Imagining the future : young Australians on sex, love and community / Chilla Bulbeck.

Includes bibliographical references: (pages 257-281) and index.

Introduction -- Background to the research: 'The future is female' (is it?) -- Methods -- The questionnaire -- Writing the future: imagined life stories -- Outline of the book -- 1. Essaying difference: Comparing essays across the sub-samples -- Introduction: 'Choice' or 'risk' biography? -- Young women and their mothers: From caring for family to caring professions -- Young men's and women's life stories compared -- Young men: Cars and sports -- Sex and love -- Gendered career aspirations -- The homosexual imaginary -- Disadvantaged stories: No bridges from now to the future -- Aboriginal youth: Family and politics -- Young migrants' dreams -- 2. Learning from their parents: Inter-generational change and continuity -- Narratives of becoming: Women change their lives (and minds) -- Women's lives transformed by access to paid work -- Psychic transformation -- Men's disadvantage or opportunity? -- Fathers grope for stories of moving masculinities -- Sons deflect feminism in parodic masculinity -- Girly girls and blokes: Young people's consciousness of gender performance choices -- Feminism: Too far, too soon, too same -- Gender inequality: All about male disadvantage -- 3. Emotional literacy and domestic relations -- Emotional literacy: Crafting a choice biography in the company of others -- 'I am': Independent and interdependent? -- Psychological capital -- A meeting of minds? His and her imagined relationships -- 'Settling down': Breadwinning and childraising -- The 'neo-traditional' family: A compromise between his and her relationships -- Equality at the limits: Sharing the caring -- Equality and egalitarianism in housework and childcare -- Emotional literacy at the limits: Abortion decisions -- Changing institutions as well as women's desires -- 4. Global visions and cramped horizons: Stories of class -- The hidden injuries of class -- Consuming class -- The 'zombie' category of class -- Addressing class differences: Abject social services recipients and the welfare state -- Rejecting the social security subject position -- The poor are always with us -- 'Education generation': Equality of opportunity? -- Comparing educational pathways in the life stories -- Young mothers becoming 'can-do' girls? -- 5. 'Intimate' citizenship? -- Playing at politics -- Celanthropy: Money buys love -- Planet earth needs our love and protection -- Beyond 'yeah, whatever': The potential for individualised citizenship -- Gender relations: 'my feminism' -- Refugees: Good neighbours -- Reconciliation: Us and them and its quotidian expression -- Lacking sociological literacy in an age of individualism -- Conclusion: Equality in the rhetoric, difference in reality -- Appendixes -- The questionnaires -- The sample -- Survey statistics.

"Explores our contemporary complex equality narrative through the desires and dreams of 1000 young Australians and 230 of their parents from diverse backgrounds across Australia. This 'extraordinary' data set affords analysis of the impact of gender, socio-economic disadvantage, ethnicity, Aboriginality and sexuality on young people's 'imagined life stories', or essays written about their future. An intergenerational comparison assesses how different young people really are from older generations."--Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record.

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