Motivated Men: First-in-Family Male Students

While first-in-family women’s experience of attending university has been examined in a growing body of literature, there has been little attention paid to the experiences of first-in-family males. This chapter presents an account of the motivations, transitions and participations of first-in-family male students using a narrative gender framework. The analysis especially privileges the idea of situated and relational masculinities (Hopkins & Noble, Masculinities in place: Situated identities, relations and intersectionality. Social and Cultural Geography, 10(8), 811–819, 2009). Age was found to be the chief organising category of their experiences structuring their embodied life course. Three main age and relational masculine performances emerged from these men’s stories, namely those of the Fathers, the Self-Starters and the Sons. Working to achieve or enact the breadwinner model of masculinity was found to be the dominant motivator behind their gender performances.