Jackie's Identity Changing Through The Years - Essay Example

“All of Britain watched them grow up, from rambunctious 7-year-olds to fortysomething adults”, writes the Associated Press (2004, para.1). One of them was Jackie Bassett, who transformed from a carefree child into a troubled youngster, and then into an adult trying to cope with the pressures of life, work, marriage, finances, relationships, and parenting. Her emerging identity always remained strongly tied to her parentally determined social class and its standards, yet she struggled hard to create harmony in her life through bringing changes in her identity, apart from what her social class contained for her.

Papoulia-Tzelpi, Hegstrup and Ross (2005, p.4) write that, “Identities are not simple or determined in contemporary societies. The seven year olds’ sense of themselves is not fixed, and new aspects of identity will supplement, complement, and may even replace previous descriptions.” This means that Jackie had been pulling together her parental social class identity and the changes in her identity- the changes that her life and its pressures demanded her to bring forward. Did the seven year old Jackie portray the image of the woman she had to grow into?

Is a child really the father of the man? Did Jackie’s dream of a nice and comfy house come true? We see Jackie saying, when she was seven years old, that all she wanted was a nice and comfy house. . Hence, what she thought of many years back as a child became a conviction that shaped her identity through the years. Her enthusiasm toward everyday life showed through her interaction with her peers, Lynn and Sue, in the 7 Up. This carefree attitude was a part of her identity when she was a child.

By 14, she was facing a braver era, in which she was asked about her boyfriends. She replied that she regarded 14 as a bad age for such friendships. Her identity, which was untroubled and carefree in the 7 Up, had changed into a careful one, because she talked about guys and relationships carefully. When the cameras came back to her when she turned 21, she had already married Mick, and had bought a house. She was working in a bank by then, and did not have any kids. She did not like to answer questions like why did she marry too young.

She was getting irritated. Her identity had changed from a carefree child to a somber adult. At 28, she was running the Turnpike pub in Cambridgeshire with her husband and parents, proving to be a responsible adult. In 35 Up, we come to know that her mother had died. Her marriage had broken. Later on, from a brief relationship, she had a child, Charlie. She had two more kids, named James and Lee, from her new partner, Ian, from Scotland. She raised all three children in Scotland, as we see in 42 Up.

Hence, she grew into a responsible mother who raised her kids with love and care. Her marriage with Ian also broke up, and she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She was depressed with her illness but counted on her kids for love and support. The 49 Up shows what a nice and conscientious person she had grown into. To conclude, the Up series shows how Jackie transformed from a happy-go-lucky seven year