Theresa Sawicka and James Urry

(with Louise Grenside, Jonathan Thomson and Gwyn Williams)

The Youth and Family Project is concerned with the ideas and opinions of young people and their parents in the Wellington region in order to understand the processes involved in the transition of young people to adulthood in New Zealand. This includes understanding how identity is constructed among young people, how ideas and practices are reproduced and transferred across generations. This requires an understanding of both the continuities and the discontinuities involved in the transition and examining these in a larger context of the transformation of New Zealand society in recent years.

The research began with the aim of studying four distinctive ethnic groups - Greek, Indian, Maori and Pakeha - under the assumption that ethnic differences would determine distinct cultural conceptions and social practices in areas such as age, generation, community, and identity. We therefore looked for cultural differences which we assumed would determine different pathways to adulthood in what we took to be culturally distinct ethnic groups. We discovered, however, few such marked differences. From the outset a number of our interviewees were at pains to point out that they were not so different from other members of New Zealand society as they lived in the same world that we did. These responses obtained in our initial ethnographic enquiries set in train a process of coming to grips with what the members of our supposedly different groups have in common, what they share with others living in New Zealand today. We soon realised that all the parents and young people interviewed were attempting to come to terms with the demands of growing up in the modern, industrial world of which New Zealand is part. This larger world includes those industrial societies now part of an emergent global economy which originated in nineteenth century western Europe from where a majority of the ancestors of New Zealanders migrated. Maori, descendants of those who lived in New Zealand prior to European settlement, and later immigrants from the Pacific islands and Asia, also are involved in this larger industrial world. Their children all grow up in a modern, industrial society and are influenced by the cultural meanings and the social forms associated with this world.

Although the title of this seminar might suggest we are discussing a rather singular theme - marriage - in fact the topic is relevant to our work on adulthood. While marriage per se has not been a particular focus of our research, the relationship between marriage and adulthood and the production and reproduction of society and cultural meanings has acquired a degree of relevance. We will argue that in the past marriage has acted both as confirmation of a change in a person's social status and is itself a social relationship from which the duties and responsibilities of adulthood flowed.

Our particular interest in marriage stems from two findings of our research. First, we have discovered that young people, parents and the modern state are not at all certain about the exact age when adulthood is achieved. In New Zealand laws relating to young people there are a range of dates stretching from 16 to 25 which regulate young people's rights, duties and obligations in relation to the state and their parents. But hidden in these legal definitions concerning the attainment of adulthood, marriage qualifies and in certain cases exempts people from the restrictions based on age. However, such regulations have a somewhat anachronistic meaning in the modern world due in part to the age of marriage rising well beyond the official markers of adulthood. Secondly, we discovered that for at least some of our groups, marriage still marked a major change in mature status even if in reality actual marriages did not occur in the way or at the times they once did. Many of the ideas concerning marriage in official regulations and popular views of life relate to a world at odds with the reality of life in contemporary New Zealand. To explain this contradiction the connection between marriage, adulthood and the reproduction of society need first to be clarified.

One thing we have come to realise is that the cultural concepts people assert, which are often the focus of attention of researchers and policy analysts, need to be considered against more basic structural features of society of which people may not be aware. This is because such structural features are implicit in how people live their lives, they are not reflected upon and therefore are difficult for those involved to articulate.

The major transition in the life cycle with which we are concerned is the transition to some kind of "adult" status, an experience common to all the young people of our research populations. As members of the same species they will all pass through the basic processes of birth, a period of intense childhood dependency on adult caregivers, particularly their mothers in the early years of life, and a long maturation process in terms of physical and mental development. They will continue to experience the effects of age, eventually dying. Thus the physical reality of aging sets a basic structure for the formulation of social generations . What is more variable is how these changes are marked culturally in different groups and thus how age as a social and cultural phenomenon is defined and experienced. Behind this shared experience and the diversity of cultural interpretations there is another factor to be considered. This is the fact that social and cultural meanings relate to the need to produce and reproduce human existence across generations, in both its physical and socio-cultural sense.

In our study we also are aware that the transitions from childhood to adulthood must be placed in a much larger historical context. This context involves a transition from a way of life which in the past was dominated by agricultural production aimed in the first instance at self-sustenance within local, kinship-based communities, into a way of life with a complex division of labour ruled by a market money economy, industrial production and complex service industries. Marriage and the transition to adulthood with which we are concerned occurs against this background of a larger transformation of social organization and culture associated with the transition from an agrarian (Agraria) into an industrial way of life (Industria).^**

Agrarian societies developed following the domestication of plants and animals and have existed for only 10,000 years or less. Industria, by contrast is less than 200 years old, but has rapidly achieved global significance. As Industria developed from Agraria, many older agrarian social forms and cultural values survive in modern industrial societies, although transformed and transmuted. The economic bases of Industria are founded on continuous growth which profoundly effects the reproduction of social life and the transference of skills and knowledge between generations. Social forms and cultural knowledge are highly transformatory even within the experience of a single generation. Although social continuities are still valued, in reality the essential discontinuities implicit in the production and reproduction of life are apparent to the participants of Industria. The only constant is change.

The cultural knowledge required to achieve competency in the modern world is not only acquired in the early years through participation in activities, but also is learned increasingly through formal education and training. This extension of enculturation increases the dependency of young people, mainly on their on parents and the state. The aim of this process, however, is not to establish the interdependency between generations, but to develop independence from kinship and community. Young people are expected to become independent through the acquisition of personal skills, and to recognise and assert their individual freedoms as citizens. They must cut themselves free from the duties and obligations to family, community and place and as individuals become highly mobile in terms of social status and physical location in order to maximise their opportunities and so enrich the nation. In Industria there is a conscious assertion of individuated personhood and an awareness of social discontinuity.

In Agraria a person as a social being is defined by external factors associated with the social context in which they find themselves. Their personhood is partible, determined by the social relationships a person is required to adopt and not self-defined in any significant way. Rights, duties and obligations are known in advance and a person moves through a pre-defined range of roles, statuses and identities. Some of these still exist and will persist: sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers etc., but these are insufficient to define the person in Industria.

In Industria much of this partibility and social interconnectedness no longer is as significant as it once was. Industria is a world where the individual is often opposed to "society"; the individual is sovereign and society is seen as inhibiting personal freedom and the right to choose, to "be oneself". In such a world of autonomous individualism, people are meant to look after themselves and place self-interest before others. Gender and sexuality can be personalised and within limits, self-defined. The self is best cut free from those relationships which the person did not chose to establish. The statement "You can chose your friends, but not your family" is a curse upon kinship and a denial of social continuity.

The peoples who are classified or self-defined as "ethnic" or "indigenous", today live in New Zealand's industrial society and are part of its modern transformatory processes. As they or their parents retain aspects of Agraria some possess a more conscious sense of "difference". The cultural reference point of this difference is seen to exist in another time and/or place than contemporary New Zealand: it is out-referenced. Both indigenous people and immigrants conceptually link their way of life back to another time and across space to another place, often with an imperative of re-establishing the past and its customs in order to ensure a continuity between past, present and future. But young people have little or no experience of these worlds, often presented by parents or grandparents as still existing. Young people born and raised in New Zealand primarily relate to the world around them: they are in-referenced

While the out-references of many older peoples in our ethnic research populations relate to other times and places, in the New Zealand context their ethnicity-as-difference and the practice of established customs is often restricted to limited social domains, separate from their everyday experience of the wider world. Ethnic identity is asserted as an individuated aspect of personal identity with little social significance. In the final instance, Agraria "survives" less in terms of its "total" social or cultural significance, and more as a set of customs disconnected from sustained practice in those areas of social life crucial to the production and reproduction of life.

The continuity of all social life is based on the physical reproduction of the population and the reproduction of the society itself through the socialization and enculturation of children. Without children, a society cannot continue, materially and culturally. The bearing and initial sustenance of children is the prime responsibility of related kin in domestic groups. Here, however, there are major differences between Agraria and Industria in terms of the promotion of inter-generational dependency or autonomy and patterns of authority within kin groups.

In Agraria children are fundamental to the continuity of the domestic group and are socialised in order to establish inter-generational dependency. Children are the primary source of insurance for parents and grandparents in their later years. Just as a child was once dependent on their parents for sustenance and support, so in their twilight years parents look to their children and their children's children to repay the debts of childhood. Thus the connections between generations, backed by the authority of seniority, must be maintained to ensure the continuity of duties and responsibilities. In Industria in contrast parents cultivate a degree of autonomy in their children, permit them to cut themselves free from parental authority and not to feel any sense of inter-generational obligation. Parents maintain and sustain children in the domestic sphere without an expectation of return and, encourage their offspring to gain educational qualifications and become autonomous, mobile individuals, independent of family obligations and free to go in search of work and money on their own. Parents have to plan for their own security in their old age even while providing for the sustenance of their dependant children. However, this is one area in which differences in our research populations can be observed, although the differences vary with generation. Those with Greek, Indian and Maori roots do articulate and to varying degrees attempt to put into practice inter-generational continuity through insisting that the younger generation will, in time, assume responsibility for their elders.

Another difference between Agraria and Industria connected with inter-generational continuity is residence. Young people in many agrarian societies stay at home, only forming separate households when they marry or even later, once they have children. In some societies the household remains the primary corporate unit so young people never leave home but gradually assume control of the household as they achieve maturity, marry and have children; their parents retire, sometimes to a separate part of the same household. Continuity across the generations usually occurs in a single location. In industrial societies, however, the domestic/household unit is not corporate in as much as it does not continue beyond the life time of the couple who founded it. This lack of corporateness in the basic units of society below the nation state, is related to social mobility in both a physical sense and in terms of social status with a desire to "improve" one's position, employment, income. There is little commitment to place or to other persons, even to close kin.

In Industria mobility and independence are stressed in the process of growing up. In all our research populations, irrespective of their appeal to agrarian values, children are taught to improve themselves through education and to establish independent careers. But one major difference in our populations lies in different attitudes to physical mobility. Parents with no idea of household continuity or commitment to place or a particular way of life encourage their children's independence by permitting them to leave home before marriage. The idea of "flatting", leaving home and setting up an independent household often with peers is not just permitted, but positively encouraged as a necessary stage in the development of autonomous individuals. Indeed, today it also includes an acceptance of setting up a household and a relationship with a partner outside marriage. Parents of course are also motivated by self-interest: when their children "eventually fly the nest" they can reclaim at last their own independence which they lost when their children were born.

Such practices and the attitudes of parents to their children are viewed with horror by many first generation immigrants who see the continuity of "family and household" as essential for the proper reproduction of society across generations. They view parents who permit their children to go flatting as having no sense of their proper duties and obligations and as acting outside the bounds of morality; young people who leave home before marriage are viewed as placing their reputations and those of their families at risk. Most of the young people, of course, see it merely as an assertion of their rights as individuals!

It is clear that marriage once played an important role in social continuity beyond the dependencies of childhood. In Agraria marriage was an important marker of the continuity of generations bringing together different kin groups and ensuring that children born were legitimate, raised to be dependent and fully aware of their duties and obligations. In Industria the formation of individuated persons takes precedence over the interests of kin and the continuity of domestic and other social groups. Indeed communities and even the domestic unit have no corporate being in as much as they do not persist across generations and cannot lay claim to a person's labour or other services. Instead individuals have universal and inalienable rights and their primary duties are to self and the nation state of which they are citizens. Marriage therefore does not have a wider social role in Industria and as will be shown is conceived of more as a relationship freely entered into by two individuals without the involvement of other kin and without any immediate implications other than to the couple who have chosen to marry.

For the majority of the population this situation has not occurred overnight, nor is it universal. But the shifting place of marriage in industrial societies over the last twenty to thirty years, including New Zealand, is a good example of just one aspect of the social transformation associated with the transition from Agraria to Industria.

In Agraria marriage is a major marker of changes in social relationships within and between kin groups, signalling new inter-dependencies and the succession of authority and the social order across generations. Whereas in Industria marriage, as a social relationship, plays no part in the formation of individuated personhood which is established usually long before marriage occurs. It is obvious that the role of marriage in society as well as the idea of marriage itself has changed in the modern world..

In anthropology there is a large literature on the subject of marriage, most of it referring to marriage in agrarian societies. There are discussions and debates on the need for, or the possibilities of, a universal definition of marriage. Some argued that marriage involved "a bundle" of rights, duties and obligations so a single, all-inclusive definition was impossible. Marriage it was argued is best seen as an alliance between social groups and establishes new social relationships well beyond the couple to affines and other kin; it is far too important in terms of its social consequences to be left to the whims of the couple themselves. The marriage ceremony itself is merely the start of a series of ongoing relationships involving different social groups to which the couple are related. This often involves a series of ongoing exchanges, in the form of form of bridewealth. The relationships established through marriage are confirmed and complicated through the birth of offspring which establishes new sets of social relationships.

For many in New Zealand, however, marriage is a private matter, a relationship between two individual couples, a matter of personal choice rather than a concern of others or, as we shall see, long-term consequences. When asked about marriage some young people confused the state of marriage with the ceremony of marriage, eagerly discussing the costs and elaborateness of marriages they knew or they knew were planned. This focus on marriage as an event, rather than as a long term commitment, reveals a changing attitude to relationships and a recognition of the potential discontinuity of all long-term relationships.

Again this is an area in which our research populations show some differences related to their immigrant status and closeness to Agraria. Many Indian parents and grandparents in New Zealand still believe strongly in arranged marriages and many of their children actually accept that their parents will choose their partner. Members of the family often go to India to negotiate a marriage with another family selecting an appropriate spouse for their children. It is all arranged and involves considerations beyond the personal preferences of either the bride or groom; marriage is far too important to be left to the young people to decide and arrange. While arranged marriages are seen as the ideal and still occur, other forces are at work. Young New Zealand-born men are more likely to acquire a spouse from India than a young woman born and raised in New Zealand who often will not accept the subordinate position in a relationship expected of her by her husband and his family, especially if he comes from rural areas of India. However, while some young people begrudgingly acknowledge the right of their parents to arrange their marriage, the practice goes against the idea to which they all adhere that they have a right of personal choice. A compromise often occurs in which one of the partners has the right to refuse the selected candidate; others delay the decision using extended education as an excuse; some reject arranged marriages entirely.

The Greeks once followed a similar pattern although today arranged marriages are rare. Partners may still be sought from Greece, but today most young people are merely expected to marry within the Greek community. Like the Indians, they also are expected to live at home until they are married; flatting or living with a partner before marriage is generally forbidden. Again this belongs to an older tradition; marriage leads to legitimate sex which results in legitimate offspring. This after all is the major purpose of marriage: to continue the physical reproduction of people in society.

The text of the old Anglican marriage ceremony for instance, stated that people who entered into marriage had to do so for the right reasons, clearly specified as "the procreation of children, continence and mutual society, help and comfort." The procreation of children is clearly stated as one of the essential entailments of marriage. For the Greek Orthodox it is the same. The Orthodox marriage ceremony includes a prayer that God "will grant them [the couple] chastity, and of the fruit of the womb as is expedient for them ... fair children ... offspring in number like full ears of grain." The priest also reads from Psalm 128, which says "your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your home, your children like olive plants all round your table." And Greek marriage ceremonies in New Zealand stress the importance of "fertility" with which the couple hopefully will soon be blessed.

Young people living in New Zealand today belong to the post-pill generation and they can purchase condoms at the supermarket like lollies. Sex does not necessarily result in children; children are not an inevitable consequence of marriage; becoming pregnant does not inevitably lead to marriage.

Marriage in agrarian societies was also recognised as an important marker in the life cycle, an event which indicated a change in personhood, status, residence, and relationships. It was but one of a set of marked stages often starting at birth, later continued, sometimes by initiation or confirmation ceremonies which set the person on a path to a socially recognised mature status in society. A person had to pass through these marked stages before they could be married and begin to reproduce society through having children. Marriage also marked another important step on the path to accepted maturity as it involved the right to set up another household, to exercise authority over a household and later over children. Once married, a couple who fail soon after to produce children, become the subject of public comment.. This is still true among Indians and Greeks in New Zealand. One Greek interviewee said that on one Greek island young girls who die before they can marry are buried as brides; there is that sense of unfulfilledness.

So in agrarian societies there is a crucial window within which young people are supposed to marry. If they do not, their status fails to change or is changed into an identity which denies them a place in the essential continuity of reproduction. Failure to marry meant that proper maturity could not be achieved, particularly for men. Career bachelors remained juvenile "boys", vulgar in their dress and actions. But because they were not responsible for setting-up a new household and caring for offspring, all this was forgivable. People laughed at the antics of bachelors; they condemned the actions of younger married men. Women who failed to marry, often because they were the daughter(s) charged with looking after their parents or because they could not marry below themselves, were not permitted such a reckless life. Females always carry the burdens of moral responsibility in agrarian societies; their sexuality is either vulnerable or dangerous (or both). Women who failed to marry within the period of their potential fertility became spinsters, barren and in popular imagination often bitter.

Today in New Zealand, for all young people, the position of marriage as a marker of maturity is rather different from that so far described. This is not to deny, however, that ideas and attitudes surrounding marriage do not survive from Agraria, not just among some interviewees in our research populations with closer links to agrarian pasts, but also in official legislation concerned with age, maturity and adulthood. There is in fact a long list of legal restrictions, entitlements and markers based on age which are qualified or overridden if a person is married. At age sixteen a person can only get married with their parents' consent, but once married their parents' responsibilities, which for unmarried people last until they are aged twenty, cease. Married at sixteen you can seek a divorce at any time without parental consent. Although before eighteen young people have some protection under the law they cannot be held to a contract which is fair and reasonable, which is why young people under eighteen sign hire purchase agreements without a guarantor. Once a person is married they can be held to a contract even if they are under eighteen. At age eighteen a person can apply for an unemployment benefit, but if married and/or if a person has children, the benefit is obtainable at sixteen. At eighteen a person can be granted New Zealand citizenship, but if married it can be obtained earlier. At age twenty parental guardianship ends, but the parent's income will be means tested with regard to their offspring's right to obtain a tertiary education allowance until aged twenty five unless, of course, the offspring are married. Through marriage a person has achieved almost full adult status before the law, but even a married person still cannot drink in a pub or vote until they reach the legal ages for these things.

These pieces of legislation are not unique to New Zealand; some have been transferred from British law and reflect older customary practices which were codified long ago. Similar points are also found in the laws of many other Commonwealth countries and other modern states. All this reflects that the idea that marriage was an important marker of adulthood is an old, established idea derived from a social system very different from modern Industria. Very few people get married at sixteen these days.

But what do young people and their parents think about marriage and it's role in the maturing process and the transition to adulthood? We did not ask the question directly. In the questionnaires we sent to both parents and to young people, however, one of the open questions at the end asked them what they considered made a person an adult. Sometimes we received short replies, occasionally mini essays. We also provided some concepts to help them consider what to write about. One of these was the word "marriage". In the numerous responses received, very few people selected "marriage" as a sign of adulthood. The few that did include it did not develop the idea in any significant way. It is also interesting that a number who did include marriage as a factor in adulthood could be identified as belonging to an obviously ethnic background. But even here there were some significant contradictions. A parent who stated they were of Fijian Indian background stressed the importance of marriage and community, while at the same time extolling the virtues of young people making personal "executive" decisions, using the language of modern management.

One probable reason why marriage as a marker of adulthood was not selected is that marriage no longer falls within the period of the transition to adulthood as identified by young people and their parents. Nor is it seen as involved in the process of maturation. Marriage now occurs after the period when a person is assumed to have achieved adult status which most of our populations recognise as occurring between the ages of 16 and 20 (with plus or minus two years at the upper end ie. 18 or 22). It is therefore also not surprising to discover that young people had to be prompted to think about where marriage might fit into their futures. For most of them it is something no longer connected with "growing-up", it lies in the far distance and is not worthy of immediate consideration or concern. Nor is it an immediate concern for their parents. The more immediate and pressing concerns are about getting a good education and getting a good (ie. well paid and interesting) job, travelling and experiencing life to the full.

Of particular interest is that in interviews with many young people, marriage is less of a concern and more distant for girls than for boys. The boys still recognise that somewhere among the responsibilities of growing up are those of husband and father. This may reflect the continuing power of illusions of patriarchal responsibility: they had to look after a wife and the kiddies, but girls appear to have long abandoned any passion for motherhood or wifely subordination, at least in the immediate future. When prompted they sometimes admitted that one day they might get married. But not for some time; there was too much living to do first.

Here are some of the responses from interviews with young people on the subject of marriage:

"Am I going to get married? No. Oh, I might get married for legal reasons like lower mortgage rates... or for a student loan. Married people have bigger rights than de facto couples, and that would be the only reason I would get married. Oh I might get married just for the dress and stuff, it would be a quite fun day... But I'm not religious...it's not like a big symbolic thing. Actually it doesn't mean anything to me, especially since my parents split up - it's just a bit of paper."

"My sister's getting married in January - she's a really dependant person. I think she's just doing it for the security. She can't take responsibility for herself and live her own life. My parents have paid for all her education and they still give her money. I mean she's 23! She's going straight from living at home, where she doesn't even pay rent or anything, to living with Bob. And he's working, got a house, got a car, you know - he's being an adult and she's still being a child. Sometimes I think of her as being younger than me; she's just going from one dependant position to another."

"I could never do that [get married]. I don't want to be dependant for my income. I want to be able to support myself as soon as I leave home (oh, I mean after my parents have paid for varsity). I wouldn't like to rely on someone - like to divide up money and know that you weren't earning it. I'd just feel unequal."

"For myself, personally, what I can see of my future, I would definitely have to live at least for a while on my own, having things my own way. I'd hate having to share everything. I don't wanna share a house and have to compromise. I don't want to say 'I want the walls this colour but you want them that colour'. Well, we're having it my colour. I wouldn't even like flatting. I'd definitely have my own house, with my own room, under my own name. And have everything the way you want it, and know that you own it all, that it's your car and your house - 'I've worked hard for this, this is what all my hours of work went towards, and this is mine!'."

"It'd be really horrible having to support kids. You know, 'oh you want a pair of shoes - here's my money'. I mean when I think of the demands I place on my parents 'oh I need new shoes'. I'd just hate to be a parent getting asked for money all the time - and having to give it to them! 'We need it for school'."

These quotations reveal an overwhelming sense that getting married has negative connotations: of being dependent and tied down, having to share or rely on someone else, having to compromise individuality and choice. While young people clearly like to form relationships with others, friendships are particularly favoured because they are between equals and freely entered into and easy to form, break, and reform. Marriage is too binding, requiring personal commitments of self to a singular, long-term relationship. The other factor is that relationships which have aspects once associated only with marriage (sexual relations, different sexes living together, sharing holidays and apartments) are now more freely available and acceptable in the public sphere. Such relationships are also more varied in their possible form, permitting choice, freedom to develop or escape from the relationship and an ability to maintain an independent self.

In the past, and this is the view still of the senior generation, especially among our more "ethnic" populations is that young people should stay at home until they marry, then they can leave home and have children binding the couple in a long term, life-time relationship "until death do them part." There are no choices and little variation. Today, and the situation is very recent in its widespread practice and public acceptance, the choices for forming relationships are immense, only some of which may involve marriage.

Diagram 1 (see end of paper) indicates the range of possibilities. As will be seen getting married/not getting married, once the only choice open to a person, is today supplemented by a more primary choice: forming a relationship/not forming a relationship. Marriage as a socially acceptable relationship which was also a legally recognised institution implied a legitimate union between heterosexual couples; so-called de-facto relationships now can include unmarried couples living together including homosexual couples even if the law denies the latter the legal status and protection provided by marriage. Sexual intercourse within or outside marriage has always been an option but only recently has it become widely acceptable that a couple may live together outside marriage and presumably have regular sexual relationships. Having children/not having children was always an option within or outside marriage, although the basic facts of life sometimes forced unmarried couples to marry in order to legitimate their offspring. In the area of producing offspring a couple's options have widened considerably in recent years with easy access to birth control and artificial insemination, amateur and professional; potentially a woman who has never had sexual intercourse, can bear a child and divine intervention is not required. Separation and divorce cancel contractual relationships, formal or informal, although here the law recognises "de-facto" links. And the terminology of kinship, once clearly linked with marriage - husband/wife - has expanded to gender neutral and relationship non-committal terms, the best known of which is "partner".

The profusion of choices facing young people today as they contemplate forming relationships thus is formidable. This reflects very recent transformations in the structure of industrial society involving a set of interrelated changes which include the importance of extended education in securing employment, the nature of employment and income relative to age, increased physical and social mobility, including transnational mobility, and the development of ideas associated with individuated personhood.

In New Zealand before the 1960s the future life-paths of young people were remarkably similar and predictable. After attending school until 15 or 16 young males began an apprenticeship or entered the lower ranks of white collar occupations where they basically received on-the-job training which laid the foundations for life-time careers. Young females left school at the same age but life-time employment was less likely as women would have to assume the roles of wife and mother at some time in their life cycle. Only a very few young people went on to higher education but this merely delayed the career path of males and motherhood for females. At 21 young people received "the key to the door" of the family home where most were expected still to be residing, an event which marked their attainment of full, adult responsibility within their parent's household and permitted them to enter the wider world and make their own decisions without seeking parental permission. Now they could marry, usually somewhere between 21 and 24, leave home and set-up a new household where the arrival of children soon signalled the start of a new phase in the developmental cycle of society. Once married, and especially after the birth of children, many women became restricted to the domestic sphere, abandoning employment either permanently or until their children were well established in school. This is, of course, a very middle class model, but then New Zealand was a profoundly middle-class society.

Young people interviewed before the 1970s, unlike those we have interviewed today, could articulate their futures quite clearly. Marriage was one of a series of stages which seemed both inevitable and ordained by human nature. Parents and the state prepared young people for this existence. Every person in elementary school did "manual" classes; young women later were given basic skills in domestic life with classes in home economics in preparation for home, housework and hubby; young men received practical lessons in the generalised technical skills required of husbands and house owners. But the education and training experienced by the majority of young people today do not place great value on such domestic or manual skills. They require an extended generalised education and "literacy" in more than reading and writing to meet the challenges of a world of high technology and shifting work patterns.

The majority of both male and female young people articulate a strikingly similar future for themselves. It is a future where life is de-gendered in terms of distinctive roles associated with social reproduction and de-domesticated in terms of location. Instead the future they articulate for themselves stresses the need for an extended education in order to obtain the qualifications which will secure them a good job with a high income. The aim of this is not to settle-down in wedded-bliss and raise a family; such a way of life is far too restrictive with long term dependencies and responsibilities which require the subordination of self. Instead they hope in the immediate future to establish or "discover" a unique sense of their individuated personhood and develop a personal lifestyle based around freedom of choice. They do recognise that relationships might still form, but not necessarily relationships involving marriage or the production of children. Relationships such as "friendship" have expanded to involve both long term commitments to persons or groups of peers and short-term, casual connections. "friendship" is involved even in intimate relationships and even married couples aim at achieving friendship as a true marker of their closeness and commitment.

In this new world of individuals and friends, partners and playmates, marriage is still seen as a possibility, but not an inevitability. It is something that lies increasingly in the distant future, not close to a set of stages connected to the acquisition of education and training. In fact it lies outside the period of the transition to adulthood and is not seen as connected with that process or as a marker of maturity. The statistics on the age of marriage confirm these changes in a number of ways.

Figure 1 indicates how the age of first marriage has increased for both men and women in New Zealand over the last twenty years. Women have experienced the greatest change a reflection of a greater "equality" between genders.

The average age of new mothers has also risen (Figure 2), so motherhood has been thrust further and further back in the life cycle.

Of course the biological realities of female fertility eventually come into play as women who want children cannot put off becoming pregnant for ever. Couples in a relationship, married or otherwise, who want children, have to face a major choice and change in the relationship at some time in their lives and this appears to currently to be in their late 20s.

Comparative figures (Figure 3) indicate that this later age at marriage is not just restricted to New Zealand but is a common trend in most industrial societies. The age when people first get married is getting later and later; the age when a woman first has a child has increased in association with this change. The convergence of such aspects of social structure and the reproduction of society in different societies, clearly indicates that common forces are at work in industrial societies irrespective of their varied histories and "cultures".

Achieving adulthood is about leaving home and becoming an independent (non-dependent on family or place) individual through getting a higher education and qualification and a good job with a high income, the aim of which is to achieve what young people refer to as a "lifestyle." The "style" of this "life" is not about settling down and reproducing society through getting married and having children in a stable and secure relationship settled in a home of your own; indeed such considerations clearly preclude and even exclude a person from fully enjoying a "life" with "style". Education while a means to achieving such a lifestyle is associated, however, with childhood; it is unpaid "work" and forces a person to be dependent and subject to authority. As young people today are forced to extend the years of their education and training up to and beyond the period when they think they should be "free" and independent, they look forward to a time when they can reap the rewards of this period of sacrifice and servitude.

They are, though well prepared for this later existence. We have discovered that young people start working much earlier than is often assumed in order to gain money to practise, on a part-time basis, aspects of the "lifestyle" they so desire. They take on part-time jobs and get income from about the age of 14; by 16 young girls, in middle class schools in Wellington, are spending a considerable amount of time at work, in evenings and weekends, to secure an independent source of income. The average income is about sixty to eighty dollars a week, s small amount but enough to develop the desires and skills for being an independent consumer, an essential feature of a future lifestyle. They do this with the approval of their parents who think that it is good for them to experience the time discipline of work and learn how to manage their money in a responsible manner. After all, they will have to face such things alone in the future.

Although, as we have seen, parents and young people agree that the process of the maturation to adult independence occurs between the ages of 16 and 20 (plus or minus two years), there is another interesting period that follows which contains aspects of both adulthood and childhood. This is the period, roughly between the ages of 20/22 and 30 when, as one student put it, "you live high on the life". This is the time where the rewards of education and training can be enjoyed; lifestyle is lived. This is because lifestyle is not about education, qualifications, employment and money alone; these are the means to an end, not the end in themselves. The really important thing is "play"; in adulthood, childhood can be re-lived in a mature way, independent of parents and the educational institutions of the state which so inhibited their earlier enjoyment of freedom. Juvenility can be extended and elaborated beyond the wildest imaginings of people of just two generations ago.

The opposite of work is leisure and leisure is mature play, real, serious play. But mature play is costly, it involves a high level of consumption itself involving the search for something different, goods, foods and experiences. Among the different experiences is adventure, travel and the taking of risks. The greatest risk to experience is that to the very life of the person themselves. But of course done with style so as to not be a risk at all. The thrill of the experience of something different.

The rise of adventure risk tourism is fascinating feature of the modern world. People, especially young adults, like to place themselves in risk situations. But it is only themselves, it is a personal risk. Having left home, become independent of their family and responsible only to themselves and, usually not living in a settled relationship which involves long term commitments or responsibilities, such as being married and having children, they are "free" to risk everything. In the past young people may have also engaged in such risk activities, often in situations without the built-in safety measures associated with modern risk-tourism. But this period of life was more directly linked to childhood and usually occurred between the ages of 15 and the early 20s, in the years before people "settled down" as the old expression goes and by getting married "got responsibilities". Young men gave up riding motorbikes so rashly or riding them at all, trading them in for the family saloon. Today the demands of extended education and training have eaten into what for many were halcyon days. But today, there is so much more to enjoy and more time for it especially because marriage, settling down and taking up life's responsibilities have been set back until later in life for many. Some people of course choose never to stop playing, never marry and especially never have children. They "tie you down" too much.

Marriage therefore is no longer a marker or stage in the maturation of people into the cycle of social reproduction associated with adulthood. Although in official legislation it may still appear to be so marked, in the life of most young people it no longer is. Instead the maturation associated with the process of growing up occurs long before marriage becomes part of the life cycle in modern industrial society. But marriage itself has not just been relocated in the structure of social life; it has been reformulated and this in turn reflects its changing position and relevance in the development of personhood and the production and reproduction of society. Today marriage is more about relationship choices between individuated selves than an alliance across generations in which elders have a greater say than the couple themselves. It is about love, lifetime friendship in a relationship of equality. In the modern world marriage is just one option a couple of any gender can choose to confirm and affirm their relationship, which is freely entered into as an autonomous individual self. The relationship might endure with a long period of co-habitation, but does not necessarily imply any intention of producing offspring.

But for those who somehow wish to return to a more "traditional" marriage after living out an exciting lifestyle the realities of commitment and especially the reality of producing offspring can be a shock. The long forgotten but continuing realities of social life become all too apparent. Individuated selves, once they have achieved a high income, can enjoy the way of life our young people look forward to with so much naive innocence; but the duties and responsibilities of living in the world, are brought to the fore as marriage leads to children. All rights of the individuated person and their autonomy appear to vanish. They are replaced by a suffocating round of duties and responsibilities starting with the nappies....

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