Emerging Youth, Ideal Ages of Transition to Adulthood and Students’ Post-diploma School Choices

This paper aims to understand the role played by perceived social norms regarding the ideal age of having the first child in shaping the post-diploma choices of students in the fifth class of high school. In most of the literature on the topic of school choice, in fact, the role of ascribed variables and students’ academic performance in determining school paths and the school-university-work transition has been analyzed. This study, on the other hand, aims to hybridize two theoretical strands: the first studying the stages of the transition to adulthood according to the imperatives imposed by tacitly internalized social norms and the second analyzing the reproduction of inequality in education. On the one hand, social norms and, in particular, age norms, institutionalize life paths by stabilizing transition times and roles to adulthood (Tosi 2017; Billari & Liefbroer 2007). On the other hand, post-diploma school choice is a privileged moment of ob-servation to understand the processes of production and reproduction of social and educational inequalities (Pitzalis 2012; Cataldi & Pitzalis 2014; Tarabini & Ingram 2018) because it is in the transition between school lev-els that social selection takes place (Boudon 1973). The post-diploma choice, therefore, represents a decisive step in the school career and, more generally, in the life of students because it constitutes an essential stage towards the transition to adulthood (Arnett 2000, 2007, 2016). This stage may be conditioned by social, value, and identity expectations that are linked to one’s family environment and the opportunities offered by the territorial context to which one belongs (Cefalo & Scandurra 2021; Iammarino et al. 2018). The hypothesis on which this study is based is that, in addition to the role played by the ascribed variables, the social norms perceived by students regarding the ideal age of having their first child may influence their decision to continue their studies, all else being equal, given certain contextual conditions in which young people live and experience. In addition, due to greater social pressure for women, it is hypothesized that gender may have an influence on the perception of the ideal age at which to have the first child (Bergnéhr 2009; Bernhardt & Goldscheider 2006). The study used data from the first phase of the MAYBE project – ‘Moving into Adulthood in uncertain times: Youth Beliefs, future Expecta-tions, and life choices between changing social values and local policy initiatives’, which interviews students before school graduation and has as its main objective to investigate the role of values and choices in the transition to adulthood. Particularly relevant in the study is the attention given to the regional context of reference, Lombardy, which is very heterogeneous in terms of youth services and initiatives offered at the local level. Through the application of logistic regression, the contribution shows how the ideal age perceived by students on a stage considered to be among the main ones for the transition to adulthood, such as having their first child, can orient the decision of the post-diploma school pathway.