Introduction

In this chapter our focus shifts to the wider institutional opportunities and constraints that impact on young fathers. Drawing on and updating earlier findings (Neale and Davies, 2016), we explore the economic resources available to these young men and how they seek to make ends meet. We begin by considering the aspirations of young men to provide materially and financially for their children (the ‘breadwinner’ ideology). We go on to chart their varied pathways through education, employment and training (EET) and we show how these pathways are shaped through a complex constellation of life circumstances. The discussion is shaped around the distinctions between the EET trajectories of young men who were skilled, semi-skilled or low-skilled at the start of our study, and their attempts to maintain or improve their skills levels and employment prospects over time. We also show the varied ways in which young fathers attempt to balance learning, earning and caring, and the very real burden that this can produce, often over considerable periods of time.

Extending our discussion in Chapter 2, we set our findings in the context of contemporary debates about the socio-economic fortunes of disadvantaged young people, and their marginalisation within policy processes. Over the course of the Following Young Fathers study (FYF, 2010– 15), welfare policies in the UK become increasingly punitive under the Coalition government, with adverse effects particularly evident for young parents.