European youth studies increasingly use critical modernisation theory to understand the changing social circumstances and cultural context of contemporary youth in advanced western societies. It is generally argued that the social biography of youth is taking a new form and meaning in the light of individualisation and destandardisation/destructuring processes. On the basis of data drawn from two recent studies of British and Dutch teenage girls, this paper argues that the relationships between youth and social change are more complex and fragmented than has been frequently implied. In particular, youth transitions continue to be marked by the effects of systematic social inequalities, such as gender relations, and these imply that gender-specific adult normal biographies remain of sociological and personal significance.
