A Family Affair?Conceptualising First Generation Entry to

UniversityProfessor Jocey Quinn

IPSE

Families and Universities

Some common assumptions • Students are individuals

and university is about individualisation and differentiation from the family

• Middle class‘Helicopter parents’ are both powerful consumers and irritants

• Working class parents are passive and don’t exercise choices for their children

Some consequences• Students are viewed in

isolation, not as part of familial networks

• Students are judged by how far they can escape the family-intellectually and geographically

• Families are judged as uncaring or too involved-basically a problem

What does it mean to be a first generation entrant?

• Implicit in widening participation research but little specific focus-

• No theoretical conceptualisation or empirical analysis

• First Generation Entry an International Study draws on international meta- analysis of evidence from 10 countries, empirical UK study and theory from socio-cultural theory on the family to address this

• We define first generation entrants as as “those for whom the older responsible generation(not necessarily biological parents) has not had an opportunity for university study at any time of their lives”

• This definition recognises changes in the family/changes in HE participation/ interrelation with social class

First Generation Entry and Family Theory

First generation families are diverse but also often structurally and discursively stuck. Not the fluid, untraditional (Giddens) family“people in the valleys they haven’t got much confidence as a community you know…you get a sense of being knocked down and your family are the same,not good enough,not good enough”

But they are not necessarily fragmented (Mason) or individualised (Beck)

Our research supports theories of reciprocal and moral relationships within families(Ribbens McCarthy)

“”As much as I was enjoying the course and everything it was

starting to upset me as well as my mum…I think for her I had to leave”

Transition to HE as a Situated Practice

So-Democratisation, individualisation not most useful concepts

Nor collapse of family/decay of society-these families showed cohesion

Rose (1996)challenges linear idea of detraditionalisation

suggests look at situated practices by which families are made subjects

• Transition to HE as a Situated Practice• Internationally seen as time of attrition,

probation, risky stressful• In UK-culmination of aspirations, Part

of youthful seamless path to success and citizenship

• shed the old inadequate self-become someone new-the first generation entrant is one who must allow themselves to be changed-therefore emphasis on access and retention

• But our research suggests they are permanently in transition-as we all are- and what we need is a flexible HE system that mirrors this

Social Capital and First generation entry

First generation entry fits a dynamic reciprocal model- it operates at multi-levels on family and its development

They are pivotal/totemic figures for family and culture

They have to-perfect themselves as educated and employable, reassure family it has invested wisely, open horizons of family and community, represent a triumph of egalitarianism-’everyone can make it’.

How is it the degree ‘branded’-(Skeggs) desirable, even obligatory-but also likely to be not an eliite subject or institution. Compelled to buy something that may ultimately be of little value-but can’t afford to be without it?

In the UK social capital may not lie in the degree itself but in prevailing discourse of aspiration and mobility.

First generation students prove they are winners not losers-insiders of educational project brought into the fold and with them the family-can now be social capitalists and barter

Different forms of social capital

• Bonding social capital-first generation entry can cause fractures not glue-but over time can help new sets of values within the family-perhaps more critical but useful to renewal of the family

• Bridging social capital-first generation entry predominantly seen as opening student up into the world-but bridges structurally easier for some than others. Theoretically university important means for connecting with difference and making ideas strange and new in our culture

• Linking social capital-Inhibited by lack of knowledge of He and how it works. But being deprived of links to HE can decrease social capital eg in workplace

• Imagined social capital- can be produced by shared outsider knowledge and imagined links with mythological communities-Potentially first generation entrants well placed to generate this. But only capital that is legitimated counts so this is problematic

• First generation entry generates diverse forms of social capital-but messy and problematic

The Ambivalence of First Generation entry

First Generation entry is contested, paradoxical and ambivalentIt involves students working on themselves to become disciplined bodies who will do what’s

expected and want to do itBut also evokes counter-memories and counter-narratives“sociological ambivalence”(Connidis and McMullin, 2003)“simultaneously holding opposing feelings or emotions that are due in part to countervailing

expectations about how individuals should act. Thus ambivalence reflects the contradictions and paradoxes of social experience”

Moments of crisis and disruption make ambivalence visibleParents want children to go to university/they fear the abandonment of the familyChildren don’t want to go to university/they feel they must fulfil parents ambitions and

compensate for past inequalities educated person/loyal family memberTrue to class and history/free to take family furtherEnacted within socio-economic framework where access has replaced traditional industry-

but no means clear this provides adequate compensation or reward

Findings from the empirical study

• Parents/carers had not had opportunities for any university education but wanted it for their children-they welcomed the opportunities for family mobility but at the same time only wanted children to be “happy”

• They did not lack aspiration, but could not ignore the constraints of poverty and class.

• “ Back then when my parents were in education they never really had the opportunity to go, it was straight into a job and that was it”

• “They think it will make me go further, give me more opportunities job wise? My grandad says if I finish my degree I can be anything. I could pack shelves if I wanted to. I can have the choice, whereas if I don’t do my course I wont have the choice. You can go down, but I cant go up.”

Families setting limits

They wanted children to have access to He that protected family survival and sustainability and therefore had to set limits as to where and how children could study and live

• “I had to live at home because they couldn’t afford anything else. Go to school come home, go to university come home, nothing different”

• “The people who lived in Halls were part of the environment whereas I felt like a bit of an outsider-even though I lived round here and it was my town.”

You don’t have to go to university

• University education was by no means considered essential to a happy or fulfilled life

• It was seen in terms of doing something useful rather than becoming someone different

• “ my family have a working attitude. They didn’t really mind what I did as long as I wasn’t sitting around the house doing nothing. If I was doing something with my life they were happy enough supporting me.”

• “You don’t have to have a degree to be intelligent do you? My father is a highly intelligent man and he’d read all the classics and he’d be constantly learning”

Negative impacts

• Parental lack of opportunity for HE and lack of knowledge about university norms and systems impacts negatively upon student ability to progress and even stay in HE

“ I just felt like I was out there and I was on my own and there were not a lot of people who could help me in any way”

“ We got the induction at university at the beginning and there was some talk about it (student support) but we were never told who it was so if I ever needed I wouldn’t know where to find them”

“ It was like this is your course and you are in it-no-one told me you could change”

Family support

• Parents however, attempted to help and support their children as best they could

• It was parents who students turned to and trusted for guidance when it came to decisions about both entering and leaving early

Were your family interested in what you were doing at university? Did they ask you about it?

Yes they didn’t understand a lot of it but they were keen to try

Do you feel they supported you when you were there?

Yes they tried to help me when I was stuck or if I needed any help. Again they didn’t really understand it.”

Family responses to withdrawal

• Parents displayed flexibility and contingency

• Both parents and students desired more flexible options rather than being tied irrevocably to 3 years uninterrupted study

• Are they the real lifelong learners?

“They are pretty broad minded…she said if I wasn’t happy I should just do what I wanted to do”

“ They said they would support my decision whatever it was”

“ Obviously they haven’t been to university and they have got on with life and everything without it”

“ It just made me realise there are other areas to be explored”

Conclusion

Research on families needs “multilevel analysis that connects interactions within families to social structure and culture, the importance of viewing conflict as a central feature of social life, the need to focus on relationships and families rather than on individuals exclusively and the necessity to consider diversity in family life”

(Connidis and McMullin, 2003).• Rather than trying to fit the family to the university we should

focus on responding to the family –recognising how it is socially and culturally constructed

• On a deeper level -a much more flexible and responsive HE needs to be developed which will meet the needs of diverse families