Freedom, Constraint, and Family Responsibility

Abstract

This article examines kids' talk about cars, exploring what their talk reveals about the dynamics of family life among families with teenagers.1Using indepth and focus group interviews with teens, this article identifies how the car serves as cultural object around which parents and kids collaboratively negotiate both kids' autonomy from the world of family and their increasing responsibility to family that usually follows learning to drive. Highlighting the accounts of teens, this article identifies the central role of gender, class, and culture as parents and their young adult children collaboratively negotiate around the car. This analysis sets these family negotiations within the context of broader economic and social shifts often associated with “the new global economy,” including changing demands of work, mounting economic pressures for American families, and the eclipsing of family members' free time.