Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Essaying difference: Comparing essays across the sub-samples
- 2 Learning from their parents: Inter-generational change and continuity
- 3 Emotional literacy and domestic relations
- 4 Global visions and cramped horizons: Stories of class
- 5 ‘Intimate’ citizenship?
- Conclusion: Equality in the rhetoric, difference in reality
- Appendix 1 The questionnaires
- Appendix 2 The sample
- Appendix 3 Survey statistics
- References
- Index
1 - Essaying difference: Comparing essays across the sub-samples
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Essaying difference: Comparing essays across the sub-samples
- 2 Learning from their parents: Inter-generational change and continuity
- 3 Emotional literacy and domestic relations
- 4 Global visions and cramped horizons: Stories of class
- 5 ‘Intimate’ citizenship?
- Conclusion: Equality in the rhetoric, difference in reality
- Appendix 1 The questionnaires
- Appendix 2 The sample
- Appendix 3 Survey statistics
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction: ‘Choice’ or ‘risk’ biography?
When I was younger I thought that I would be very good at school and complete year 12 then I would travel and do everything I wanted. I thought I would get my licence straight away and have a car already and I would have my freedom and do whatever I wanted to do. I dreamt that I would live my life the way I wanted to and enjoy it and then around the age of twenty-five I would have the man I love — be married to him and start a family. I would have a good job that pays well and I would be paying off my house and I would have a nice new car and would be living comfortably, but when I started high school that all changed. At the age of fifteen I found out about drugs and got involved with them and started going down in my schoolwork because it didn't interest me any more, my mind wasn't on it. I started getting more and more involved with drugs and at the end of year 10 I quit school and just did nothing any more. … I became involved with [friend's cousin] and then I ran away with him. And then my parents moved away so I moved into a flat with him, and now I'm pregnant with his baby. And I'm confused about my future now but I hope that everything works out and I marry him and have a happy life with him. (female, working class government high school student, Adelaide)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Imagining the FutureYoung Australians on sex, love and community, pp. 23 - 60Publisher: The University of Adelaide PressPrint publication year: 2012