‘I’ve Got Used to Being Independent Now’: Women and Courtship in a Recession

Abstract

A great deal of previous sociological research on working-class girls and young women has stressed the central importance of love and marriage, both in their current lives and in their expectations about the future. For cultural, social and economic reasons ‘getting a man’ and getting him to the altar seem to dominate thoughts, conversations and social activities during the years between puberty and marriage.