
Youth as a period of preparation for adulthood is undergoing change
(Furlong and Cartmel, 1997; Irwin, 1995; Mitterauer, 1992; Rogers, 1997).
Across all industrialized countries, adolescence lasts longer as education and
training are extended. Education and training have expanded to include most
young school-leavers, as the pool of semi-skilled and unskilled work has dried
up and as the demand for more highly trained workforces has grown. Great
diversity exists among these extended pathways through training and educa-
tion, albeit with much less standardization in curricula and qualifications in
Britain compared with other industrialized countries (Shavit and Mueller, 1998)
such as Norway. However, there are few clear timetables to govern young
people’s navigation through the multiplicity of pathways into work (Furlong
and Cartmel, 1997). In Britain, entry into higher education is less of a guar-
antee for gaining higher status and more prestigious occupations than else-
where (Shavit and Mueller, 1998). Moreover, while entry into the labour
market is deferred in all Western countries, so too are other markers of adult-
hood, namely leaving home, marriage and transitions to parenthood (Skrede,
1999).
Yet the extension of youth as a lifecourse phase and the emphasis on the
agency of youth in creating diverse ways of ‘being young’ still somehow
assumes that adulthood is an unproblematic concept (Lewis et al., 1998; Nilsen,
1998). In effect, with the rapidity of economic change and the increasing uncer-
tainty of the labour market, notably the ending of jobs for life, and through the
rise in women’s employment and the demise of the male breadwinner, tradi-
tional notions of male adulthood are increasingly redundant, while new notions
of female adulthood are still emerging.

Individualization Theory and the Choice Biography

The lifecourse is also said to have become a much less collectivized experience.
Destandardization of the lifecourse involves a loosening of biographies. A
theoretical perspective which discusses this process is individualization theory
(Beck, 1992, 1994; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1991, 1994).
Intrinsic to the theory is the thesis that the process sweeps away structural divi-
sions of gender, social class and age. Individual choices become all the more
important, and the choice biography takes over from the standard biography.
Choices involve planning at every crossroads in life, thus Beck-Gernsheim’s
(1996) phrasing of ‘life as a planning project’.
Some writers (for example, Giddens, 1994) portray this process somewhat
optimistically in terms of a weakening of constraints and increased liberation
for individuals, which is signified in the very term ‘choice biography’. By con-

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516 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

trast, in some commentaries there is an emphasis on the burdens which the

continuous process of making choices and decisions places upon individuals:

Life loses its self-evident quality; the social ‘instinct substitute’ which supports and
guides it is caught up in the grinding mills of what needs to be thought out and
decided. If it is correct that routines and institutions have an unburdening function
which renders individuality and decision making possible, it becomes clear what
kind of encumbrance, exertion and stress is imposed by the destruction of routine.
(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995: 30)

Moreover, as Beck argues, the individual is not so much an actor in the

choice biography as compelled by (de)institutional(izing) structures to make
choices:

Individualization is a compulsion, but a compulsion for the manufacture, self-design

and self-staging of not just one’s own biography but also its commitments and
networks as preferences and life phases change, but, of course, under the overall
conditions and models of the welfare state, such as the educational system (acquir-
ing certificates), the labour market, labour and social law, the housing market and
so on.
(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995: 15).

The compression of working life at both ends of the lifecourse is resulting

in a more intensive employment experience manifested in longer working hours
(Brannen and Moss, 1998) and marked by the stress of increased personal
responsibility for making provision for the lengthening periods of the lifecourse
outside work (Deven et al., 1998). This condensing and intensive period in
work during the middle years of the lifecourse also constitutes a concentration
of several lifecourse phases into a single phase – bringing together work and
care responsibilities – which is sandwiched between elongated periods of youth
on the one hand, and retirement and old age on the other (Brannen and Moss,
1998). It may also lead to the social exclusion of those who do not manage to
maintain employment in the peak period. In Britain especially, the past two
decades have witnessed new and sharper dividing lines between the ‘haves’ and
the ‘have nots’. In a time where the number of beggars, in a literal sense has
increased, choices are not for everyone; a choice biography takes little account
of the saying ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ (Bauman, 1998a).
For the many young people in insecure jobs (European Commission, 1997),
on low pay rates during training, on limited benefits during unemployment, or
trying to repay loans for higher education, it would not be surprising were they
to see rather little sense in long term planning. As Sennett (1998) notes, where
changes happen so rapidly that people barely know if they will have a work-
place tomorrow or where it will be located, people may feel trapped in the pre-
sent and apprehensive, rather than expectant about the future: ‘An
apprehension is an anxiety about what might happen; apprehension is created
in a climate emphasizing constant risk, and apprehension increases when past
experience seems no guide to the present’ (Sennett, 1998: 97).2

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A Conceptual Discussion of Time

The ways in which people conceptualize and experience time are important
influences on whether they have a notion of planning for the future. In this
section, we examine some recent theories of the way that time shapes experi-
ence and vice versa. While life is lived in time and time concerts and coordinates
our everyday lives, the lifecourse and the wider social context, the concept of
time itself is not static and changes in relation to historical period and varies
across different societies (Ferrarotti, 1985; Kumar, 1995). Crudely, we may say
that in pre-industrial or traditional society, time was cyclical. For example, it
was structured by the seasons and in relation to the demands of reproduction
and care. Through the introduction of standardized units of time or clock-time,
a shift occurred in modern society from cyclicality towards linearity (Adam
1990, 1995; Davies, 1989; Ferrarotti, 1985; Gronmo, 1989; Harvey, 1989;
Kumar, 1995; Nowotny, 1994).

The Extended Present

In late modern society, the shaping of time upon human experience is undergo-
ing further transformation (Adam, 1990, 1995; Harvey, 1989: Kumar, 1995;
Nowotny, 1994). Daly (1996) summarizes some of the debates. He suggests
that principally through advances in technology, in late modern society time is
becoming disconnected from space while the time taken to travel in space is
annihilated. Time is increasingly experienced pluralistically since new technol-
ogy makes us constantly available and allows us to be constantly interrupted.
Time is also accelerated in that more activities (work, consumption, experi-
ences) have to be compressed into a shorter timespan. In this perceptual pro-
cess, it is not that time has become scarcer but that experience is overtaxed by
expectations. As Nowotny notes, ‘the abundance of what remains to be done
and the possibilities which cannot be realised far exceed what can be fitted in,
however well time is organised’ (Nowotny, 1994: 133). The net effect is a frag-
mentation of the present and a sense of it being expanded. Everyday time is
experienced as a constant sense of busyness, of never being unavailable, of
always being on message, of never being fully connected and is accompanied by
an intolerance of waiting (Daly, 1996).
Nowotny’s concept of the ‘extended present’ is a useful one in that it
suggests how the notion of planning for the future may be altered by the expe-
rience of the present. Accordingly, when changes happen so fast that the future
never seems to arrive or arrives before its time, the straight line to progress is
broken (Nowotny, 1994). In effect, the future is taken into the here and now. It
loses its meaning, in the sense that people are unable to think about the long
term much less plan for it.3 Lived experience is imprisoned in an all pervasive
extended present:

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518 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

The extended present stresses the necessity of structuring but also the possibilities of
re-structuring. It tries to diminish the uncertainties for the future by recalling cycli-
cality and seeking to combine it with linearity. The present is no longer interpreted
merely as part of the way on a straight line leading to a future open to progress, but
as part of a cyclical movement.
(Nowotny, 1994: 58)

This reconceptualizing of time relates to ideas of the risk society (Beck,

1992). The management of future uncertainty in one sense involves bringing it
into the present. Through the conceptualization of uncertainty as ‘risk’, in
Beck’s use of the term, it becomes possible to calculate and therefore control
uncertainty (Adam, 1990; Beck, 1992). By contrast, Sennett’s reference to ‘risk’,
mentioned previously, involves the opposite of this; risk means losing control
because past experiences are seen to be ‘no guide to the present’. Moreover, as
Bauman (1998a, b) suggests, not all groups of people are equally able to man-
age risk and take control of their lives.
Access to resources of space and time are differentiated and shaped by rela-
tionships to the labour market. For those with access to the world of work and
those outside it, space and time become transformed into qualitatively different
types of resources. Thus those in the ‘first world’ – the world of work – live in
time, albeit they feel constantly short of it, while space is not important to them
because they can transcend it. In contrast, those in the ‘second world’ – the
world without work – are constrained by the space they inhabit and have an
excess of time (Bauman, 1998b: 88–9).

Uncertain Futures

Thus it is argued that, in terms of the way people think about the world, the
links between the future, present and past are no longer understood as having
a linear or chronological relation to one another (Adam, 1994; Bauman,
1998a, b; Harvey, 1989; Nowotny, 1994). The march of time towards a certain
future, defined in terms of hoped for progress (Ferrarotti, 1985; Hobsbawm,
1994; Kumar, 1995) is seen as increasingly anachronistic. A shift from a linear
concept of time can mean that people no longer try to predict the future. There
is an emphasis on randomness, in having lost control over events in time, as
Sennett (1998) has suggested, and no meaningful connection between the past,
the present and the future. Consequently ‘planning’ as a notion loses its mean-
ing when it is more than a mere projection of present conditions into the imme-
diate future (Nilsen, 1999). However, for groups whose lives are not
constrained by space but who are short of time, the uncertainty of the future
may constitute a risk to be calculated and controlled (Bauman, 1998b). By con-
trast, those with time on their hands but who are constrained by space may
regard the uncertainty of the future as a threat 4 or, in Sennett’s terms, they may
view it with apprehension.

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Young People’s Views of the Future: An Empirical Study

The data we draw upon in this article were originally collected for an interna-
tional comparative study, conducted in five countries during 1997–98, which
focused upon 18–30 year olds and their views about combining employment
with family responsibilities. The study’s method involved a series of approxi-
mately 12 focus groups in each country conducted with different groups of
young people in training, higher education and employment.5 We tried to make
each group as homogeneous as possible. The groups were structured as follows:
by education and training levels (those in higher education and those in voca-
tional, largely government training); and by occupational level (those in higher
status non-manual jobs, and those in manual or lower status white collar jobs).
Separate groups were conducted in each case with young women and young
men while, in Britain, some extra focus groups were carried out with minority
ethnic groups. In each country, unemployed young people are required to enter
training schemes and so are included in the groups in vocational training,
although attempts were made to reach non-attenders but without much success.
In line with the trends towards later parenthood, very few of the focus group
participants had children at the time of the interview. Issues about combining
employment and family life were therefore extremely hypothetical for most
young people at the time of the study.
In this article, we concentrate upon material from the British and
Norwegian focus groups; these were conducted in Bergen, Norway’s second
city, and in Manchester. In the remaining part of the paper, we set out and dis-
cuss three models or ways in which some groups of young people think about
their lives and futures as adults. This represents an exploratory analysis of the
focus group discussions in relation to theories concerning time perspectives.
The study was not designed to examine these issues and so it is not possible to
examine systematically the relationship of gender, age and social class to these
models of thinking about the future. While the explicit focus of the study was
on the future reconciliation of employment and family responsibilities, the
extent to which young people discussed thinking about the future per se was an
emergent theme of the study. Moreover because of this, any attempt to make a
comparative analysis of young people’s views in Britain and Norway must be
limited; instead we use the material to present different patterns we have iden-
tified among the British and Norwegian groups, albeit it is important to con-
textualize the analysis within the national economic, social and institutional
contexts. The ways in which national trends and institutional frameworks
shape young people’s discourses about combining employment and family life
are discussed elsewhere (Brannen and Smithson, 1998). Issues about the focus
group method and its consequences for analysis, for example, mechanisms
which silence dissenting voices, the assumptions which underpin the questions
framed by the focus group moderators (and the research itself) relating to
dominant societal discourses, have been explored elsewhere (Smithson and

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520 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

Brannen, 2002; Smithson, 2000). There is no sense in which focus group

methodology attempts either to generalize about young people or to generate
biographical material.
Rather, our purpose in this article is to begin to develop a ‘language of
description’ (Bernstein, 1996) for representing and interpreting the nuances and
diversity of young people’s orientations to adulthood which may be applied
and modified in further research. The models are ideal types, in a Weberian
sense, for which we provide approximating exemplifications drawn from our
analysis of the focus group discussions, and they represent the dominant dis-
courses we have identified in the Norwegian and British groups. Moreover,
these discourses are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Based on our earlier theoretical review, we are suggesting that any conclu-
sion that there has been a wholesale movement away from the standardized
biography towards the choice biography is problematic. In our view, this con-
clusion is rather simplistic and fails to capture the processual, dynamic nature
of orientations. Rather, we suggest there is considerable diversity in the ways in
which young people conceptualize and consider their futures. This variation
derives from young people’s present perspectives as they relate to particular life-
course phases and ‘moments’ which young people are in the process of negoti-
ating, and the ways in which their expectations are shaped by their gender,
ethnicity and educational and other resources, for example, related to the social
class of their families of origin. The latter can only be hinted at, as our data are
based upon focus group discussions in which it was not appropriate to explore
young people’s social class origins. Thus, while it is clear that young people are
reflexive agents who negotiate their own pathways into adulthood, their agency
continues to be shaped by structural influences (Roberts et al., 1994).

The Model of Deferment: Living in the Present – Keeping the Future at

Bay

Many of the younger groups in the study (18–20 year olds), that is, those who
were on vocational training courses and in higher education, emphasized pre-
sent options, possibilities and constraints which competed for their time and
attention. This emphasis is in some ways unsurprising. It reflects young people’s
location in the lifecourse – they have yet to complete their current training and
education and have not yet gained the qualifications which are increasingly
essential in Norway and the UK in order to enter employment. It also reflects a
social construction of youth as a time for friends and a time of leisure and
lifestyle opportunities. This ‘extended present orientation’ is also clearly evident
among young people in training in the other countries, including similar groups
of young men, although, as we shall indicate, not among all groups of young
people in training. One such discussion took place among a group of six
Norwegian young women aged between 18 and 20 who were training to be
hairdressers, tailors and goldsmiths. This model of thinking about time is

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present among some groups of university students although there is also evi-
dence of other orientations.
In the focus group discussion, the young Norwegian women spoke very
much from a present time perspective as young people rather than adults, stress-
ing the importance of living their lives now, in the immediate present, in order
to enjoy themselves and try out a range of possibilities. They do not want to
think too much about the future and adulthood; in particular they do not yet
want to take on family responsibilities. They associate the notion of responsi-
bility with adulthood, a lifecourse phase they see as being ‘far in the future’. Yet,
at the same time, they make assumptions that adulthood in the future will
resemble the current lives of their parents. Future adulthood is envisaged
according to the old order, as safe and secure. For these young women, serious
consideration of the future is deferred or postponed.
This can be illustrated by a discussion in the focus group concerning set-
tling down. One young Norwegian woman asserted that she had considered
getting engaged to her boyfriend but had changed her mind because she thought
it was ‘much too soon’ and she wanted to enjoy life first:
It was like, oh, I don’t know . . . it was so nice, a ring on my finger . . . Gee won-
derful! The girl reaction, you know! But I changed my mind fairly quickly and then
we went out and had a good dinner instead of buying engagement rings. No, but
you know, I realised there wasn’t any sense in it. Because I feel it’s much too soon
. . . You see, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You’ve got all the possibili-
ties in the world.

When asked under what conditions she would consider having children,
she described a situation which is non-normative in a Norwegian context,
namely marriage and a breadwinner husband (Deven et al., 1998; Skrede,
1999): ‘Then we’d have to have our own house, a job with good wages, a hus-
band who was nice – with good wages [the latter remark was greeted with roars
of laughter]. Then it would be fine.’ Clearly, the idea of a wanting or finding a
sole breadwinner husband was meant as a joke, that is it was not a serious
expectation.
The group then went on to talk about the long-term security needed to
bring up children which was presumed to take a long time. Mindful of their cur-
rent lifecourse phases – their continuing financial dependence on their own par-
ents, they perceived the need for financial security, in particular in settling down
and having children. Although they did not say so explicitly, they assumed that
their own employment, as mothers, was necessary for this: ‘A good job and a
good income and feel oneself secure in one’s own life.’ Clearly, for these young
women, the normative basis for family life was for each family member to be
self supporting, for women as for men: ‘If you can’t support yourself, then how
on earth can you manage to support a child.’ However, when the interviewer
asked the group if they were to acquire good jobs and good wages now, would
they consider having a child, the young women expressed a clear wish to defer
the decision to the distant future. As one girl said:

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522 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

No, not right away . . . I’m talking about the future, way ahead in the future. No, I
couldn’t think of having a child now. It wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t imagine doing
that now . . . In ten years time, I don’t know.

At which point a second girl joined in and suggested that combining

employment with looking after children would be very stressful. She was also
mindful of the short-term and pressurized nature of the current labour market
in this next comment: ‘Yes, remember the average age of a hairdresser is about
30. After that they give up on account of being worn out . . . I’m going to wait
a good while before I think about children.’
In accordance with our earlier discussion of time, these young women’s
present time perspectives focused upon enjoying the extended period of youth
and reflecting the theme of the ‘extended present’. They view adulthood as a
phase reserved for the distant future, a phase which they assume will resemble
their parents’ lives. Yet there is a certain ambivalence when these young women
talk about the future. They give the impression of being very clear about want-
ing security when they eventually settle down and start a family. At the same
time, they seem to want to keep the future and adulthood – in so far as it entails
family responsibilities – at bay for as long a time as possible. They consider
their parents’ lives to be ‘boring’ and ‘routine’ which they contrast with their
own present lives as young people which they consider ought to be full of
possibilities, variety and excitement.

X: I’m never gonna live the same kind of life as my mother. I’ll travel a lot –
have the freedom to do things.
[The others agree]
Y: I think people in their forties live boring lives – all is routine. Do the same
thing every day, and do it because you must, you have to. Go to work because
you have to.

The following reflective comment (by Z) suggests that she sees the present
and the future in these terms because she is currently ‘still so young’. Moreover,
the normative notion of youth to which she subscribes is a period in which
young people are supposed to experiment – to try out ‘all the fun things’. She
suggests that they must do this in the prescribed order, that is before they pro-
ceed to adulthood, which they characterize in oppositional terms – as a time of
cares and responsibility, contrasted with youth as a time of fun and freedom. At
the same time as suggesting a normative ordering of lifecourse phases, she per-
ceives a risk to leaving the future to take care of itself; as X below observed:

Z: Maybe we think like this because we’re still so young. We might see it dif-
ferently when we get older. When we have experienced all the ‘fun’ things, we
might not find them much fun anymore. Perhaps we think our parents have a
boring time because they’ve done all that and are finished with it. I’m not say-
ing we’ll end up like they are, but we never know, do we? We might become like
that eventually . . .

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X: Nobody knows the future. We can imagine it, hope for something different,
wish it, yet we never know, do we?
A group of 18-year-old British young women who, like the Norwegian
young women, were also on training schemes pursuing business studies and
wordprocessing courses, talked about the future in a rather similar way to the
Norwegian group. They described their present lives as packed with immediate
concerns including gaining qualifications, ‘decent jobs’, living alone, and going
round the world. They regarded having children as something very much for
the long-term. However, they see their lifecourse as shaped by their female gen-
der; they assume that they will have children eventually. Yet, they also speak as
non-gendered entrants into the labour market. They talk about the need to gain
‘good jobs’; one young woman refers to ‘career jobs’ even though she (and the
others in the group) had left school at 16. These aspirations are combined with
other lifecourse specific and ‘youthful’ aspirations, notably living alone and
travelling.
S: But I do want a career job but at the moment I’m not really interested in
children or anything like that. I’m too selfish.
G: I want to get myself a good job, make sure I make the best of what I can,
with a career, and then maybe later on think about having children. But at the
moment I wouldn’t dream of having them . . .
N: Um, well, I’ve got a job. Stay at home a couple of years. After that I’ll
probably go and live out on my own. Wouldn’t mind travelling for about 18
months round the world. That’s an idea I have . . . I don’t have any interest in
having kids before I’m 25 . . .
Focus group moderator: What sort of age do you think would be a good idea
to have children?
A: About 32.
Z: About 50! [Laughter]
Both these groups of British and Norwegian young women seemed con-
vinced that, at a later lifecourse phase, they would gain the necessary means and
conditions to lead a secure and settled life as ‘proper’ adults. Both groups see
getting into the labour market and gaining good jobs as their current project.
For these young women, the short term is all encompassing. The fact that the
young women who had relatively low educational levels saw their immediate
future in these terms is perhaps surprising; if they had been young men, their
strong labour market orientations would have been assumed. However, the
long term is taken for granted and assumed to resemble the old, predictable,
settled order of ‘proper’ adulthood. These young women have yet to confront
the possibility that there may be contradictions between their non-gendered
identities as workers and their gendered identities as mothers. They do not
think very far ahead in time and leave the future for the morrow. They speak
about embracing adulthood when they are ready; they are unclear as to when
this will be exactly. They think about their futures as adults as an abstraction,

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524 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

and when trying to envisage them, they think in terms of their parents’ lives,
especially their mothers’.
As in all orientations, gender is relevant but it is not all encompassing.
Rather what we wish to emphasize is that the focus on the extended present
means that these young people in training and education are deferring thinking
about planning for the future, hence the ‘model of deferment’.

The Model of Adaptability: A Contingency Mentality

Some young people did discuss the future in more concrete terms and viewed
the future as more malleable and contingent. To some extent they also
reflect the discourse of the extended present in their current concern with
opportunities and personal lifestyle options. But they also saw themselves as
having the possibility to forge the future, shaping it in short steps and making
the necessary adaptations as they went along. Thereby they sought to construct
pathways into adulthood. This model is illustrated by the discussions of a focus
group of five Norwegian university students, four women and one man aged
between 20 and 25. Reflecting the demarcated routes to different types of qual-
ifications and jobs in Norway, the students, who studied a variety of subjects,
were more confident than the British university students that they would even-
tually find jobs which would satisfy them.
Compared with the groups of young people who subscribed to a discourse
of deferring thinking about the future discussed above, these young people were
in higher education. (They resemble the ‘trendsetters’ in the study by du Bois
Reymond, 1998.) Given that a university education is more likely to lead to
higher status jobs than vocational training, and that at the time (late 1990s) the
Norwegian economy was stronger than the UK economy, the Norwegian stu-
dents seemed to take for granted that they would get good jobs in the future. A
major concern for these young people seemed to be considering the ins and outs
of taking a permanent job. For example, one young Norwegian woman wor-
ried about the restriction a permanent job would have upon a major aspiration
of youth, namely the desired state of remaining mobile: ‘. . . then I may not be
so mobile as I’d have been if I’d gone around taking temporary jobs.’ However,
the group appeared to reach a consensus that permanent jobs were not neces-
sarily a signal for the state of adulthood – settling down and starting a family:
No, I see it more that in that way you’ll get security, that’s what I meant. In a way
you can calm down a bit. You know, if you’re studying then you’re going round all
the time with that feeling that things are . . . er . . . well, insecure and that. I could
fancy a permanent job, so as, as it were, not to have to be bothered with that. But
I don’t think it’s specially got to do with family, not to do with that, you see.

In the next part of the discussion, the young Norwegian women went on
to emphasize the discourse of ‘choice’, a key reason for going to university in
the first place, and the right to choose to change jobs in order to find satisfac-

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tion and excitement through their work. To some extent this reflects the expec-
tations of the young women in the first model of deferment who were also
highly orientated towards getting good jobs. But the discussions of the
Norwegian university students refer to negotiating ways through the labour
market following the first job rather than simply landing the first good job.
These young women’s orientations reflect their older age but more importantly
their greater resources compared with those in the model of deferment.

C: But I’d like to have to have had the opportunity to – Because the reason I’m
studying is that I want to have the opportunity to choose. Right now . . . a lot
of people who are working and who’ve worked for 25 years and they’ve still
got the same job, and start getting cheesed off . . . So you’ve got a chance to –
well, get a job somewhere else. Even if you don’t do it, you’re free to do it, and
you know you can. And you’ve also got – choices.
[. . .]
E: If I could choose then I’d like to be able to change my employment when I
got tired of it, but you don’t always have offers coming at the right moment –
you can’t just –
D: It depends a lot on what kind of job it is. I mean, if you’ve got a job which
has a lot of routine in it, then it’s obvious it’d be exciting to change it after 20
years, but if you’ve got a job with a lot of variety and it’s very varied, then you
most likely don’t have that need . . .

At this point the discussion takes a different turn, focusing on the condi-
tions for having children and the problem for Norwegian students of the great
length of university education.

But like things are today most people, or anyway many people, are taking a long
time in education. And so if everyone was going to wait until they’d finished their
studies they’d have to wait quite a long time. And of course there’s lots of people
who want to have children before they’re thirty – There are a lot of people who’ve
got higher education so if you want to plan everything it’ll be neither one thing nor
the other.

This is where gender explicitly enters into the discussion. As several com-
ments from the young women suggest, there are considerable dilemmas for
women about the timing of having children because of ‘the biological clock
ticking away’, as one put it. However, the young women were torn about ‘doing
a lot of other things first’ before having children, and they concluded that hav-
ing children does not necessarily put a stop to being young and ‘running wild’.
These young women envisage juggling their different identities simultaneously;
they seek to keep their options open.

Focus group moderator: How will it be when you’ve finished ‘running wild’?
E: You can say that again! I’m sure it’s just that people assume that they are
going to finish with it –
C: Of course it is not so sure people want to either [Agreement]

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526 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

E: I think it is a trap which a lot of people fall into, stuff like, now we’re par-
ents of small children, and so we’ve got to stay at home and protect the chil-
dren against the rest of the world . . . it’s an ideal, cut out all ties, or, not all but
a lot of ties, and just concentrate on that. You forget lots of the interests you
had before, I’ve seen it several times.
The comparable groups of British female students and female employed
graduates did not articulate the same sense of mastery and control in relation
to negotiating their preferred labour market possibilities as the Norwegian
groups. This is not surprising given the difficulties in recent years of some
British students in finding ‘graduate type’ jobs (Shavit and Mueller, 1998), the
high levels of perceived job insecurity, especially among professional workers
(Burchell et al., 1999), and among full-time working parents (Cully et al.,
1999). However, some talked about negotiating future ways of reconciling
employment with having children, notably expressing the traditional female
preference for working part-time if and when they became mothers (a few
young men also said this), while other young people questioned having children
at all. Some British young men and women also emphasized the importance of
‘couple compacts’ in managing both jobs and children, reflecting the individu-
alized and familial solutions of British childcare and the absence of an infra-
structure of public childcare. In general, the discourse of ‘individual choice’ was
articulated, at least normatively speaking, in relation to having to navigate indi-
vidual routes through the labour market. However, young people also made
reference to what they saw to be the temporary, insecure nature of much of the
employment open to them (Lewis et al., 1998).
Under this model, young people saw the future in terms of trying out dif-
ferent occupations and assumed that they would have a wide range of jobs to
choose from. Their attitude to work was that if they did not like one job, they
could always find a different one and draw upon different qualifications and
skills. They want the option to be mobile and flexible to be left open since they
fear being stuck in a job. At some point they want to settle down but do not see
this ruling out continuing to enjoy being young. One reason for this in Norway
may be the widespread cultural acceptance and public support for combining
employment and child care responsibilities. As in the last model (the deferment
model), the young women expressed a strong orientation towards employment.
However, unlike the young women in the last model, they are thinking about
the future in a gendered way, notably their concern about the female biological
clock. While to some extent the white British students in higher education also
see the future as contingent and dependent upon their own adaptability and
flexibility, their emphasis is less on mastering their routes through the labour
market and more on negotiating its vagaries. Like their Norwegian counter-
parts, the young British women were aware of having to make decisions in
the longer term about having children (Norwegian university students tend to
stay longer in higher education than British students). But, unlike the
Norwegians, they were aware that they would have to rely upon their own

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resources and create their own solutions in the context of little public support
for childcare. On balance, for the groups in this model, the future is a challenge
which they believe they can master. In Bauman’s terms, they are ‘tourists’ who,
in contrast to the ‘vagabonds’, wish to experience life, both socially and liter-
ally, as free from the constraints of place (Bauman, 1998b).

The Model of Predictability: Striving in the Long Term for Security

By contrast, some young people had a clear view of their future adulthood
which they saw as relatively certain and secure, so long as they worked hard to
attain their long-term goals. The two focus group discussions we draw upon
here have similar viewpoints. In contrast to the groups in the adaptability
model, these are the true planners. They look to the long-term, firmly within the
framework of what we have called the model of predictability, and they expect
to remain within their chosen field or occupation throughout their lives.
Significantly, both groups we have identified are male. Their views reflect old
male breadwinner ideologies: in one case, the desire of second generation sons
of first generation British-Asian origin families to make it into the middle-class
professions and, in the other case, the aspirations of Norwegian working-
class young men to continue to find skilled work in the male-dominated, heavy
industry of their fathers.
The first group consists of four British-Asian young men, aged 18–19, who
were in their first year of studying law at university. These young people were
from families where great importance was attached to education and study.
Moreover, as children of first generation immigrants, these young Asian-origin
men expected to make their way in the world and to improve upon their own
parents’ economic situations. They expected to do so, not only for their
own sakes, but for the sake of their family to whom they felt bound by obliga-
tions. As sons, they expected and were expected to provide for their parents and
to marry wives who would care for their husbands’ parents. In this next focus
group extract, the young men discuss the reasons why they had chosen to study
law at university. The focus group moderator posed the initial question in terms
of personal choice. While the Asian-origin young men appeared to agree that
they had decided on their own careers, they also referred to strong parental
influence. They clearly sought to conform to norms concerning the desirability
of upward mobility whereby education would lead to a remunerative profes-
sional occupation.
N: Parents tend to push us toward professions like law or medicine although
you do have a say in it . . . But like if you wanted to do something like, you
know, something not so high status – like a shopkeeper or something like
that – they’ll take you away from that. They say: ‘This is the good point about
law.’ They’ll tell you about the salary and all that and so make you want to do
law.
Focus group moderator: What about the rest of you? Has this been the same?

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528 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

A: No. Basically it was my own choice but of course there was a lot of guid-
ance, especially in Asian families. They are the centre of the community. It’s
actually very, you know, close knit . . . Maybe money and everything is a factor.
Basically you are guided to professions where it’s easier, you know, and the
status –
Focus group moderator: So it’s your own choice but you have been directed in
that avenue?
[Agreement] . . .
R: The same thing happened to me. My dad wanted me to be a solicitor. That’s
why I came to this side of things.
[. . .]
A: Education is always there while I am growing up . . . You know your family
is always there and education, culture, identity, religion and perhaps social
friendships.
The model of predictability also to some extent fits a group of five
Norwegian shipyard workers, who ranged in age between 19 and 22 and who
were still in vocational training. They described how they had been encouraged
by their families, their fathers in particular, to gain formal training and qualifi-
cations which had not been available to their fathers when they were young.
These young men were concerned about the competitiveness of the labour
market, which they contrasted with the ease with which their own fathers had
gained jobs at the same age. They felt that education and formal skills would
make for a more secure future. Yet, while they appeared very aware of the
changing world of employment, they saw their future family lives as clearly laid
down and as more or less the same as their own parents’ lives.
Focus group moderator: How about when you reach the same age as your par-
ents are today?
D: Me, I think it will be the same, well not quite. – I’m thinking about when
I’m 40 to 50 then I’ll probably have a house and a mortgage and – well, this
and that and kids . . .
When asked under what conditions they would consider starting a family,
they all agreed that security in the sense of having a steady income to support
the family was the most important precondition.
C: [a regular job] means a regular income. It’s a security –
E: . . .you’ve usually got responsibilities for loans and things like that . . . and
it’s better to have a regular job every day so you can meet your financial obli-
gations, to support yourself and maybe a family.
One young man (E) refers to the old breadwinner model when he said:
It’s a pattern we’ve had for hundreds of years, you get a family and kids and you’re
the breadwinner and [laughter from the rest of the group] yes, but that’s how it is!
My grandfather was in fishing, my great-grandfather was in fishing and supported
the family at home, that’s simply the way it used to be!

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Young people’s time perspectives Brannen & Nilsen 529

The discussion among these young men was premised upon the normative
situation in Norway in which both parents are expected to be in employment
when children are young (around 80 percent of mothers with dependent chil-
dren are employed in Norway) (Deven et al., 1998). Yet their expectations of
family life were in some respects highly traditional. With the widespread provi-
sion of public childcare, they saw it as desirable that their children should
attend nursery, but not before they were old enough. When asked who should
look after the child before that time, they took it more or less for granted that
the mother should stay at home.
Both the British and Norwegian groups of young men made distinctions
between different phases in the lifecourse. Unlike the groups in the other two
models, they do not make a strong distinction between being young and adult-
hood. Both were confident that they will, at some fairly predictable time in the
future, get married and start a family ‘just like everyone else’. A secure job, a
permanent contract and good wages and salaries were seen as the preconditions
for this to happen and as a progression rather than a leap from youth to adult-
hood. (Some of the Norwegian shipyard workers were already saving to buy a
house, itself indicative of a long-term view of the future and a progressive route
to adulthood.) They expect their lives to follow the same sequence as those of
their parents. Both groups share in common the desire to be providers for their
families. Even if their partners are likely to be in employment, their clear sense
of responsibility stems from being part of a strong male tradition in their sphere
of employment and their family lives, which is reflected in their general views
of what life will be like as adults. In this, they are ‘expectant’ rather than ‘appre-
hensive’ about the future (Sennett, 1998).

Conclusions

In this article and in the analysis of our study of young people we have chosen
to focus upon time, a facet of social experience which has been much neglected
in empirical research. We have suggested that young people vary in how they
think about time – in particular in relation to their present condition of being
young and the way that they envisage adulthood in the future. We have put for-
ward three ideal typical ways which we have identified in, and applied to, our
material. Other models remain to be identified and analysed.
In the model of deferment, we have presented a critical case of how
younger young women (illustrated by two groups on vocational training
courses) consider adulthood in vaguer, more abstract terms than the young peo-
ple characterized by the other two models. These young women live very much
in the present and orientate themselves to their present status as young people
and toward the extended present opportunities provided for being young. In so
far as they take a longer term view, they make assumptions about adulthood
according to the old order which are based upon an unquestioning acceptance
that it will resemble their parents’ lives. They assume, though, that one day they

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530 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

will settle down, but not yet. They manage this by drawing a clear line between
being young and being adult. They think about the immediate future in terms
of getting into work. As we have shown, a strong work orientation was
expressed in discussions of the groups of young women in both the UK and
Norway who had relatively low levels of education and qualifications. In their
focus on the entry into work, their discussions do not refer explicitly to gender.
Gender emerges when they talk about adulthood, albeit vaguely. But rather
than think about how, as young women, they are going to reconcile employ-
ment with motherhood (a more difficult process in the UK than in Norway),
their current reference point for these young women is the lives of their moth-
ers which they do not wish to replicate.
In the model of adaptability, we have suggested that some young people
view the future as a risk to be calculated and controlled, and perhaps even a
positive challenge. These young people take one step at a time and try to ensure
that they are equipped to deal with a future which they see as constantly chang-
ing and requiring them to adapt. These young people (illustrated by a group of
female Norwegian university students) expect to be able to try out different
types of jobs before they settle down, and are adamant that they do not want
to get stuck in boring jobs. For the Norwegian young women, the future brings
challenges which they feel confident they will master. They are expectant rather
than apprehensive about the future, and they believe that it is up to them what
they make of it. They perceive few constraints arising from their status as
women. However, when discussing family responsibilities and the timing in the
lifecourse as to when they intend to have children, young women were con-
cerned about not deferring the birth of children indefinitely. This was especially
the case for the Norwegian students who spend a long time in education (com-
pared with UK students) and so enter the labour market late; on the other hand
it is not uncommon for students in Norway to have children during their uni-
versity courses. In the male groups generally, there a singular lack of concern
about any problems they might encounter as fathers. In contrast to Norway, we
noted that the British students were more concerned about the insecurity of the
labour market but also subscribed to notions of individual choice including the
management of their employment and family careers, if and when they become
parents.
The model of predictability was illustrated by two groups of young men,
whose orientations are not dissimilar to traditional male breadwinner ideolo-
gies and old assumptions about jobs for life. Both groups viewed their lives as
set on clearly-charted courses. Far from constructing individualized pathways
into adulthood, and rather than expecting to make short term plans according
to changing circumstances, the young British-Asian men were collectively fol-
lowing a route into highly remunerative professions (assumed to be ‘safe’) in the
knowledge that they have behind them the support and aspirations of their first
generation immigrant parents and communities. The Norwegian shipyard
workers were influenced by their traditional working class backgrounds and by
their fathers’ working lives. They took pride in their skills and competence in

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Young people’s time perspectives Brannen & Nilsen 531

their chosen vocation. This does not mean that they did not think in terms of
choices and opportunities but, rather than seeing these as being of their own
making, for them adulthood is embedded in collective male traditions and a
clearly scheduled, standardized lifecourse. Interestingly, they did not see a great
leap between youth and adulthood.
The developing literature on concepts of time has provided a useful frame-
work for interpreting our empirical material; it has helped to provide a ‘lan-
guage of description’ (Bernstein, 1996) which differentiates the experiences of
young people. As other writers have pointed out, Bauman and Sennett in par-
ticular, current economic trends point toward a situation where only the best
qualified will have the opportunity to make plans for the future. To live only in
the present is to be its prisoner, as Sennett (1998) observes. Following this line
of thinking, the ‘discourse of choice’ is likely to be prominent among particular
groups: among the relatively privileged young whose education is likely to lead
to better career opportunities, as we found, while in other groups, the old order
of collectivism prevails. Moreover, diversity is not random. As Bauman’s thesis
suggests, in a society where individualism and choice are a dominant motif, the
privileged stand a better chance of being the choosers. Those who have fol-
lowed more traditional patterns, who have a strong sense of belonging to
traditions which offer a well-trodden route into adulthood, are less inclined
to see their futures in terms of individual choice and as a risk to be taken and
a challenge to be conquered (social class traditions are also relevant here). Two
groups of young men we have discussed – Norwegians shipyard workers and
British Asian lawyers-to-be – may not at face value appear to have much in
common. But they share a common perspective in the tradition of the male
breadwinner; they hold a long term perspective on the future and they plan
accordingly. It is perhaps ironic that the only young people in the study for
whom the notion of life as a planning project may be truly apt are those who
aspire to be male breadwinners.
Even if there are elements of planning in the discussions of the other
groups, these are projections of the present or extended present. In that sense
their plans are not strictly plans, but rather courses of action upon which indi-
viduals are already set (Nilsen, 1999). In other words, the notion of life as a
planning project is less appropriately applied to those who envisage the future
in terms of choices and options. Rather a planning project involves a long term
perspective associated with those whose lives are embedded in established
collectivist traditions and that conform to traditional male biographies.
Imposing a dichotomy upon young people’s lives in terms of either the
‘choice biography’ or the ‘standard biography’ is too simplistic. Our argument
is that the way that young people navigate the transition to adulthood is influ-
enced by their perception and experience of time, and that the notion of young
people’s agency in terms of planning and making choices, which is so prevalent
in the theoretical literature, has ignored this important dynamic.
There are many factors shaping these time orientations which, as our ana-
lysis suggests, are likely to change as young people construct their pathways

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532 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

into and through adulthood. These include: the opportunity structures of edu-
cation and training, which have implications for employment aspirations and
patterns; the influence of gender – as girls weigh up the contingencies of the bio-
logical clock and negotiate gendered identities both with reference to changing
gender opportunities and role models offered by their mothers and fathers;
youth lifestyle and consumption opportunities and cultural constructions of
what it means to be young; changing maps of social class meanings and desig-
nations; and the influence of race and ethnicity. In this study, it was neither our
intention, nor was it possible, to disentangle the relative importance of this
complex of factors. Indeed, we would argue that the complex of material,
social, cultural and discursive resources available (or not) to young people,
together with the way that young people orientate themselves in and to time,
are germane to young people’s construction of their identities and to their nav-
igation of trajectories from youth to adulthood in a changing world. Young
people both construct their own lives (in increasingly self-conscious ways) and
feel ownership in their construction, while their lives are framed by material,
social and space contingencies (Ball et al., 2000). As we have attempted to
show, how young people view their futures needs to be seen through the lens of
the dual epistemology of agency and structure or, as Roberts et al. (1994) have
termed it ‘structured individualisation’ (emphasis added).

Notes

1 The cross-national study, ‘Young People’s Orientations to the future reconcili-

ation of employment and family life’ was funded by the European Union, DG
V, under the Equal Opportunities Programme. Researchers from Britain,
Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Portugal were involved in this project and col-
lected data in their own countries. The initial cross-national analysis was pub-
lished in a report, Futures on Hold (Lewis et al., 1998) and a fuller analysis has
been published (Brannen et al., 2002). The study’s focus was young people’s
views of future employment and family life, and did not set out explicitly to
examine their views of the future in general nor their conceptualizations of
time. Our purpose in this article is therefore somewhat different from the focus
of the cross-national study. Moreover, our analysis presented in the article
draws on a subset of cases from the Norwegian and British studies in which we
seek to apply theories about time.
2 The term ‘risk’ has a somewhat different meaning in Sennett’s analyses than
in Beck’s (1992). Sennett draws on theories of probability calculation, and
the ‘regression to the mean’ in any set of random events, meaning that any
previous event has no impact on future events; all events are isolated, one
cannot predict the outcome of one event from any previous event (Sennett,
1998).
3 See also a parallel study, based on individual interviews with young Norwegian
men and women, for a conceptual discussion on different ways of thinking of
the future in terms of planning (Nilsen, 1999).

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Young people’s time perspectives Brannen & Nilsen 533

4 Beck (1996) uses the notion of ‘threat’ to describe phenomena that cannot be
conceptualized by the term ‘risk’, such as nuclear disasters, since they are
beyond any measures of calculation and control.
5 The cross-national study sought to examine young people’s orientations to the
future reconciliation of employment and family life. As noted above, it was
funded under an initiative which sought to generate research with a strong
action component under the Equal Opportunities Programme of the EU. It is
somewhat ironic that the study resulted in such a keen interest in theoretical
issues. Its focus was on the ways in which young people view employment and
parenting careers and the resources that they consider ought to, and are likely
to, be available to young people, if and when they become parents (the latter
being the action component). To this end, the following research design was
chosen. Different groups of young people were to be studied in each country
which reflected both the range of different pathways into the labour market
according to educational level (those on vocational training courses straight
from school and those in higher education) and also their different destinations
in terms of jobs (higher status nonmanual occupations and lower status non-
manual and manual occupations). To some extent, there is an overlap with age,
with younger young people in vocational training and higher education and
older young people in employment. Given the extension of training and educa-
tion in most European countries (European Commission, 1997), we decided to
focus on young people between 18 and 30. We also sought to recruit unem-
ployed young people but since, in most countries, young people were in train-
ing of some kind, this proved difficult.
Because we were interested in young people’s orientations, our preference
was for a qualitative approach. However, the funding for the research was
small and its time scale short. There were insufficient resources for translation
of all the material and very limited resources in terms of analysis. For these rea-
sons we decided to carry out an exploratory study since there are few cross-
national qualitative studies to guide us. Our main aim was to provoke
discussions among young people about issues which were, for most young
people, largely hypothetical – that is combining employment with bringing up
children; in all countries young people are deferring parenthood to older ages.
Because we sought to generate reflexivity around a lifecourse phase and set of
social situations yet to be encountered, we decided to use the focus group
method. We sought to encourage the development of discourses among young
people which were not driven solely by the explicit focus of the study. There is
no sense in which focus group methodology attends either to generalize about
young people or to generate biographical material.
Approximately 10 focus groups were conducted in each of the five countries
(UK, Portugal, Ireland, Norway and Sweden). They ranged in size between
three and ten participants, were held in a variety of settings and lasted approxi-
mately an hour each. A total of 402 young people took part. Interviews were
also conducted subsequently with selected young people (not drawn from the
focus groups) but these data are not discussed in this paper. The focus groups
were conducted with young people aged 18–30, which were organized by gen-
der as well as by level and status related to education, training and occupation:
low skilled workers – male and female groups; higher skilled/professional
workers – male and female groups; vocational trainees – male and female

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534 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 3 ■ August 2002

groups; university students – male and female groups. Recruits were found
through a number of sources: employers, universities, training organizations,
outreach workers (for the unemployed), and personal contacts. In some coun-
tries, notably the UK, additional groups were carried out with minority ethnic
groups (male and female). Because of the method of selecting young people, it
was inappropriate to specify social class or family of origin. A small number of
young people were in couple relationships and a few had children.
Developing the research methodology and the collaborative method of analy-
sis involved cross-national meetings but relied also on two other mechanisms:
the first was the co-ordination carried out by the research officer, who was
funded half-time on the project for a period of 2 years, and the second involved
communication by e-mail. The latter was a new mode of communication and
for most of us was not without its problems. The method of analysis was
largely thematic with different researchers taking on responsibility for
analysing particular conceptual or substantive themes (as in this article, we
sometimes worked in pairs or triads). In some cases, as in this article, the con-
ceptually-driven analysis involved focusing upon a subset of the focus group
data and on an elucidation of those focus group discussions in which issues of
time orientations are articulated. The analysis process has had to contend with
lack of funds for translation of some material as well as problems of cross-
cultural interpretation. Issues about the focus group method and its conse-
quences for analysis are explored in the forthcoming book (see chapter by
Smithson and Brannen, 2002) and in an article based on this study by Smithson
(2000).

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Julia Brannen

Is Professor in the Sociology of the Family at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute
of Education, University of London. She has written and researched in the following
areas: gender, families with young people and children, resources in households, the
interface between the labour market and family life. She is co-founder and co-editor of
the International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory and Practice. Her most
recent book is Connecting Children: Care and Family Life in Later Childhood (Routledge
Falmer, 2000).
Address:Thomas Coram Research Unit, 27/28 Woburn Square, London WC1H OAA,
UK.
E-mail: j.brannen@ioe.ac.uk

Ann Nilsen

Is Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway. She has

written and researched in the following areas: women’s lifecourses, biographical
methods and time and environmental sociology. She is co-editor of the journal of
sociology (Sosiologisk tidsskrift).
Address: Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Fosswinckels gt. 6, N-5007
Bergen-University, Norway.
E-mail: a.nilsen@sos.uib.no

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