Introduction
A fundamental feature of the people of Western cultures and societies is the aim of having a personally good life and being able to offer similar prerequisites to one’s descendants (Bertaux and Thompson 2007, 1; Tafarodi et al.
2012, 785). It is a goal shared by most people both internationally and historically, although there is no consensus on what actually constitutes a ‘good life’ (Niiniluoto 2015; Brown 2014; Silva 2014; French 2011. See also Enlund 2014). The goal of this chapter is to discuss the common ideals of a good life and a proper life-course and to reveal how the corresponding discourses have been argued and categorised in discussions. In particular, this chapter will reflect on the ways these same ideals have been expressed by ‘common people’ of different generations and how these ideals have been negotiated, transmitted, and reproduced within Finnish families in Finland and Canada. To address these issues, two separate family life-course interview databases have been utilised. They consist of 135 life-course interviews with three generations in both Finland and Canada. One of the main goals of the chapter is to reveal how the views and experiences of a good life differ in the two countries in a population with the same ethnic background.The two separate groups of informants are independent of each other, and the data have been collected at different times. The Päijät-Häme (Päijät-Häme is a district in Southern Finland, around the city of Lahti) interview database is linked with ‘Ikihyvä’, a Finnish research project on ageing and well-being (See http://blogs.helsinki.fi/ikihyva-paijat-hame/in-english-2/). Volunteer interviewees with families stretching across three generations were recruited. The Canadian families were included in the research by using the so-called snowball technique. Volunteers were requested for interview, and the request was spread openly across the local Finnish community in Thunder Bay, Canada. The material was analysed using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods. The method of hermeneutic phenomenography was used to interpret the differences in the ideals of a good life between the generations and the countries of residence.