Earmarking Adulthood: College Financing as Economic Relational Work

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Access to Higher Education

Abstract

The American higher education system is premised on extensive parental support. Sociologists of education have investigated this parental financial support in terms of its predictors and effects, but little work has examined how this flow of money is actively interpreted, negotiated, and accomplished by students and families. In this paper I draw on 15 semi-structured interviews to fill this gap, using theoretical tools from the economic sociology of intimate life to analyze the black box of parental financial support. I argue that 1) The flow of monies from parent to student represents a relational package of associated social ties, transactions, media, and meanings, and 2) students can be distinguished by the extent they engage in relational work aimed at transforming this package. Some students take parental support for granted as a nonproblematic part of college life; others categorize their income and expenses in line with an emerging-adult identity, a process I refer to as earmarking adulthood. I suggest that this relational work reflects these students’ efforts to negotiate the ambiguities of young adulthood in the contemporary age of (in)dependence.

Author

• Andrew Swift