Understanding Urban Adolescent Mothers' Visions of the Future in Terms of Possible Selves

ABSTRACT

As part of a larger study of factors influencing the educational and occupational achievement of adolescent mothers, this study explored the phenomenology of pregnant and parenting teens' aspirations and expectations using the construct, “possible selves.” Focus group discussions, autobiographical projects, and self-report surveys revealed that African American pregnant and parenting youth develop self-representations related to future achievement in the context of interactions with neighborhoods, health care systems, and adult support figures. Results related to teens' “ideal selves,” “feared selves,” and “who they might become” are presented.     

Relationships Among Middle‐School Adolescents' Vocational Skills,Motivational Approaches,and Interests

This study examined gender differences in relationships among vocational skills, motivational approaches, and same‐gender and cross‐gender interests for urban adolescents. Results showed gender differences in interests, with males having greater Realistic interests and females having greater Artistic and Social interests, based on Holland's (1997) theory of interest types. Structural equation modeling revealed that males tended to approach the occupational world with assertiveness, the desire to create opportunities, and the use of instrumental support. Females tended to approach the occupational world by being adaptable, capitalizing on their skills and abilities, actively preparing themselves for the future, exploring options, and using emotional support. Recommendations for career development practice are provided.     

Going Against the Flow: A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Cognitive Skills and Gender Beliefs on Occupational Aspirations and Outcomes1

Occupational sex segregation persists in part due to cultural beliefs in the existence of gender differences in skills. This article explores potential resistance to the gender‐typical aspirations and outcomes that re‐create occupational sex segregation: cognitive skills in gender‐atypical areas (i.e., math skills for women and verbal skills for men) and beliefs about women’s prioritization of family over paid work. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort, I find that individuals with skills in areas considered gender atypical have less traditional occupational aspirations and outcomes than their otherwise‐similar counterparts. This process varies by gender, however. The results reflect the differential valuation of math and verbal skills. I conclude that programs designed to encourage women to pursue gender‐atypical occupations that align with their gender‐atypical skills are focusing on the least resistant group.     

Using the Constructs Multifinality,Work Hope,and Possible Selves With Urban Minority Youth

This article describes and highlights the potential contributions that the constructs multifinality, work hope, and possible selves make for designing career counseling interventions and for better understanding possible career‐related factors associated with academic engagement and achievement among urban minority youth. Multifinality may serve as a superordinate orientation because it conceptualizes development as discontinuous and relatively plastic, allowing for youth deemed at risk to follow more hopeful pathways. Work hope and possible selves emphasize the utility of providing urban minority youth with space to answer questions related to what they might achieve and do in the future and who they might become. Together, multifinality, work hope, and possible selves provide a hopeful conceptual framework for career researchers and practitioners.     

Constructing Clean Dreams: Accounts,Future Selves,and Social and Structural Support as Desistance Work

This article investigates the discourse individuals use when talking about desisting from criminal offending. I analyze the links between offenders’ accounts of past negative behavior, their construction of their possible “clean” future selves, and the social and structural conditions in which they were raised and continue to be embedded. Applying Scott and Lyman's (1968) framework on accounts and Markus and Nurius's (1986) framework of possible selves to interview data with twenty‐eight criminal offenders, I illustrate how excuses for past behavior provide a way for people to distance themselves from their past selves in attempts to preserve or re‐create a possible self that is still worthy to be redeemed in the future. This discourse becomes one mechanism that motivates individuals to change their lives—but it can be short‐lived. The analysis highlights how limited structural opportunities influence individuals’ lifestyles and behaviors, how individuals approach the desistance process even in the face of structural deprivation, and how they attempt to sustain this desistance process.     

Man Up,Man Down: Race–Ethnicity and the Hierarchy of Men in Female‐Dominated Work

Scholars have largely overlooked the significance of race and socioeconomic status in determining which men traverse gender boundaries into female‐dominated, typically devalued, work. Examining the gender composition of the jobs that racial minority men occupy provides critical insights into mechanisms of broader racial disparities in the labor market—in addition to stalled occupational desegregation trends between men and women. Using nationally representative data from the three‐year American Community Survey (2010–2012), we examine racial/ethnic and educational differences in which men occupy gender‐typed jobs. We find that racial minority men are more likely than white men to occupy female‐dominated jobs at all levels of education—except highly educated Asian/Pacific Islander men—and that these patterns are more pronounced at lower levels of education. These findings have implications for broader occupational inequality patterns among men as well as between men and women.     

School performance, academic aspirations, and drug use among children and adolescents

The relationship between drug use, school performance, and academic aspirations among 446 Anglo and Hispanic youths, age nine to seventeen, is explored. Two groups of subjects--current substance users and non-users--were interviewed. Subjects in each comparison group were similar in age, ethnicity, and gender. Overall results, consistent with prior research, indicate a significant relationship between current school performance, future educational aspirations, and drug use. No difference was noted between substance use groups on indicators of general interest in school work or probability of dropping out of school. Important differences in response patterns occurring with age, ethnicity, and gender were found.     

Breaking New Ground: Diverse Routes to College in Rural America*

Abstract Rural communities pose a challenge to status attainment models that explain children's educational attainment primarily in terms of the parents' education and professional status. Alongside the rural professional class are farmers of similar social status but with less education and other families that lack the status and resources of both professional‐class and farm families. The prolonged agricultural crisis in the American Midwest has turned rural youths toward college and has raised questions about the educational value of resources provided by farm parents and other rural parents. We classified youths from the Iowa Youth and Families Project into three SES groups: professional‐managerial, farm, and lower‐status. We compared these groups on resource levels and on the extent to which the resources predicted enrollment in a four‐year college one year after high school. Findings indicated three distinct routes to four‐year college. Professional‐managerial youths tended to follow the traditional path from parents' educational and other resources and support to their own academic involvement and aspirations for higher education. Successful farm youths, in lieu of parental educational advantages, drew on parents' community ties. Resourceful lower‐status youths, in the absence of family background advantages, generated educational attainment through early educational ambition and varied community and school involvements. Even relatively low levels of involvement were valuable to these youths' educational attainment.     

Gender Gaps in Educational Outcomes Among Children of New Migrants: The Role of Social Integration from a Comparative Perspective

This article reviews current research on gender gaps in educational outcomes among children of new migrants (first, 1.5, and second generations) from a comparative cross‐national perspective. The article examines potential explanations for why gendered differences in educational outcomes among immigrants (vis‐à‐vis non‐migrants) continue to occur, focusing on individual, schooling, and institutional factors. For example, while gender gaps in expectations and aspirations as well as some cognitive outcomes are increasing (reading ability is considerably higher among females) and shrinking in specific subjects (e.g. math and science ability is slightly higher among boys), that process often has been less explored within and across immigrant vis‐à‐vis non‐immigrant students. We show that in some countries, gender gaps among disadvantaged ethnic minorities (in relation to other groups) continue to persist and are exacerbated by institutional factors. These disadvantages vary not only across different educational systems and at different rates over time but also are based on students' social background. Overall, we argue that these educational inequalities are key to understanding not only the socioeconomic and future political adaptation of migrants and their children but also future social policy developments in the European Union context.     

AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF IDENTITY AND CAREER CHOICE*

Standard economic models tend to be more specific about pecuniary payoffs than nonpecuniary payoffs to education. Based on the ideas of Akerlof and Kranton, we consider a model of career choice and identity where individuals derive nonpecuniary identity payoffs. Using factor analysis on a range of attitude questions, we find two factors related to identity (career orientation and social orientation), which are important for planned educational choices and for observed gender differences. The implication is that policy makers and institutions of higher education need to focus on identity‐related issues rather than just improved financial incentives if they aim at attracting high‐ability youths to certain careers. (JEL I21, J24)     

Shifting STEM Stereotypes? Considering the Role of Peer and Teacher Gender

This study builds on research on the power of counter‐stereotypical cues, as well as intergroup contact theory, to consider whether interactions with a female teacher and female peers in a high school engineering classroom decrease male students' gender/science, technology, engineering, and math stereotypical beliefs and whether this varies according to the initial strength of their stereotypical views. Analyses reveal that among male students who initially reject stereotypes of male superiority, more female peers in the classroom leads to a further decrease in their stereotypical views by the end of the year. In contrast, boys who held strong stereotypical beliefs became less stereotypical by the end of the course when they had a female teacher. Implications for future research and current educational reforms are discussed.     

Do gender differences in preferences for competition matter for occupational expectations?

Occupational segregation by gender is prevalent and can explain some of the gender wage gap. I empirically investigate a possible explanation for this segregation: the gender difference in preferences for competition, which in recent experimental studies has been found to affect economic outcomes. My findings suggest that women’s greater distaste for competition decreases educational achievement. It can also explain part of the gender segregation in occupational fields. Specifically, accounting for distaste for competition seems to reduce gender segregation in the fields of Law, Business & Management, Health, and Education.     

Class and ambition in the status attainment process: A Spanish replication

There are two principal theoretical schools that seek to explain status outcomes in early adulthood: those focusing on intergenerational transmission of class privilege and those emphasizing individual characteristics, particularly ambition. The first may be called the structuralist school and the second the psycho‐social school, following the Wisconsin Model of Status Attainment. A second structuralist perspective, Segmented Assimilation, highlights transmission of socio‐economic status across immigrant generations, but emphasizes the positive role of co‐ethnic resources for upward mobility and preventing downward assimilation. We examine these alternative predictions using a large longitudinal sample of youths in Spain that includes both children of native parentage and children of immigrants. Spain possesses characteristics that make it uniquely suitable to examine these predictions. Results show that both family socio‐economic status and ambition, measured by adolescent educational aspirations and expectations, play important roles in educational and occupational attainment, but the influence of family status persists even after controlling for ambition. The influence of co‐ethnic nationalities disappears after these controls, except among Chinese and Filipino youths, a result consistent with segmented assimilation. Predictive models of status attainment yield identical results for children of immigrants and children of natives, indicating that in Spain, they have become part of a common youth universe. Theoretical and practical implications of the analysis are discussed.     

Separate Spheres or Increasing Equality? Changing Gender Beliefs in Postwar Japan

This research investigates change in gender beliefs in Japan during a period of economic hard times in the late 1990s. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme on the Japanese population from 1994 (n = 1,054) and 2002 (n = 872), we examined how cohort replacement and intracohort change contributed to changes in gender beliefs. We found important differences from the patterns of change reported for many Western countries, namely, a decoupling between societal trends in the female labor force participation rate and beliefs about gender. Such differences may be attributable to factors such as the high societal valuation of the housewife role compared to that in other postindustrial countries and sanctions against full‐time employment for women in Japan.     

Moving Ahead in Madrid: Aspirations and Expectations in the Spanish Second Generation

This paper examines determinants of aspirations and expectations among children of immigrants based on a statistically representative sample of 3,375 second generation youths interviewed in 101 public and private secondary schools in metropolitan Madrid. We review the past literature on status attainment in general and aspirations and expectations, in particular, and draw from it a set of six hypotheses to guide the analysis. Most theoretical statements in this field have been developed on the basis of U.S. data; studies in other immigrant-receiving countries, especially outside the Anglophone world, have been scarce. The study thus provides an opportunity to test and refine existing hypotheses in a different national context. We present breakdowns of educational and occupational aspirations and expectations by gender, parental education and type of school attended. This is followed by multivariate regressions of all four dependent variables on these three plus other predictors suggested by the research literature. This analysis ends with structural equation models - recursive and non-recursive - that provide an integrated theoretical statement of the causal structure of ambition in the Spanish context. Implications of our findings for theory and policy are examined. Suggestions for future research in this field are discussed.     

Healing the Hidden Injuries of Class? Redemption Narratives,Aspirational Proxies,and Parents of Low‐Income,First‐Generation College Students

Existing scholarship has examined how low‐income individuals conceptualize their socioeconomically constrained positions in relation to the meritocratic ideologies and stratified mobility structures of the United States, but little is specifically known about how these individuals' ideas regarding their own status may be impacted by raising children who surpass their educational and occupational achievement levels. Drawing on interview data from both low‐income first‐generation (LIFG) college students and the parents of those students, this article examines how parents framed the achievements of their upwardly mobile, college‐going children in relation to their own experiences of socioeconomic, educational, and occupational constraint. Engaging qualitative understandings of the “hidden injuries of class,” the analysis demonstrates how parents of LIFG college students reconciled their own experiences of limited mobility despite hard work with their steadfast beliefs in meritocratic ideals by (1) invoking narratives of personal “redemption” from past “mistakes” or “failures” in relation to their children's educational accomplishments, and (2) conceptualizing their upwardly mobile children as “aspirational proxies” through whose accomplishments they measured their own success.     

Parents’ awareness of lesbian,gay, and bisexual youths’ sexual orientation

This study used a sample of 293 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth to examine factors that differentiated youth whose parents knew of their sexual orientation from youth whose parents did not know. Earlier awareness and disclosure of same‐gender attractions, greater childhood gender atypicality, and less internalized homophobia were characteristic of youth whose parents were aware of youths’ sexual orientation. Youth with aware parents reported more past verbal victimization on the basis of sexual orientation from parents, yet more current family support and less fear of future parental victimization on the basis of their sexual orientation.     

Why is the gender revolution uneven and stalled? Gender essentialism and men's movement into ‘women's work'

Men's limited movement into female occupations has been identified as a key barrier to future declines in occupational sex segregation and achieving greater gender equality. So why are men so reticent to enter jobs normatively regarded as female? Drawing from qualitative interviews with multiple stakeholders in four female‐dominated occupations in Australia, this article documents the processes that influence men's employment in gender‐atypical jobs. Gender essentialism is central to many processes that generate and/or stall changes in men's representation in female‐dominated occupations. While gender essentialism's role in producing and reproducing occupation sex segregation is well known, its role in reducing occupational sex segregation is a critical process which has previously received limited attention. The article details gender essentialism's integrative function.     

Understanding Transnational Labour Market Trajectories of African‐European Migrants: Evidence from the MAFE Survey

Labor market trajectories of migrants are seldom explored in a longitudinal and comparative perspective. However, a longitudinal approach is crucial for a better understanding of migrants' long‐term occupational attainments, while comparative research is useful to disentangle specificities and general processes across destination and origin countries. This article explores the labor market outcomes of migrants from Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana in different European countries, using the MAFE data to compare their occupational attainments before migration, upon arrival and during the first 10 years of stay in Europe in a longitudinal perspective. Results highlight different pattern of migrants' selection across destinations, influenced by prior employment status and education, gender and colonial legacies, and which impact subsequent trajectories into the European labor markets. Our analyses also show a severe worsening of migrants' occupational status in Europe compared to their situation prior to migration, which is the resultant of a dramatic downgrading upon entry and of a slow occupational recovering during the first 10 years of stay in Europe. Results suggest that the educational–occupational mismatch of skilled workers might represent a long‐lasting “price” for migrants, unless (further) educational credentials are achieved in destination countries.     

Heterosexually Married Men Who Have Sex With Men: Marital Separation and Psychological Adjustment

In order to provide an empirical base for generation of theory and the design of intervention and enrichment programs, relationships between youths' perceptions of parental values/behavior and their own sexual attitudes were tested, as well as the interactive effects of a formal course in sex education. Perceptions of parental sexual liberality, concern about nudity in the home during childhood, caring for each other, and sex‐role stereotyping were correlated to adolescents' sexual liberalism, as measured by the Athanasiou and Shaver scale (1969, 1970), and other categorical items which elicited views of homosexuality, access to abortion and sex manuals, sex‐love linkage, premarital sexual relationships, and persons from whom advice about sexual problems would be sought. Sixty males and 75 females, ranging in age from 11 to 19 years, participated. Parental liberality correlated with offspring liberalism and other attitudes. Interactive effects of sex education were found: Sexually educated youths who perceived their parents as moderate reported greater sexual liberalism than those without sex education. No difference related to sex education was found among youths who perceived their parents as conservative or liberal. Lack of parental concern about nudity related to greater adolescent liberalism. Few differences attributable to gender and age were found. The discussion cautions against causal interpretation of correlations and presents avenues for future research.