Chronologising Adulthood/Configuring Masculinity

Abstract

This chapter explores the implications of particular temporalities for the contingent nature of the categories ‘youth’ and ‘adulthood’, showing the potential intersection of masculinity, femininity, occupational identity and social class at the site of contemporary lifecourse transitions.1 Its focus is prospective time and the configurations of masculinity which young men in different occupations imagine and indeed plan for, the calendars and maps through which they ‘make’ and mark the passage of time. Rather than the structuring of an individual man’s aims and objectives that result from workplace imperatives, the chapter details a potential meshing of professional and personal age-based transitions: for example, homeownership, marriage, fatherhood, level of income and position within company. In addition, we found that rather than a structured trajectory driven by male career goals, for young men in some occupations this prospective lifecourse chronology may be planned and operationalised by their female partners, particularly when they too share a commitment to personal career development. Rather than simply foregrounding familial considerations, then, men with female partners may find that these women are defining the broader range of chronologised achievements which both parties then orient themselves towards.