Anticipating gendered futures? Young adults' financial practices in relationships and work-family plans

Existing research has explored how couples manage relationships and financial resources; however, little has been written about young adults’ anticipated finance practices in relationships, particularly at the transition to parenthood. To address these gaps in empirical understanding, 14 in-depth interviews were conducted with cisgendered heterosexual young adults aged 20–30 years. We examined their anticipated financial practices in relationships and expectations for balancing paid work and caregiving, drawing on the scholarship of gendered futures and ‘doing gender’ theory. The findings show how young people’s planning, speculation and orientation are directed towards managing gendered lives. For women participants in particular, concerns about limitations to their agency in the here and now, as well as in the future, underpin their decisions or plans to maintain mostly separate finances with their current and/or future partners. While these participants emphasized the importance of financial independence, many participants, especially those of working and lower middle-class self-identification, expect quasi-traditional financial and work-care arrangements at parenthood. This article argues that pragmatism, alongside normative factors, informs and situates gendered futures, highlighting the (im)possibilities for doing gender.