Where the Millennials Will Take Us

"Provocative, timely, and lucid, Where the Millennials Will Take us provides a powerful framework for studying gender and inequality today. Addressing everything from trans kids, to 'hookup culture, ' to institutional forms of gender inequality, Risman shows us how Millennials think about how gender shapes their experiences and opportunities. So too does Risman rely on her participants' ideas and lives to identify cracks in gendered structures, helping us consider how we might exploit these to affect change. This book is bound to provoke conversation and, just perhaps, a bit of necessary controversy as well." -Tristan Bridges, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara "From the 'true believers' who remain gender traditionalists to the 'rebels' who hope to dismantle gender altogether, Barbara Risman's insightful analysis provides a roadmap for making sense of the dizzying array of gender strategies emerging in 21st century America. This important book extends and refines Risman's pioneering work on gender as a social structure. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wishes to understand the fundamental changes transforming the very meaning of gender." -Kathleen Gerson, Collegiate Professor of Sociology, NYU "The era of 'gender vertigo' is here: confusing, creative, unsettled, and unsettling. Bouncing between ideas as radically divergent as fundamentalist religion and queer theory, Millennials are forging their own gendered paths, sometimes undoing gender altogether. This is a first look at how young people are responding to the gender revolution they've inherited, one that reveals a kaleidoscope of identities and offers a new vision for the future." -Lisa Wade, Occidental College

Barbara J. Risman is Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition and editor of Families as They Really Are.

Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Gender as a Social Structure Chapter 3: Millennials As Emerging Adults Chapter 4: Getting the Stories: Data Collection and Methodology Chapter 5: The True Believers Chapter 6: The Innovators Chapter 7: The Rebels Chapter 8: The Straddlers Chapter 9: Bringing Gender into the Emerging Adulthood Literature: Where do the Millennials Stand? Chapter 10: Getting to a Utopian World Beyond Gender Bibliography Appendix 1: Growing Up in the 21st Century: Interview Schedule Appendix 2: Coding Scheme: Gender Structure Themes