Exploring%20selfhood%20in%20the%201960s%20through%20secondary%20data%20analysis

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Exploring selfhood in the 1960s through secondary
data analysis
Sub-brand to go here

• Jon Lawrence, University of Cambridge
• Jane Elliott, Centre for Longitudinal Studies

CLS is an ESRC Resource Centre based at the
Institute of Education
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Aims of the presentation

• Introduce the essays written by eleven year old
  children in 1969 as a resource for secondary
  analysis
• Explore the original context in which the essays
  were written
• What can analysis of the essays tell us about
  childrens understandings of gender, class and
  family life in the late 1960s?
• How can the essays be used in conjunction with
  quantitative material from the 1958 cohort study?
• What are the limitations of the childrens essays
  as a source for historians and historical
  sociologists?

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Hypothetical life history
Age 16
2000
2004
1991
1981
Age 42
Age 46
Age 23
Age 33
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NCDS 11-year old Essays

• At age 11, in 1969 NCDS Cohort members completed
  a short questionnaire (at school) about leisure
  interests, preferred school subjects and
  expectations on leaving school
• They were also asked to write an essay on the
  following topic
• Imagine you are now 25 years old. Write about
  the life you are leading, your interests, your
  home life and your work at the age of 25. (You
  have 30 minutes to do this).
• 13669 essays completed, mean length 204 words
• Copies of the original essays (in childrens
  handwriting) are available on microfiche at CLS
  and have been digitised.

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Existing research on the essays

• A small sample of 521 essays have been coded for
  word count
• Boys 180 words
• Girls 228 words
• All essays have been coded for employment
  aspirations, over 90 give a classifiable
  occupation
• No other systematic coding and analysis of the
  essays has been carried out to date

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Combining quantitative and qualitative methods

• Historical/cultural information provides a
  context for both qualitative and quantitative
  analyses
• Analysis of quantitative data collected in 1969
  provides a description of the context in which
  the essays were written
• Large sample and quantitative variables allows
  for the creation of a stratified sample for
  in-depth/qualitative investigation
• Qualitative close reading of essays enables
  development of a coding frame that emerges from
  the text
• Coding of essays using new coding frame produces
  a quantitative description of a sub-sample of the
  essays
• Extracts from the essays accompanied by a
  quantitative summary of frequencies provides a
  more detailed description of the content and
  style of the essays
• Quantitative variables van be used to identify a
  very specific sub-sample of essays for more
  in-depth qualitative analysis (and also provides
  the context for the essays analysed)

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Historical context being eleven in 1969

• Films and TV cultural reference for children,
  discourses around gender and social class
• Popular toys, games and activities
• Family life living conditions, housing, role of
  mother and father
• School life type of school, class sizes, gender
  of teacher head teacher
• Political context including politics of class
  and gender

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Popular toys of the 1960s

• The Toy of the year Awards began in 1965
• 1965 James Bond Aston Martin Die cast Model car
• 1966 Action Man
• 1967 Spirograph
• 1968 Sindy
• 1969 Hot Wheels Cars

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1969 1970 Action man dolls
1969 1970 Sindy dolls
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Home experiences

• 46 of the eleven-year-olds were living in
  owner-occupied accommodation while 42 were in
  council housing
• At age eleven, 44 of children had their own
  bedroom
• When the child was eleven, 19 of girls and 16
  of boys shared a bed with another member of the
  family
• When the child was eleven, 54 of mothers and 51
  of fathers were reported to take the child for
  walks, visits or outings most weeks
• When the child was seven, 48.5 of mothers and
  34.6 of fathers were reported to read to the
  child every week
• When the child was sixteen 1974, 58 were in
  families with only a black and white TV, 41 were
  in families with a colour TV, 65 of families had
  a car and 16 of these had two cars.

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School experiences (1969)

• The majority of children were in primary schools
  when they wrote the essays
• Only 4 of children were at independent schools
• At age 11 the median class size was 36 pupils
  (mean 34.3), while at age 7 the median class size
  had been 37 with a mean of 35.25
• 82 of children were in a school with a male
  head-teacher
• 45 of children had a female class teacher

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Politics of class and gender in 1969

• Wilsons Labour had governed since 1964 elected
  on a managerial, class-less manifesto stressing
  modernisation and meritocracy
• From 1966 Labour lost a swathe of by-elections
  and councils in its traditional industrial,
  working-class heartlands
• In 1968-69 Goldthorpe and Lockwood published The
  Affluent Worker in the Class Structure arguing
  that class differences remained potent
• Many concluded that Labour had betrayed the
  working-class rather than that class was ceasing
  to be a strong source of Labour support
• Equal Pay Act passed 1970 (enacted 1975)
  Dagenham ? strike 1968
• But first Womens Liberation conference in GB
  only in 1969 (_at_ Ruskin)

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Coding the content of the essays

1. All essays were coded for occupational
   aspirations in the early 1970s (21 categories)
2. A coding frame for the main themes within the
   essays was developed by Elliott and Morrow
3. A subsample of approximately 500 essays have been
   transcribed and coded for these key themes (and
   are available from the UK Data Archive)

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Results themes in boys and girls essays
Gender differences in themes and topics included in childrens essays Gender differences in themes and topics included in childrens essays Gender differences in themes and topics included in childrens essays
Boys (N243) Girls (N252)
Mother 19 37
Siblings 7 20
Friends 18 29
Domestic labour (Child care etc) 22 55
Cars 41 18
Money/earnings/savings etc 42 25
Occupational skills/nature of work 46 32
Working hours 27 35
Husband/Wifes occupation 10 23
Football 39 2
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Social class and childrens essays

• Social class (as Heads occupation) had no
  impact on the frequency with which the children
  discussed holidays or foreign travel, leisure
  interests, money, or occupational skills
• Non-manual children were more likely to write
  about fathers, travelling by car about living
  in the country
• Including information on mothers occupation
  housing tenure into class model ? made
  occupational skills housing type significant
• But most children regardless of class
  background appeared to write aspirational
  essays - imagining a future different from their
  present lives
• Writing about poor childrens essays from 1976
  in A Tidy House Steedman wrote that imagining
  adult lives was not a means of talking about
  the future, for there was none. Their lives had
  already been lived
• NCDS essays do not support this intepretation of
  unchanging working-class culture but they

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Social class and childrens essays

• Social class (as Heads occupation) had no
  impact on the frequency with which the children
  discussed holidays or foreign travel, leisure
  interests, money, or occupational skills
• Non-manual children were more likely to write
  about fathers, travelling by car about living
  in the country
• Including information on mothers occupation
  housing tenure into class model ? made
  occupational skills housing type significant
• But most children regardless of class
  background appeared to write aspirational
  essays - imagining a future different from their
  present lives
• Writing about poor childrens essays from 1976
  in A Tidy House Steedman wrote that imagining
  adult lives was not a means of talking about
  the future, for there was none. Their lives had
  already been lived
• NCDS essays do not support this interpretation
  of unchanging working-class culture but they DO
  suggest aspiration was often marked by class

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Class and the Qualitative analysis of NCDS Essays

• Essays coded BLIND for how children talked about
  their futures
• We coded whether future wholly unbounded,
  limited or constrained, stable and certain or
  unstable and/or incoherent
• Stable/Unstable futures did not correlate with
  childs social class
• Middle-class children 5 times more likely to
  conjure unbounded futures than working-class
  (c. 3 times more than intermediate)
• Working-class children almost 4 times more
  likely to describe a limited or constrained
  future than middle-class children
  (intermediate children were 3 times more likely
  to do so)
• BUT when only girls essays were analysed this
  difference ceased to be significant
  middle-class girls also imagined constrained
  futures

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Class and the Qualitative analysis of NCDS Essays

• Essays coded BLIND for how children talked about
  their futures
• We coded whether future wholly unbounded,
  limited or constrained, stable and certain or
  unstable and/or incoherent
• Stable/Unstable futures did not correlate with
  childs social class
• Middle-class children 5 times more likely to
  conjure unbounded futures than working-class
  (c. 3 times more than intermediate)
• Working-class children almost 4 times more
  likely to describe a limited or constrained
  future than middle-class children
  (intermediate children were 3 times more likely
  to do so)
• BUT when only girls essays were analysed this
  difference ceased to be significant
  middle-class girls also imagined constrained
  futures

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NCDS Essay Example 1 (unbounded but unstable)

• My age is twenty Five. I am a manager of a big
  firm I am not married but I am engadged engaged
  to a young lady called Paula she is 21. Her job
  is my secroday secretary. Every Saturday I am
  at Chelsea football match with Paula. After the
  match we have a drink then drive home. Once a
  month we have a firm party. I have four cars
  Rolls, Bently and 2 minis. When at work I plan
  all the new building contracts. These contracts
  include sky scrapers, Bungalow, Houses, Farms and
  even Docks. The Americans have sent us a
  contract for 200,000,000 dollers to build a city
  on the moon. I live in a big house called 'The
  Villa'. In it there is 10 bedrooms for
  entertaining guests, 5 bathrooms and toilets. In
  the garden there is a swimming pool as big as
  Putney and open air with heating A private yacht,
  you might call me a millionare. I am only this
  because my mum owns the firm. My mother owns 27
  pubs 18 sweet shops 9 toy shops and 13 Hotels
  plus 19 grocere grocery shops. I go to
  social clubs and many firm meetings. In 1
  months time I am of on a trip round the world for
  places to build towns ect ect. My first part of
  the Journey will be by privite jet the second by
  my Privite Yacht. I am takeing Paula and the
  Rolls with 12 men 4 Engineers the other 10 are
  architects ! and the men who plan the site.
  When I was little I wanted to be a Footballer
  like GOARGE BEST but I saw this was not as good
  as being what I am now. My mother is now a widow
  my father left our family when I was 9. I have
  two brothers in this firm who are in a good
  position and a sister. But for me I am happy
  with my life and Paula and I intend to get
  married next month.
• Male, Unskilled head of house no father
  present 511209D

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NCDS Essays Example 2 (bounded and stable)

• I am 25 years old. I am married have two
  children. My friends are all round about the
  same age as I am. My hobbies are reading,
  printing and model making. At home I mend things
  that broken cultery cutlery, chairs ect. I am a
  teacher. We live at Blackpool and go to the fair
  at holidays time and sometimes go to morecambe
  and hesham. The year after I would like to work
  in London for a few years.
• Male, Skilled manual father 085016W

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Social class and gender conclusions

• In summary the essays appear to be very clearly
  gendered- but despite the gendered nature of the
  essays, both boys and girls have aspirations for
  family life
• There appear to be subtle differences in how
  children do gender depending on their social
  class
• Compared with gender, there is much less evidence
  of doing class within the essays, but class did
  influence HOW futures imagined

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Appendix
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