Best Laid Plans: Women Coming of Age in Uncertain Times

by Jessica Halliday Hardie

Given the range of possibilities open to women today, what futures do adolescent girls dream of and pursue? And how do social class and race play into their trajectories? In asking young women about their aspirations in three areas—school, work, and family— Best Laid Plans  demonstrates how future plans are framed by notions of gendered responsibilities and abilities. Through her examination of the lives of poor, working-class, and middle-class Black and White young women as they navigate the transition to adulthood, sociologist Jessica Halliday Hardie defines anew what it means for young women to come of age. In particular, Hardie shows how social capital, either possessed or lacked, is not simply a resource for planning for the future but a structure whose form and function varies by social class and race. As these inequalities persist into adulthood, high aspirations, social capital, and careful planning bolster some young women while hindering others.

Drawing on qualitative data from a five-year period, Best Laid Plans makes the case for why we need to move beyond the individual appeal to “dream bigger” and “plan better” and toward systematic changes that will put young people’s aspirations within reach.

274 pages, Hardcover

Published September 13, 2022

Reviews

[aniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was fine, definitely not the soundest sociological study but interesting nonetheless

[Jonathan Daw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book exploring young women’s secondary school plans and following them into young adulthood to see how they turned out, and why. Unusually for interview-based qualitative research, the author follows up with the young women several years later, telling the story of a critical slice of their life course. The analysis clearly demonstrates how, far from being clueless and adrift, young women from all class and race backgrounds are highly focused on their plans for the future - their careers, education, family life, how they’ll fit together at different ages, and how they plan to get there. While these young women varied in the level of detail and sophistication in these plans, this primarily reflected class, racial, and individual differences in access to informative social connections to knowledgeable adults, professionals, and educational institutional resources. Throughout, the explanatory sections do a fine job of balancing the role of agency and social structure, showing how preferences, available realistic options, choices made, and the likely consequences of those choices are shaped by the economic, racial, institutional, and policy structures of U.S. society. Similarly, it shows how common connections like parental, family, and non-family adult ties have many commonalities across all social divides, but due to differences in economic, social, and institutional resources play out in divergent processes. Throughout, the author makes sure to center the words and stories of the young women she interviewed, adding interpretation and context while centering the people that inform her arguments and interpretations. Altogether, this is a great book I recommend to anyone who wants to better understand how gender, class, race, institutions, and policy collectively shape the available choices and consequences of women making the transition to adulthood.