Poverty and Aspiration: Young Women's Entry to Employment in Inter-war England

Todd, Selina

doi:10.1093/tcbh/15.2.119

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…72 Selina Todd has demonstrated 'the importance of kinship and friendship networks, and particularly mothers, in shaping employment opportunities and wider social aspirations' amongst workingclass girls of this period, while Carol Dyhouse has shown the impact of parents on the educational and career aspirations of both working-and middle-class children, with mothers a particularly strong influence upon working-class boys' aspirations. 73 Such findings suggest that family was just as strong, if not a stronger, driver of aspiration than was school and this held true for many of the Middlesbrough pupils. Certainly there is little evidence in their writing of the tensions between these spheres described by the scholarship boy Richard Hoggart: 'such a boy is between two worlds: the worlds of school and home; and they meet at few points.'…”

Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

Children, Class, and the Search for Security: Writing the Future in 1930s Britain

Barron¹,

Langhamer²

2017

Twentieth Century British History

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This article is based on 269 essays written in 1937 by Middlesbrough schoolboys aged 12-16 years on the topic 'When I leave school', which were collected by the social research organization Mass Observation. The essays provide a counterpoint to social scientific surveys of ordinary people and allow us to work with the boys' own understandings of the world they inhabited. They offer an alternative lens on a period which, at least in relation to the industrial areas of Britain, is often characterized by poverty and unemployment. This representation is largely absent from the children's essays: instead, an overwhelming sense of possibility characterizes their writing, from their wildest fantasies to their most concrete plans. Most dreamt of lives that would be long, fulfilling, domesticated, and happy. This is not to say that they were oblivious to the world around them; indeed an emphasis on security and planning suggested an implicit awareness of material context. Nonetheless these boys expressed a marked determination that their lives would be better than those of their parents. As such, they embodied the educational and occupational aspirations that are more often seen as characteristic of post-war Britain. Their essays illustrate emergent and widely held expectations of social mobility and dreams of cradle-to-grave security in the years before the Second World War, articulated-as they were being lived-by a generation which would go on to elect the 1945 Labour government.

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Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

Children, Class, and the Search for Security: Writing the Future in 1930s Britain

Barron¹,

Langhamer²

2017

Twentieth Century British History

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“…Writing to the local authorities was rather exceptional, but this example illustrates how parents tried to maintain control over the decisions of their children, even after the latter had emigrated to a foreign city. 81 Corresponding with their daughters on a regular basis -sometimes with the help of others -may have been a common practice.…”

Section: Far From Home But Among Relatives?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Arrival of Foreign Female Domestic Servants in Antwerp and the Role of Compatriots and Relatives as Intermediaries, 1860–1880

Verbruggen¹

2019

Gender & History

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“…Although there has been substantial demographic research on leaving home in the past 2 , and many historical studies of intergenerational social mobility 3 , much less attention has been paid to the experience of first entering the workforce. One notable exception is the research of Selina Todd 4 who argues, among other things, that family ties continued to exert a strong influence on female experiences of finding work and entering the labour force in the twentieth century. This paper seeks to extend Todd's research by focusing on men and women in the mid-twentieth century, and demonstrates that family and friends were widely used to gain work for men as well as women entering urban labour markets in this period.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘My father found it for me’: changing experiences of entering the workforce in twentieth-century urban Britain

Pooley

2014

Urban History

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ABSTRACT:Leaving education and gaining employment is a significant life course transition for most people. This article explores the processes by which young people gained their first job in mid-twentieth-century urban Britain, and examines the ways in which this changed in relation to major shifts in society, economy and culture. Key themes include the role of parents and other family members, changes in levels of autonomy and control and the impacts of societal change. Data are drawn from oral testimonies collected in three major urban areas: Glasgow, Manchester and London, and span a period from the 1920s to the 1980s.

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Poverty and Aspiration: Young Women's Entry to Employment in Inter-war England

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Children, Class, and the Search for Security: Writing the Future in 1930s Britain

Children, Class, and the Search for Security: Writing the Future in 1930s Britain

The Arrival of Foreign Female Domestic Servants in Antwerp and the Role of Compatriots and Relatives as Intermediaries, 1860–1880

‘My father found it for me’: changing experiences of entering the workforce in twentieth-century urban Britain

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