Parents, partners, and professions: Reproduction and mobility in a cohort of college women

Abstract

Using data from a 12-year longitudinal qualitative interview study of 45 white women at a public flagship university in the American Midwest, the authors compare the class position of interviewees’ parents in 2004 to the women’s own adult class position at age 30. They find that white women’s social class was relatively sticky: downwardly mobile white women from privileged families did not fall far, while upwardly mobile white women from less privileged families did not reach the top of the class structure. The authors develop the concept of “class projects,” or multigenerational approaches to obtaining desired and imaginable economic circumstances, to explain patterns of intergenerational mobility in their data. They document three distinct class projects—gender complementarity, professional partnership, and self-reliance. Women experienced better outcomes when their project fit family resources and motivations as well as the larger socioeconomic context. In addition, not all successfully executed projects led to the same level of economic security.