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- Title
‘Doing Gender’ in the Imagined Futures of Young New Zealanders.
- Authors
Patterson, Lesley; Forbes, Katherine
- Abstract
This article analyzes how 100 young New Zealanders (aged 16 to 18 years) imagined their futures, and particularly their future family life. In their written accounts imagining themselves aged 25 to 40 years, the participants drew upon dominant parenting norms in which contemporary gender beliefs positioning men and women as separate and discrete categories of people were implicit. Parenting was typically positioned as concrete and compulsory by young women and as abstract and complementary by young men. Conversely, paid work as abstract, contingent and amenable to interruption was imagined by young women; and as continuous and compulsory by young men. Given these findings we argue young New Zealanders ‘do gender’ in the social relational contexts of future family life and paid work. These findings are situated by the historical antecedents of New Zealand’s current modernized male-breadwinner family ideal, and recent ‘family-friendly’ policies designed to encourage mothers into paid work.
- Subjects
NEW Zealand; GENDER; FAMILIES; PARENTHOOD; PARENTING
- Publication
Young, 2012, Vol 20, Issue 2, p119
- ISSN
1103-3088
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/110330881202000201