Life Choices of People Born in 1980–2000 in the Context of Social Challenges

Abstract

Applying David Riesman’s (1993) concept of adaptation in the period of social changes, the article analyses how the changing institutional environment and readaptive family behaviour influence the life scenarios and choices related to the profession and family of persons born in 1980–2000 and raised in independent Lithuania. The author examines what are the professional career and family life choices of young people, what influence the family has on those choices as one of the most important adapters, how the family’s successful or unsuccessful readaptation experiences in the new social reality influence the professional career of young people and what are the reasons for the fear of long term commitments related to family life plans. The analysis is based on 67 life history interviews collected in 2021–2022 in eight counties of Lithuania during the project of research groups funded by the Lithuanian Science Council Growing up in Independent Lithuania: Life Course, Behavioural Strategies and Their Contexts of Those Born in 1980–2000 (2021–2024).