Social Reproduction and Change in the Transition from Youth to Adulthood

Abstract

Over the past decade research into youth and the transition to adult status has focused on the relationship between labour force and domestic life course trajectories, in the context of employment restructuring and declining demand for youth labour. Some writers have addressed a hypothesis of deferral amongst recent cohorts of young people in the timing of transitions from the partial dependence of youth to forms of adult independence. This hypothesis has been explored through consideration of significant life course events, particularly the attainment of independence from the parental home, cohabitation, marriage and birth of the first child. Critics have argued that research has not fully succeeded in locating youth and transition in relation to general social arrangements. It is argued that this problem arises as a consequence of a conceptual framework which foregrounds the issue of transitions from dependence to independence but undertheorises the relationship between them. The approach argues that employment and household resourcing arrangements together shape `dependence' and `independence'. Change in patterns of transition is integral to change in these general arrangements. The argument is developed through an analysis of change in the structure of rewards to employment and patterns of delay in family formation.