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Parents’ hopes and expectations for their

children’s future occupations

Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

Abstract

Qualitative research has generated important insights into the intersection of social
class, parental values and children’s experiences of education and their role in the
reproduction of inequalities. There has been less analytic engagement with parents’
expectations and aspirations regarding their children’s future occupations. Such
expectations and aspirations have attracted much research and policy interest.
Typically, analyses have been quantitative and focused on outcomes for children.
Whilst parental expectations are deemed very influential for children’s future occu-
pational outcomes, there is relatively little evidence on the shaping of such expec-
tations, or the ways in which future work and occupations are discussed between
parents and children. This article reports on an analysis of parents’ ideas about their
children’s future occupations and the contexts in which these ideas accrue meaning.
Drawing on primary data from interviews with parents we explore diversity within,
as well as across, social classes. First we explore parents’ expectations and aspira-
tions for their children’s future occupations. Secondly we consider how parents see
their own role in shaping such futures. The evidence highlights the salience of
parents’ own biographies and class backgrounds in shaping their orientations to, and
manner of engagement with, their children’s futures. Thirdly we briefly explore how
parents’ expectations and engagement with their children play out in class differ-
entiated ways as their children approach early adulthood.
Keywords: aspirations, children’s futures, employment, occupations, parents’ expec-
tations, social class

Introduction

Parents’ expectations and aspirations for their children’s future occupations

are deemed to play an important part in shaping such futures, a concern of
politicians and policy-makers as well as researchers. However, such occupa-
tional expectations and aspirations and the contexts in which they are shaped
and accrue meaning are not commonly a focus of analysis and there is a lack
of evidence allowing a comparison across social classes. This is a gap, both
within the literature which seeks to understand child outcomes, and within the
literature on parents’ values and social class inequalities. This paper reports on
The Sociological Review, Vol. 61, 111–130 (2013) DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02139.x
© 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published
by Blackwell Publishing Inc., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
02148, USA.
Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

an analysis of parents’ expectations and aspirations for their children’s future

occupations, and of the differing ways in which they engage with their chil-
dren’s prospective futures. We examine classed contexts and dynamics in the
shaping of expectations, and explore how class intersects with different styles
of engagement with children.
Recognition that aspirations and expectations are shaped by social class
position is long-standing, although there has been controversy over the nature
of this association (Hyman, 1954; Keller and Zavalloni, 1964; Goldthorpe,
2000; Bourdieu, 1986; Devine, 1998, 2004). Arguing against a position that
classes manifest different cultural values and priorities, Keller and Zavalloni
argued that different levels of aspiration should be interpreted structurally, or
positionally, with reference to ‘the relative distance of a social class from a
success goal’ (Keller and Zavalloni, 1964: 60). It is as ambitious, if not more so,
for the son of a semi-skilled labourer to aspire to be a skilled worker as it is for
the son of a professional to aspire to a profession. Goldthorpe (2000) draws on
this theory of social structural difference in his account of the stability of class
inequalities across generations. Here, economically rational outlooks charac-
terize expectations and behaviours, in contrast to the theory of cultural differ-
entiation developed by Bourdieu, wherein expectations and behaviours are
understood to be imbued with divergent social psychological dispositions
linked to differing positions in the class structure (Bourdieu, 1986).
A body of recent qualitative research and writing has provided a wealth of
insight into parenting, social class and orientations to children’s education and
schooling (Reay, 2005, 2000, 1998; Gillies, 2006a,b; Vincent and Ball, 2007;
Walkerdine et al., 2001; and in the American context Lareau, 2003). Research-
ers have drawn on Bourdieu here, and have explored ways in which familial
assumptions, cultures and resources of various kinds align with school and
other insitutional expectations. Reay’s work has been particularly influential
in turn, centring the role and work of mothers in aiding the educational work
of their children, and positioning them centrally within a theory of the repro-
duction of class inequality (Reay, 2005, 2000, 1998). All mothers are keen that
their children do well, and are typically supportive, encouraging and resource-
ful. However, the advantaged situation of middle-class mothers, their knowl-
edge of education systems, their associated confidence in dealing with their
children’s educational progress, and the material resources they have available
all work together in passing on privilege to their children. Middle and
working-class parents may act in broadly similar ways, for example in their
emotional involvement with children, or their efforts to support school work.
However, in an unequal system it is the work of middle-class mothers which is
disproportionately rewarded, and disproportionately effective in helping chil-
dren secure good future prospects (Reay, 2005, 2000). This work has offered a
powerful analysis of class, parenting and the reproduction of inequalities.
Here, as with other work on class and parenting (Lareau, 2003; Gillies, 2006a,
b), the focus is on the likely inheritance of generalized advantage and oppor-
tunity, or disadvantage and constraint, and less on the content of parents’

112 © 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

expectations and aspirations.There are few qualitative studies which engage in

depth with parents’ ideas about their children’s future occupations, although
there is some evidence on middle-class parents’ expectations (eg Devine,
2010). There is a lack of qualitative evidence which allows for a comparison of
parents’ occupational expectations for their children, and linked ideas about
their own roles, across social classes. Further, we have limited knowledge
about how possible occupational futures are discussed between parents and
children.
Survey evidence indicates the importance of parental occupational expec-
tations for later outcomes (Gutman and Akerman, 2009; Schoon, 2010). Paren-
tal involvement and parenting styles shape children’s outcomes on a variety of
measures relating to education, occupation and health and well-being more
generally (Kiernan and Mensah, 2011; Feinstein et al., 2008; Desforges and
Abouchar, 2003). Research shows that parents’ aspirations for children are
very important to educational achievement and occupational outcomes
(Gutman and Akerman, 2009; Duckworth et al., 2009; Schoon, 2010 in the UK,
and Kirk et al., 2011 in the US context). Quantitative methods have generated
a detailed picture of correlation and linear causation, yet leave us with a
relatively thin understanding of the content and nature of parental expecta-
tions and aspirations, and of the diverse class contexts in which they hold
meaning. Further, the emphasis is on children’s outcomes and there is very
little evidence on the shaping of parents’ expectations and aspirations, despite
their being deemed so influential.
The shaping of children’s ‘outcomes’ is a key concern of recent UK gov-
ernments’ strategies and policies which situate the family as the cradle of
children’s future life chances. The current UK Coalition Government is
seeking to promote its vision of a fair society through its social mobility and
early intervention strategies (Cabinet Office, 2011; Department of Work and
Pensions and Department for Education, 2011). Through the emphasis on
interventions with, and for, vulnerable families and the ‘breaking of barriers’
for disadvantaged youngsters, such policy agendas frame social inequality as
a ladder of opportunity. Commentators’ criticisms of previous New Labour
government policy retain or even gather force: social structural issues are
interpreted in individualized terms: causes of poverty may be seen as social,
but these are disadvantages that are deemed to happen ‘to the poor’ (Gillies,
2005; Gewirtz, 2001). In government rhetoric and policy frameworks, poverty
and lack of opportunity are problems for, and of, particular groups. Not only
is a structural problem misread, and resulting policies likely to be ineffectual
but linked discourses and policy agendas legitimate and fuel individualistic
understandings of the nature, causes and consequences of inequality (cf.
Gillies, 2005; Gewirtz, 2001). In the empirical analysis we offer, we focus not on
parents in extreme disadvantage, but on parents across a wide range of middle,
intermediate and working-class contexts. We explore parents’ expectations,
aspirations and practices.The evidence reveals a widely held ethos and cultural
framing of ‘successful’ futures for children as being within the grasp of indi-

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

viduals, shaped by meaningful action. In this respect lay understandings dove-

tail with the political debates. Our main focus of interest is with the ways in
which expectations and related subjective orientations are embedded within,
and provide analytic purchase on, structural and classed inequalities.
We report on an analysis of evidence from semi-structured interviews with
parents.We examine links between familial class circumstance and the kinds of
expectations and aspirations parents articulated for their children. We also
consider varying degrees of confidence amongst parents in helping their chil-
dren towards a hoped-for future. We explore how parents oriented to their
children’s future employment, and how they engaged with their children in
thinking about their future. There was great diversity within as well as across
classes here. Notable amongst some parents was a drive to nurture and shape
a particular kind of future for their children, and this appeared central to how
they saw their role as parents. Whilst this kind of intensity of engagement with
their children’s futures was an aspect of some parents’ accounts across all
social classes, we see evidence of how, in its expression and content, it
remained marked by class.The evidence suggests the value of a more sustained
analysis of parents’ own class inheritances in research into their aspirations
for, and interactions with, their children. It also hints at the salience of past,
gender differentiated, experiences for current styles of engagement by
mothers and fathers. Finally we consider how parents’ expectations and forms
of engagement with their children play out in class differentiated ways as their
children grow older.

Research design

‘Family contexts, class and parenting values’ was run as an extension project
of Real Life Methods (part of the ESRC National Centre for Research
Methods).1 The project was designed to research parents’ values and ideas,
their experiences and perceptions of their role, and their expectations for
their children’s education and future work. Research on family, schooling and
inequalities tends to focus on working-class or middle-class experiences. There
has been less evidence relating to those in the ‘missing middle’ (cf. Byrne,
2005). It was crucial to the project reported on here to allow for cross-class
comparison, to provide a basis for exploring internal class diversity, and to
include the ‘missing middle’.
In 2008 the authors ran a self-completion questionnaire survey of parents
with children involved in organized activities (for example, sports activities
run through local authority leisure centres, community football teams or dance
activities, and a local chess club). This allowed us to achieve a sample that was
suited to our interests in cultural capital and concerted cultivation (cf. Lareau,
2003), and was also a productive and effective practical strategy for securing an
extensive sample of parents across a wide spectrum of socio-economic circum-
stances. In all, 564 questionnaires were completed. A good representation of

114 © 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

middle, intermediate and working-class parents was achieved. We did not

access many people in extreme disadvantage (who we would not expect to
normally access organized activities) although there was some representation
of people in poverty. We accessed a good range of people within, as well as
across, classes. Respondents were invited to provide contact details with a view
to running qualitative interviews with a sub-sample, and 250 did so. We believe
the high level of offers here related to our personal contact with respondents
in distributing the questionnaires, along with the interest of parents in our area
of research. We completed 34 semi-structured interviews with individuals
identified strategically from the survey sample. This relatively modest number
was due to time and resource constraints.2 All participants lived in Leeds and
surrounding areas. In the summer of 2011 we undertook a second wave of
interviews, with 30 of the original participants.3 The main analysis here is based
on wave 1 data, but we draw on an analysis of material from the more recent
interviews particularly in the third part of our analysis.
Within the survey questionnaire respondents were asked questions about
their child’s involvement in organized activities, about the benefits of such
participation as they saw it, and some other general attitudinal questions.
These included a series of questions relating to how important different char-
acteristics are for a child to do well in life (cf. Irwin, 2009 and Park et al., 2004).
They were also asked ‘Have these characteristics changed in their importance
since you were a child?’, and asked to say if they thought each characteristic
had become more important, less important, or stayed about the same. We
took social class backgrounds, based on occupations held, and attitudes
regarding continuity and change in ‘the importance of having a good educa-
tion’, as a basis on which to sample for the qualitative research. Cross tabu-
lating social class and orientations to education revealed approximately half
of middle and intermediate class respondents to believe that the importance of
education for a child to do well has increased over time, as compared to
three-quarters of working-class respondents. This patterning is broadly con-
sistent with structural change in the relative importance of educational quali-
fications for the employment of working-class young people (Barham et al.,
2009). The distribution formed a useful basis for sampling within classes and
generated diversity with respect to parents’ perceptions of their own children’s
education, and their orientations to their children’s futures more generally
(Irwin and Elley, 2011). We also targeted for semi-structured interview parents
whose child at the activity was of upper primary school age or lower secondary
school age, so it would be more meaningful to explore reflections about
children’s future education and work at these ages (a large proportion of the
survey sample had younger children).
We had a high rate of agreement to participate amongst the people we
targeted, and interviewed 22 women and 12 men. Most were white British
although three were black British and one black Caribbean. There was a fairly
even spread of interviewees across middle, intermediate and working-class
backgrounds. Middle-class parents were most commonly aged in their forties,

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

and intermediate and working-class parents were most commonly in their

thirties. There was a mix of mothers and fathers talking about sons and daugh-
ters, although there was an over-representation of talk about sons amongst our
working-class parents, since more of them were accessed through community
football training. This is, however, of particular interest given the recent his-
torically changing landscape of employment opportunity for working-class
male youth. We cannot develop a systematic analysis of gender although, as we
will see, there is evidence of some difference in mothers’ and fathers’ outlooks
which we comment on at relevant points in the analysis.
The focus of the analysis which follows is parents’ orientations to, and
engagement with, their children’s educational and occupational futures.4 We
explored parents’ expectations and aspirations focusing on the child who had
been at the activity, but also explored expectations for other children in the
family. The analysis does not depend on the predictive accuracy of such expec-
tations, rather the purpose is to understand parents’ perceptions and reflec-
tions on what they saw as decent futures for their children. They were asked
‘Have you got any ideas about what sort of work {name} might end up doing,
or is it really too soon to even contemplate that?’ Middle-class parents might
be expected to engage with the question as a very immediate issue, part of
middle-class culture (Vincent and Ball, 2007). However, this question about
children’s future work was perceived as meaningful by most of our interview-
ees, across all class backgrounds, and who engaged with it often in depth and
with animation. If interviewees did not identify a specific occupation we asked
them: ‘What do you think of as a good job for {name} to be doing when s/he
is an adult?’ Parents tended to talk in terms they saw as realistic, yet also
indicated the sorts of things they hoped for. It was not the case there was a
clear divide between expectations and aspirations. Rather what they hoped for
appeared to be strongly grounded in what they saw as, at least potentially,
realistic.

Analysis: occupational expectations in context

Parents’ talk about expectations across social classes

We focus on parents’ diverse expectations regarding their children’s future
occupations and the contexts in which these expectations held meaning. How
options were perceived revealed a degree of openness, yet what was taken for
granted was strongly marked by social class.The evidence indicates differences
between middle-class parents on the one hand and intermediate and working-
class parents on the other in how they framed their expectations and in their
assumptions about the future.5
Middle-class parents typically envisaged as a good job for their children a
professional occupation and one which requires a university education. All of
the middle-class parents we interviewed had a university level education, and

116 © 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

held higher education as a routine expectation for their children. Generally

there was little discrepancy evident between expectations and aspirations.
Amongst middle-class parents, even those with the youngest children tended
to see as salient the question about what sort of job their child might do as an
adult, and talked at some length about their expectations for their children.
For example, Alex was a hospital consultant, married to a professional, with
children aged 11 and under. He had a clear and strong expectation his older
children would go to university. The expectation of university and a profes-
sional career, along with a sense of personal efficacy, was one the children
appear to embrace from a young age:

Josie on holiday, told us that she wants to do law and she wants to go to
Edinburgh. Cos she looked on . . . the internet to where she could do law
and so . . . when she was eight [she] has been planning, she wants to be a
barrister.

The expectation that their children could go to university is associated with

a sense of confidence about the prospects open to their children. This pattern
echoes other analyses of middle-class parents’ confidence and sense of enti-
tlement (eg Lareau, 2003; Devine, 2004). There was often a taken for granted
expectation that opportunities are there for those keen enough to grasp them.
As well as manifesting pleasure in their children showing suitably ambitious
ideas, we also saw parents encouraging their children to be more ambitious if
there was a concern they might aim too low. For example, Julia, a public sector
professional, was particularly keen to cultivate ambitious expectations in her
10-year-old daughter. She recounted how her daughter had wanted to do the
same occupation as a neighbour, a paediatrician:

She was only tiny. . . . ‘What’s a paediatrician?’ I said, ‘It’s a doctor that
looks after children.’ So if you’d have asked her in the past, she’d say she
wanted to be a paediatrician.

Julia continued the story which revealed the importance to her of holding high
expectations for her daughter:

. . . somebody had said that . . . I think they’d said, ‘Why don’t you work in
a nursery?’ . . . and I remember being incensed about that, why did they put
that into her head, cos it’s almost like at the bottom level? . . . I was think-
ing, well you’re taking away from that bigger dream . . . Anyway, so we sat
down and . . . I [said] to her, ‘Well, you can be whatever you want to be’.

Middle-class parents not only held high expectations but talked to their
children in ways that might encourage ideas of ‘suitable’ jobs. In addition they
often reflected positively on the value of university being ‘normalized’ in their
children’s environments. For example, Julia again, although typical of a
number of middle-class parents:

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

And my nieces are all at university now as well, so she’s around young
people now that are at university, and that’s all they talk about, you know,
so it’s kind of like, she’s got that thing buzzing around her that that’s where
they’re all at.

University was not seen as an unequivocal good by middle-class parents.

Nevertheless, it was seen as a realistic option for their children and, generally,
something to be chosen or actively rejected.6 Proximate points of reference
from one’s own background, extended family, friends and neighbours were
often alluded to by parents as part of the context in which they not only held,
but actively encouraged, suitable aspirations typically to a professional career.
Amongst intermediate and working-class parents we see some breadth in
hoped-for futures for their children. These often implied a degree of upward
mobility. There was much more limited experience of higher education
amongst these parents but some had a strong desire that their children should
go to university and secure a professional level job. Where university was an
aspiration for children typically this was not assumed, but hoped for.

Yeah, he absolutely loves science. You know, and, he now talks about
himself going to university and . . . he’s got his own aspirations to go to
university, whereas, I would never have, never have believed it, he would
want to go to university. (Barbara, full-time homemaker, married to police
constable, on her 13-year-old son)

In intermediate-class families, parents described a range of jobs they

thought might be good options for their children, and did so with varying
degrees of confidence and concern. There were differing degrees of efficacy in
evidence, from some who had a clear vision of their children’s futures to others
who held more of a ‘wait and see’ orientation. Whilst one of our working-class
interviewees in disadvantaged circumstances had an older child in higher
education, where university or graduate jobs were mentioned as future possi-
bilities amongst working-class interviewees these were usually described in
vague terms, and something which would be led by children depending on
their interests.
Whilst a number of parents in intermediate and working-class circum-
stances aspired to white collar work for their children, many identified prac-
tical or vocational routes, particularly where they had sons, and a career in the
police or army were seen as possibilities by some parents. Skilled manual
trades for sons remained a broad aspiration for many parents, in particular
amongst fathers in manual jobs. In households with a skilled craftsman father,
interviewees saw a trade as a positive aspiration for their sons although with
some ambivalence since they wanted ‘something a bit better’, in terms of how
hard their sons would have to work to earn a living.

. . . he’s said he wants to be a plumber or a bricklayer, but because I think

my husband, you know, it’s hard physical work, he’s more like, ‘You want to

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 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

do something better than that’ . . . and I do in a way (Debbie, part-time

administrator married to self-employed bricklayer, on 14-year-old son)
I love my job plastering [but] it’s a hard job . . . it’s just total graft . . . If he
goes my way fair enough. But I won’t push him that way . . . I will teach him
the trade cos obviously, its always handy having a trade. I will teach him that
erm, but . . . I want him to have an easier life than . . . I had, if I can (Kev,
self-employed plasterer, on 12-year-old son)
Working-class parents, without a skilled or self-employed background, typi-
cally hoped their children would make a step up the occupational ladder:
. . . I’d say, you know, be a good plumber, plumber or an electrician, you
know. [get some] good trades behind ‘em. Well paid jobs, and all. I mean,
if you, especially if you like ‘em, you’re laughing aren’t you? (Pete,
non-employed, former labourer, on 9-year-old son)
The vision of a skilled trade as a positive aspiration for their sons appeared
more strongly in fathers’ than in mothers’ accounts, perhaps because fathers
identified with such a job more readily themselves. Jenny was more circum-
spect, desiring a good future for her son whilst recognizing the shrinking
opportunities for acquiring a skilled trade. She talked of her and her husband’s
desire to encourage their son and support him so he could in future secure a
good job, one where he would do better than his father who worked as a driver
at an abattoir: ‘We talk about would he like to work with his dad in the
slaughterhouse and get up at two o’clock [in the morning]?’ They sought to use
her husband’s hardship as an incentive to her son, encouraging him to stay in
education beyond the minimum school leaving age despite his lack of enthu-
siasm for school.
Overall, then, talk about possible future jobs was described by parents as
being quite usual as a part of family conversation. Across diverse circum-
stances parents were encouraging their children to think about future jobs,
discussing job possibilities within conversations about children’s interests, and
sometimes using this as an incentive to motivate children in their school work.
Middle-class parents with a university degree more or less assumed their
children would access university and follow a professional job. The only par-
allel certainty of an ability to ‘transfer’ occupationally relevant skills and
resources to children was in instances where the father was a self-employed
craftsman. Nevertheless here there was a desire for ‘something a bit better’.
Elsewhere too there was a degree of expansiveness in hopes for the future,
with those in middling and less advantaged contexts typically hoping for their
children to do better than themselves. People drew on familiar and often
socially proximate reference points (eg their own jobs and those of other
family members, or neighbours) in talking about possible future jobs. We turn
now to consider how parents construed their own role in actively shaping their
children’s futures, as accounts of styles of engagement varied significantly
across the sample.

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

How do parents see their role in shaping their children’s future occupational
opportunities? Cruising, pushing or nudging to a hoped-for future
How their children will fare as adults was extremely important for all parents,
and all articulated their hopes for their children’s futures. However, they
appeared to perceive themselves to have very differing roles, as parents, in
facilitating such hoped-for futures. Some conveyed their desire to provide the
right context, and to encourage their children in a variety of ways. In contrast
some parents appeared to be centred on their children’s futures and conveyed
a belief that they themselves could make a significant difference by their own
actions and interactions with their children. These parents were particularly
driven and determined for their children to succeed educationally and in their
future employment. This was central to their accounts of how they saw their
role as a parent and recurred throughout the interview. It was partly related to
how they saw their children’s attributes but what became evident in analysis of
the data across cases was an association between parents’ own backgrounds,
and the role they accorded to their own drive and determination in shaping
their children’s future occupational opportunities. Being very centred on
encouraging their own children to succeed in their education and in future
work (at whatever ‘level’) often overlapped with experiences of upward
mobility. It was also commonly associated with parents feeling that they them-
selves had not been encouraged or supported in this way by their own parents.
This was construed by some parents as a consequence of ‘the times’ in which
they grew up, and by others as an aspect of poor parenting. They were deter-
mined to do things differently for their own children. Such parents described
their own intensive levels of input in seeking to motivate their children in their
school work and in encouraging them to think about their future occupations.
They often saw this as part of the emotional support they provided for their
children. Within the literature on class and parenting this ‘future focus’ and
pushing children to do well is often associated with a middle-class ethic (eg
Walkerdine et al., 2001; Vincent and Ball, 2007), so it is important to recognize
that it is manifest across a much wider population.
We initially discuss diverse middle-class orientations to children’s future
occupations. Some writers have emphasized anxieties amongst middle-class
parents concerned about their children ‘falling’ from a middle-class position,
and investing in or cultivating their children in ways which will help secure
their future success (eg Vincent and Ball, 2007). In our sample we were more
likely to see confidence amongst middle-class parents than we were to see
indications of anxiety. Some were very confident about their children’s future
when we first interviewed them and maintained this confidence even in the
depths of economic recession in 2011:

I mean I sort of, I’ve got this sort of arrogance for them that thinks ‘oh
they’ll be good at something. There must be something they’ll be good
at’. . . . And I think they’re, I think they’re all relatively driven, so they

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 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

should achieve something (Alex, medical consultant, children 13 and under,

wave 2)
He’ll go the, through to University I think. I, I actually personally think he’ll
probably become a professor (Lucy, lawyer, on 13-year-old son, wave 2)

Such confidence may relate to children’s perceived academic acumen, to how

driven they are, and to the extent to which parents perceive they can under-
write children’s futures, whether due to material resources or their own assur-
edness and sense of efficacy in shaping means and ends. Interestingly it was
more commonly articulated by parents who came from long-standing middle-
class backgrounds, sometimes described as stretching back across generations.
This was part of the context in which children’s future occupational success
was seen to be quite assured, at least so long as children were reasonably
driven to take up the opportunities available to them. Our metaphor of cruis-
ing to a hoped-for future may overstate the effortlessness of these middle-class
parents’ actions on behalf of their children, but it serves to highlight the
constrast, evident in the data, with those parents who were self-consciously
pushing their children to such a future. For this latter group, pushing their
children to do well came over as a central motif throughout the interview, with
parents returning to the theme and appearing very centred on their child’s
educational, and future occupational, success. This is not to say they lacked
confidence about their children’s futures but rather to emphasize the central
role they gave their own ongoing actions in this respect. It was often con-
strasted with their own experience of being parented. That their children
should drift and not have a focused idea about the future was a concern of
many parents who were themselves determined not to repeat others’ mistakes.
For example, Lisa was very strongly centred on motivating her son, had put in
place various strategies of support and encouragement for him to do well in his
academic work, and had a clear vision regarding a specific future professional
occupation which would suit his temperament, as well as how he should
achieve it. Reflecting on the importance of motivation she recounted her
pivotal role as a parent:

One of [my husband’s] brothers and my brother were very unmotivated.

And we see the same in Michael . . . our parents didn’t do anything. So both
men are now drifting . . . And so I’m sure one of the elements [why] we’re
really hard on Michael is that both of us have brothers who’ve certainly not
achieved what they might have achieved . . . I think both of us blame our
own parents for [that]. (Lisa, senior administrator, 14-year-old son)7

Julia, cited earlier, was very keen for her daughter to have high occupational
aspirations and she was very oriented to encouraging her daughter to achieve.
She related this to her black British identity and a linked determination that
her children’s success should confound racist stereotyping, and also to her own

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

biography of moving from a working-class, to a middle-class, context. Her own

mother was aspirational on her behalf but within horizons which were, from
Julia’s current professional perspective, very constrained:

My mum . . . thought a secretary in those days was absolutely fantastic.

So that’s what I aspired to, secretary . . . (Julia, social welfare professional,
10-year-old daughter)

Middle-class parents generally had a strong degree of confidence in their

children achieving the kinds of aspirations they articulated for them, and we
have seen differences amongst parents in how they perceived their own role
here. Across our sample of middle-class parents, experiencing upward mobility
into middle-class circumstances did not hold an exact association with this
centring of focus and determination, but there was a significant overlap sug-
gesting the salience of upward mobility to these attitudes. We might speculate
that ‘fear of falling’ is less a trait of the middle classes generally (Vincent and
Ball, 2007; Walkerdine et al., 2001) and more likely to be associated with
specific experiences and concerns. The evidence here suggests less a fear of
falling perhaps, as this may overstate the experience of anxiety, but a more
positively experienced determination by parents to consolidate their chil-
dren’s future life chances.
Parents in intermediate or working-class circumstances also manifested
diverse perceptions of their own role in cultivating their children’s future
employment success. Here there was a cleavage between those who were
relatively low key regarding their own influence and those who were very
centred on, and oriented to nurturing, their children’s future. Some parents in
the former grouping felt they had a relatively limited influence over their
children’s futures, and often conceded greater autonomy to their children than
did any of the middle-class parents. They conveyed how they sought to encour-
age their children and nudge them in positive directions, as captured by Ben’s
metaphor:

Obviously as a parent you, you will influence your children in everything,

you know. Try and influence him into eating carrots . . . he still won’t touch
it but you still . . . put ‘em on his plate. (Ben, self-employed driving instruc-
tor, 14-year-old son).
You can ‘opefully just put an inkling in his brain or something. Make him
think if it’s the right thing to do. (Mike, window fitter, 11-year-old son)

Such limits to perceived efficacy may reflect experiences of things not turning
out entirely as hoped. Mike, for example, went on to talk of his older daughter.
He was extremely excited she was at college when we first met him. When we
re-interviewed him he explained she was now in a junior service job:

You want your kids to, to do better than what you did. I never got any
qualifications cause I had a kid at fifteen . . . So all us lives we’ve pushed for

122 © 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

our kids to do better than us. So sometimes it ‘urts, when you think, you
know, [my daughter] could have done a little bit better.

Elsewhere, across a range of intermediate and less advantaged circum-

stances we see examples of parents who were very centred on their children’s
future occupational success, and who appeared to be very driven in seeking to
encourage their children in an ongoing and intensive way. This theme is
returned to throughout the interview as parents talked about how keen they
were that their children should aspire to a given level of achievement. Echoing
their ‘driven’ middle-class counterparts, many interviewees held salutary tales
about the waste of insufficient drive or motivation. For example, Di was a lone
mother who lived with her early teenage old son. She worked part-time as a
sales assistant. Her former husband worked in retail middle management. Her
father had been a miner and her mother a dinner lady. She talked extensively
of her determination that her son should succeed in education and in subse-
quent employment and constrasted it with her own experience of leaving
school and going on a Youth Opportunities Programme:

When I was at school I wasn’t given the opportunity to go to college. Erm,

my parents believed that you left school at 16 and you went to work and as
much as they supported me in that they . . . didn’t think college was the
right way to go so I didn’t do any further education and I want [my son] to
go to university, I want him to get a degree, erm, I want him to have choices
that I didn’t have and I want him to have a career as opposed to a job.

Steph also was a lone mother. She had two children, worked in a public sector
welfare job, and lived in a disadvantaged neighbourhood. She described
herself as ‘mixed race’. She left a college childcare course at 16 to have her first
baby. She too was very centred on her 10-year-old son’s future, determined to
encourage him, and through the interview she emphasized the importance of
him getting on in his school work and later occupation. She believed she could
make a difference to his future, and recounted her hopes:

. . . And then he were gonna be, he were gonna be a locksmith, cos that’s
what his dad does, and I were like, ‘You don’t need a qualification to be a
locksmith, so I would like you to pick something that you actually need a
qualification for’ . . . I’d like him to aim higher than a locksmith . . . I want
. . . him to go into a job that he can work up in.

Her perception of her own pivotal role in seeking to facilitate this outcome
was evident throughout the interview in which she returned to ways in which
she encouraged her son, tried to motivate him to do well at school, and sought
to get him to focus on his future. This emphasis aligns with the role she accords
to determination in her own biography, and the value of planning ahead:

© 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 123
Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

I think having a child really young has been, . . . as mad as it sounds it’s been
a positive step in my life, for me to turn it around and get to where I am now.
Erm, so I think if I’d have had that little bit of a push, then I wouldn’t have
needed a child to . . . do that. And I would have . . . maybe had a better job
or . . . a bit more of a planned future. Whereas . . . me future hasn’t been
planned. It’s all depended on what circumstances have happened.

The parents who were pushing their children were more commonly
mothers, although not uniformly so. Jack, a sign fitter, had been encouraged by
his parents to leave school at 16 and started work as a window cleaner. He
hoped his oldest daughter, aged 12 (and his other children) would in future go
to university and related this to his feeling he had under-achieved due to his
inauspicious start:

I’m hoping that she’ll [go to] University and the lot . . . ‘cause she’s, she’s
very intelligent. But it’s her choice. Yeah so if she dun’t wanna do it, I’ll try
and talk her back into it [laughs] . . . I never had it.And I wish I had’ve done.
I think it’d have changed me as a person. And maybe [it could change] their
outcome.

We have explored differences in how parents construed their role in

seeking to ensure their children’s future occupational success. Where parents
were very centred on encouraging and motivating their children it was often
also associated with specific experiences within their own biographies, notably
a belief they and sometimes their siblings could themselves have been more
encouraged as teenage children and young adults. The evidence points to
gendered dimensions to this lack of encouragement. The emotional work in
encouraging and driving their children recounted by several female interview-
ees appears to relate not only to their cultural positioning as mothers and
principal carers (cf. Reay, 1998), but also to their biographical experiences of
not being encouraged to achieve by their own parents. This was more com-
monly a reflection of mothers than of fathers, and was on occasion explicitly
related to their gender. Being centred on their children’s future success was
also sometimes associated with a background in which interviewees had been
upwardly mobile. Class backgrounds as well as current position have been
noted as relevant within literatures on parents’ values and practices (eg Reay,
2000; Crozier et al., 2008). The evidence we describe here suggests the value of
a more sustained analysis of such backgrounds, and of inter- and intra-
generational mobility, for understanding how parents perceive their role in
nurturing their children’s futures.
In exploring diversity in the extent to which parents believe they can
actively shape their children’s futures we are emphatically not arguing that
drive and determination are voluntaristic, or that other parents did not have
drive and determination in other domains. The parents who centred on drive
and determination may or may not help to secure a desired future for their

124 © 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

children, as their own actions intersect with other features of context and
opportunity which they and their children will confront, an issue to which we
now turn.

Evolving expectations and the contextual embeddedness of practices

(and likely outcomes)
Our discussion so far has explored expectations, orientations and perceptions
of their own role amongst parents in contexts where choices facing their
children are still some way off. In this final section we draw on our wave 2 data
in considering how parents seek to engender the best outcomes for their
children as they grow older. We take three parents from across different class
circumstances, all with a mid-teenage son who in each case was deemed not at
all academically motivated by his interviewed parent. Holding constant these
attributes of gender, age and motivation is helpful in elaborating parents’
strategies and practices relating to how they engage with their children about
future employment as options become more concrete. The evidence reveals
how parents adapt their expectations and practices and how these, as well as
likely outcomes, are inextricable from their classed contexts.
Samuel was middle class, a health care professional who was married with
three children, the older two of whom went to a private school. His eldest
child, a boy, was 15 and in his GCSE year, and wanting in future to become an
automotive engineer. In 2011 Samuel expected and hoped his son would go to
university, just as he had when we first met him two years earlier. He said the
prospective 2012 higher education fees increase would not change his encour-
agement to his son who would ‘be missing a trick’ if he did not go to university.
However, Samuel was concerned by his son’s ‘complete lethargy’, and his
practice of withdrawing from the family, and doing nothing. Although he
doubted his son’s interest in going to university, Samuel did not seriously
engage with any alternative routes his son might follow into an engineering
career. He had reflected extensively on ways in which he could incentivize and
motivate his son to access university and a graduate, professional career, and
had tried to engineer improvements in his son’s level of achievement at (his
private) school. For example, he described different strategies he had taken in
‘managing’ his son’s approach to homework, and he had enlisted his own
parents (former teachers) to talk with his son as part of his self-consciously
indirect approach to influencing his son. He also reflected in interview on the
ways in which he envisaged best supporting his son, financially, at and beyond
university again with an eye to ensuring he would be motivated to study.
Although middle-class parents cannot count on their children’s motivation,
Samuel exemplifies some of the ways they can draw on readily available
material and cultural resources in seeking to secure a hoped-for future for
their children (cf. Devine, 2004).
Nicky was a pre-school teacher in broadly intermediate circumstances. Her
partner was a mechanic at a local repair garage. Before she acquired qualifi-

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

cations as a pre-school teacher she worked as a dinner lady. She had in the past
started an arts degree but dropped out of the course. When she was initially
interviewed and her son was 14, she imagined he might become a PE teacher.
In her second interview she explained that her son, now 16, had just completed
his GCSEs. He had not been motivated by school work until uncomfortably
late on for Nicky (‘He didn’t see the point, couldn’t wait to leave . . . but I think
he realized in that last year ‘oh my goodness, what have I been doing for the
last couple of years. I really need my GCSEs’). He had just applied to join the
army. His parents have agreed to this:

. . . after a long time of discussing it . . . we came to an agreement that if he

really wanted to do this then he should go in for a trade, . . . and get some
qualifications behind him. So that eventually if he came back into civilian
life that he would have a trade behind him that he could use.

Nicky sought to channel her son’s interests and capacities in a direction which
would secure the best long-term outcome as she saw it: specifically one involv-
ing ongoing training and a future career. She adapted her ideas and support
engaging pragmatically with her son’s interests, and saw ongoing training as
the key to a successful employment future, and like many others she saw this
ongoing education (‘disguised’, for her non-academic son, as training) as an
ethic. Nicky exemplifies the sentiment across parents in intermediate and
working-class circumstances and with older children, that they would only
sanction a departure from full-time education if it were to fit a career-oriented
work plan.
Living in a context of quite significant disadvantage, Jenny (who we intro-
duced earlier in the paper) had two children, a son in his early teens and a
younger daughter who had a learning disability. She worked part time as a
sales assistant, but spent much of her time caring for her daughter, and her
husband had a driving job at an abattoir. She felt her son needed to be much
more motivated. She was a parent who felt let down by her own parents,
indeed her mother had been quite abusive. Jenny was very determined to
provide her children with a very different environment and to support, encour-
age and motivate them. Jenny’s husband died about a year before we inter-
viewed her again. She had experienced other complex difficulties, some linked
to his death and some not. Her son was 16 at the second interview. His low
motivation at school had dipped further after his father’s death, and Jenny
described the regimented displinary regime at school as being particularly
unhelpful to him. He had unsuccessfully tried to secure an apprenticeship and
was currently seeking to do a diploma course at a local college, in vehicle
accident and body repair, having struggled to obtain his GCSEs. Jenny felt her
son ‘will just, he’ll, he’ll plod along. And he’s got the brains but he just don’t do
it . . . And that’s the frustration but I can’t make him’. In a context of severe
constraint Jenny felt frustrated by her son’s lack of ambition and drive and not
able to intervene in shaping his future beyond seeking to encourage him in

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 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

positive directions. The context of recession and extensive unemployment

further undermined her sense of efficacy in shaping her children’s future.
Asked if she was happy with her children’s plans she said: ‘I’ll be just ‘appy if
they get a job’. Whilst Jenny had never articulated specific occupational hopes
for her son, beyond him possibly getting an apprenticeship, at this point she
simply hoped he would find work as a young adult. Jenny manifested a keen
determination to help her children do well, but so too frustration, which was
marked in her second interview because of her uncertainty over her son’s
future, and her inability to help secure something she saw as positive. Echoing
the evidence of others (eg Reay, 2005) Jenny exemplifies how, in contexts of
ongoing disadvantage, the determination and actions of many mothers hit a
brick wall of constraint.
In these examples and drawing on our second wave interview data, we see
children’s futures taking on a clearer shape, as children reach their mid-teens.
The evidence illustrates further how parents’ evolving expectations and prac-
tices are inseparable from the social and economic contexts in which they are
forged. For middle-class Samuel, aspirations and expectations remained
aligned, glued together by material and cultural resources. Nicky, in an inter-
mediate circumstance, drew on available knowledge and resources and
engaged with her son’s evolving aspiration to join the army, feeling able to
shape this choice in what she saw as a positive direction. Jenny, in a circum-
stance of quite marked disadvantage, started with relatively constrained aspi-
rations (that her son do better than his father). These became more delimited
through time (that her son find work), as hoped-for options failed to materi-
alize. The examples reveal personal stories, but they also evidence how diver-
gent ideas and practices, along with their linked patterns of likely efficacy, are
embedded within unequal, classed, contexts.

Conclusion

Parents’ aspirations for their children’s future occupations are shaped by

many complex factors, including their own work situation, their perceptions of
‘a good job’, and their estimations of realistic possibilities for their children. In
our research parents engaged with their children’s interests and responded to
and offered ideas about future jobs, discussed these as part of family life, and
encouraged their children in various ways. Often talk about future occupations
was used to motivate children in their school work. For the vast majority,
qualifications were seen as crucial to securing good opportunities. Those in
intermediate and working-class circumstances typically aspire for their chil-
dren to access a higher status job than they themselves hold. These were often
‘a step up’, although there were also examples of those in a range of circum-
stances mentioning graduate occupations as a possibility. A substantial pro-
portion of intermediate and working-class parents, more commonly fathers,
saw a skilled trade as a good job for their sons.

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Sarah Irwin and Sharon Elley

Across classes there was a range of ways in which parents engaged with their
children’s futures. Some gave accounts which suggested they were centred on
this, and determined to help engender a particular kind of occupational future
for their children. For other parents securing a certain kind of future for their
children was much less dominant in their accounts. Amongst this grouping
parents were (in the case of middle-class contexts) more assured about their
children’s future opportunities or (in the case of less advantaged contexts)
conveyed a perception of more limited scope in shaping their children’s futures.
Therefore whilst different styles of engagement with children’s future options
‘cut across’ classes, they remained strongly marked by class circumstance. Those
who were very centred on their children’s futures tended to be parents who had
either been upwardly mobile or who felt they had been under-supported them-
selves by their own parents. Class mobility, and biographical experiences of
being parented, were important in shaping how parents oriented to their chil-
dren’s futures and their perceptions of their own role in facilitating positive
futures. Our evidence also suggested a gendered component to this as it tended
to be mothers who more fully described experiences of being under-supported
when they were young, and in turn they were amongst the most determined in
actively seeking to shape their children’s futures.
How parents are situated, and the resources they have available, are crucial
to analysing how beliefs and actions develop over time. In our final examples
we considered the attitudes of three parents confronted by similar dilemmas of
motivating their children, but in very different class contexts. Drawn from an
analysis of our second wave of data, these cases exemplified how expectations,
and styles of engagement with children, evolved over time and reflected the
material contexts in which they were embedded, and the very different classed
resources which underpinned or compromised parental hopes and strategies.
There has been much talk over recent years amongst politicians and policy-
makers about raising aspirations, a discourse of voluntarism which positions
success and failure as an outcome of individual desire and actions (cf. Gillies,
2005; Gewirtz, 2001).We have explored examples of how parents’ expectations
and aspirations, and forms of interaction with children, are embedded within,
and shaped by, classed contexts. Nevertheless, from individual social actors’
perspectives, individual agency is the locus of hope and future prospects. Our
interviewees were hopeful for their children’s futures and the majority mani-
fested an individualized understanding of motivation, achievement and result-
ing opportunities, an understanding which current government rhetoric and
policy around social mobility and aspiration echoes and, arguably, reinforces.
Our evidence shows very clearly how parents’ assumptions, expectations and
aspirations are inseparable from the material social and economic contexts in
which they are embedded. Successive governments’ rhetoric about raising
aspirations decontextualizes the hopes parents hold for their children. It
implies that constraint for disadvantaged young people can be overcome by
action at the level of families. However, the evidence suggests that there is no
general shortage of ambition, indeed aspirations will almost certainly outstrip

128 © 2012 The Authors. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
 Parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s future occupations

opportunities, and most markedly for working-class youngsters. Expanding

opportunities for a decent and rewarding work life requires more profound
structural social and economic interventions than anything currently in view.

University of Leeds Submitted 15 July 2011

Finally accepted 7 February 2012

Notes

1 Real Life Methods was a node of the ESRC NCRM 2005–08; ESRC grant 576255017. ‘Family
contexts, class and parenting values’ was designed and run by Sarah. Sharon was employed short
term as a research assistant, contributing to data collection and analysis.
2 The extension project funding allowed for a survey and a small pilot qualitative project which
we subsequently expanded.
3 The authors shared the interviews equally in wave 1, both interviewing similar numbers across
different class backgrounds. In wave 2 Sarah undertook the majority of interviews. There were
no unusually complex ethical issues arising. We sought consent from parents to contact them
again, to ask if we might re-interview them as their children got older, and all consented.
4 All interviews were digitally recorded, and transcribed. Interviewees’ names have been changed.
5 We have classified interviewees as falling within class locations primarily on the basis of their
occupations, using standard National Statistics Socio Economic Classification tables (Rose and
Pevalin, 2005). However, we have supplemented this with an assessment of people’s means
based on their neighbourhood context and housing situation.
6 Evidence from our wave 2 interviews run in 2011 indicated that, amongst middle-class parents,
such aspirations had not been deflected by the prospect of fees increases in 2012.
7 Lisa was interviewed in 2011 as a ‘pilot’ for the wave 2 interviews, although she had not been
interviewed previously.

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