Dissident daughters? The psychic life of class inheritance

This paper arose through a chance meeting between the two authors who are feminist mothers of teenage and 20 years plus daughters. We were attending an Economic and Social Research Council-funded seminar focusing on ‘new femininities’ in the light of post-feminism and their worth and currency within the new politics of consumption and lifestyle. The seminar contributions resonated for us in two ways. Firstly, we have an interest in femininities, female friendships and how current understandings of these social bonds are being reconceptualised. Secondly, and on a personal note, we were increasingly aware that the seminar discussions framed within the landscape and biographies of risk and hope chimed with the ways our own daughters were currently playing out and negotiating their futures. How do we view the apparent contra-trajectory taken by our daughters who, unlike us, less concerned about seeing education as a ladder to ‘getting on’, seemed intent on ‘down classing’ in their various and successive ‘choices’ of educational pathways and boyfriends? In making sense of shared anxieties, our concerns coalesced around the personal, the familial and, in particular, the maternal relations. It is these inter-generational tensions entangled with the emotional politics of class that are the focus of this paper.