How do young men and young women, members of the latest youth cohort (born 1993-1995), in different societies position themselves as individuals vis-à-vis their families in constructing ‘(post)modern’ identities?  What does gender mean in this process? What cross-cultural differences and similarities can be identified?  

This paper explores these questions by analyzing young people’s narratives in a larger project (2011-2015) on identity constructions of young men and women in two contrasting societies, China and Norway, through a three-generational comparison. In that project, life history interviews (Dollard, 1935; Goodson & Sikes, 2001) were conducted (2011-2012) with 144 participants recruited from three generations of men and women in Beijing and Oslo.

Significant changes in line with de-traditionalization and individualization have taken place in the family structure and family culture in both China (Liu, 2008; Xu, et al, 2007) and Norway (Vaage, 2012; OECD, 2011; Ellingsæter & Leira, 2006) over the past decades due to the interaction between local factors and global modernity (Appadurai, 1996; Dirlik, 2003; Gaonkar, 1999). In both cases, one can observe a decreased family size, a strong child-centeredness, and more equal parental involvement in child rearing and more democratic parent-child relationship compared with just one generation ago. However, due to the specific local sociopolitical and cultural context, the ‘detraditionalization’ of the family may have taken on different features in the two very different societies. It is against this background that we will explore the questions raised above.

In our discussion of our findings we draw on Lemke’s (2000) notion of ‘time-scales’ and Holland’s (Holland et. al, 1998) ‘the figured worlds’ and ‘positioned identities’ to explore how young people define, perceive and relate to their families within different cultural and structural frames in the age of global modernity.

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