Imagine you had reached the end of your life and were writing reflectively about how you had lived and what you had achieved. What would your account reveal? What path would your career have taken and how would your family life have panned out?
This was the task given to 141 schoolleavers living on the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, in an exercise which had them imagining themselves towards the end of their lives and looking back. The participating pupils were mainly 16-yearolds, comprising 89 boys and 52 girls. The exercise was initiated in May 1978 by the late sociologist Professor Ray Pahl as part of a larger study which looked at ordinary families on the Isle of Sheppey — a study that resulted in the highly acclaimed book Divisions of Labour (1984), now a modern sociological classic.
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