Introduction

The end of compulsory schooling is a time of great choices. At the age of fifteen, Maria and Matti1 faced this challenge in the spring of 1960. Maria had performed excellently at school, and she wanted to work in an expanding business either as a clerk or as a saleswoman.

This chapter examines young people’s transitions from school to work or further education in early 1960s Helsinki. More closely, I study the influence of parents in the decision-making of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys and girls who were finishing compulsory schooling in practically oriented elementary schools. Although old enough to start working, these young people finishing school were dependent on their family in many ways. I seek to answer the following questions in this chapter. First, how did the family’s economic resources influence the decision-making of the young people? Second, what kind of meanings were given to education and work—what did the parents regard as desirable and recommendable? Third, what kind of education was valued, and what was regarded as important concerning working life? Fourth, in what subtle and more indirect ways did social networks influence the transitions?

The research questions presented above relate to the field of the sociology of education since they are connected to social mobility, social reproduction, and the significance of gender in education.

Decisions concerning education are highly influential in determining one’s life-course; education is vital for the reproduction of society (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990). Interaction between family members at a time when young people are making far-reaching decisions provides the grounds for an interesting case study on the transfer and dissemination of values and knowledge. The most influential family members were the guardians, whether biological parents, stepfathers, stepmothers, or foster parents. In addition, older siblings and other family members—such as aunts and uncles—could play a decisive role. This chapter nevertheless concentrates on the influence of the parents because they had the most say in the matter.

Examining the interaction between the young people and their parents is particularly interesting in a time of great societal change; expectations and aspirations could not be based on earlier experiences as much as would have been possible in a more slowly evolving society (Rubin 2003, 791–95). In the early 1960s, Finland’s economic structure was changing rapidly: the nation industrialised rather late compared to other European countries, and manufacturing never dominated the economic structure in the way it did in the countries that industrialised early (Therborn 1995, 65–73). In Finland, the service sector grew strongly after World War II; at the same time, the agriculture and forestry sector diminished, and the manufacturing sector increased moderately.

This study focuses on Helsinki, Finland’s capital city, where the diversification of the economic structure, the rise of formal education, and other phenomena connected to the modernisation of the society had developed furthest. Manufacturing reached its peak as an employer in 1950, when forty percent of the economically active population worked in this sector. The service sector employed over sixty percent of the economically active population in 1960, and this percentage rose quickly over the following decades. The diverse economic structure and the rich range of schooling options offered the young many opportunities, and the social background of the youths’ families was wide. These factors, as well as the availability of the source materials, have influenced my decision to focus on Helsinki.

Another major change related to the economic restructuring was the emphasis placed on formal education. Already in the early 1960s in the capital, a slight majority of children applied to and were accepted at lower secondary school at the age of eleven years. In the selective school system, the lower secondary school placed greater emphasis on theoretical subjects than did the elementary school. The children born in the 1940s were the first generation in Helsinki where the majority acquired at least a lower secondary school education (HT 1974a). The proportion of the secondary school-educated was considerably lower in Finland in general, including the other cities (SVT 1964). In the 1950s, almost a fifth of all lower secondary school pupils attended a school in Helsinki, even though only one-tenth of the country’s population resided in the capital (SVT 1952, 1957, 1960).

The young boys and girls finishing compulsory school in the early 1960s were mostly born in 1945 and 1946, and they can be referred to as early baby boomers. The baby boom after World War II lasted from 1945 to 1950 in Finland, a much shorter time than in the US or elsewhere in Europe. The sharp and relatively brief rise in the birth rate made the baby boomers a very notable group when they were in their teens (Figure 7.2). The baby boomers’ experiences have been found to differ considerably from those of earlier generations in Western Europe and North America; they did not suffer from subsistence poverty, and life became more predictable. In Finland, the baby boomers were the first generation for whom education and acquiring vocational skills became more important than working hard from early on in life (Purhonen 2008, 17–19; Häkkinen 2014, 49–51; Roberts 2012, 483). Finishing at least lower secondary school rapidly became more frequent in Helsinki from this generation onwards (HT 1956a, 1963a, 1968, 1974a.).