Ph.D. Topic: Transitions to Adulthood: Farm Youth and the Future
This thesis explores the life path of young people who grow up on farms in Ireland. It looks at how their transition to adulthood takes place, whether the societal shift towards individualised biographies impacts on their choices and how indeed these transitions take place.
It examines questions surrounding farm youths’ identity, how it is created and how it is likely to have changed as a result of shifting societal values and goals. Farming families typically followed a patriarchal model whose values seem to be at odds with those of late modernity. This potential dichotomy between the traditional way families were organised and their modern day counterpart is crucial to our understanding of the topic. Growing up on a farm brings with it a unique set of considerations and experiences that can set individuals apart from other youth who grow up in a non-farm rural or urban setting. Traditionally there has been a differentiated set of expectations for both genders in the farm family. This thesis looks at how and why these differentiations occur and whether given the current crisis in the farming community they still hold true and the impact that it has on the ability and way that transitions to adulthood take place.
