Navigating Risk Discourses: A Narrative Analysis of Parental Experiences in the Career and Life Development of Youth not in Education, Employment, or Training

Siu ming To*, Cheong Wing Wong Victor, Dick man Leung Daniel, Cheryl Danielle Lau, Xuebing Su

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Although the career and life development needs of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET) have garnered interest from researchers and policymakers in recent decades, how parents experience their NEET children’s development and how they make meaning of their parental journeys remain underexplored. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine such parents’ experiences with their NEET children’s career and life development by conducting individual, semi-structured interviews with such parents, particularly in the Chinese cultural context of Hong Kong. Fourteen parents of NEET youth in Hong Kong were recruited via purposive sampling, each of whose NEET child was between 15 and 21 years old. Using narrative thematic analysis of interviews for data analysis, the results revealed that the parents had experienced a range of negative emotions and relied upon both contemporary and cultural conceptualizations of career, risk, and parenting to make sense of their children’s circumstances. Whereas some parents blamed themselves or their children for their negative experiences, others attempted to reinterpret their parenting decisions and actions, as well as their children’s career and life challenges, by reconstructing their personal meanings of parenthood. The results suggest that the parents’ self-perceptions and well-being were subject to the influence of risk discourses on parenting. They also suggest that though macro- and micro-environments were liable to heavily influence the parents’ self-perceptions, parents who could reconstitute their reflexive selves were more likely than others to form more positive views of themselves, their children, and their parental journeys.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)2039-2058
    Number of pages20
    JournalApplied Research in Quality of Life
    Volume16
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Oct 2021

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Life-span and Life-course Studies

    User-Defined Keywords

    • Career development
    • Hong Kong
    • Life outcomes
    • Narrative analysis
    • NEET youth
    • Parents

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