Pathways of Youth Development in a Rural Trailer Park* Katherine A. MacTavish Sonya Salamon** Abstract: Limited empirical documentation exists for the developmental pathways available to rural youth growing up in low-resource community settings. Drawing on ethnographic data, this article examines the developmental pathways experienced by youth in a rural trailer park. Findings reveal how various factors, some inherent to working poor class status and others unique to trailer park residence and small town community, challenge youth’s access to a pathway offering broader life chances. Key Words: mobile home parks, rural community, rural youth, working poor families, youth development. I did things backwards. I had kids, then got mar- ried and then chose a career. I hope my kids do things the other way around. —Mother of two I hope they can all find a job that will give them the income to support a family. I hope they finish school up to and including college. That they don’t start a family until they’re done [with school]. —Father of four These two parents, like parents in general, hope for a life that offers their children broader choices than they experienced. As parents they have made moves to secure such a life for their children. Both have achieved the status and stability of homeownership. Further, both reside in a small town—a residential setting long equated with all that is good about com- munity for children (Hummon, 1990). Yet, for both parents, a hope of a brighter future for their children is potentially challenged by class factors and residen- tial location, as these are working poor parents who call a trailer park home—a context they readily iden- tify as ‘‘second best.’’ Despite the achievement ideology of American culture that motivates dreams of social mobility, in reality the vast majority of children in the United States grow up to reproduce the class status of their parents (MacLeod, 1996). Further, whereas a mobile home park offers affordable access to the American dream of homeownership, it comes with social and economic costs attached (Miller & Evko, 1985; Salamon & MacTavish, in press). Historically margin- alized to the outskirts of town, mobile home parks have long been subjected to formal and informal stigmatization (Baker, 1997; Salamon & MacTavish). As home to a highly concentrated population of young, poor, and less educated residents (Meeks, 1995), the mobile home park has the potential to function as a rural version of an inner-city ghetto—a community context we know to narrow life chances for children and youth (Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Samaroff, 1999; Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Based on a field study using qualitative interviews and extensive observations of a small sample of youth in middle adolescence and their parents, this article examines the developmental pathways avail- able to youth living in a rural trailer park. Findings are important for policymakers, program leaders, and practitioners as they reveal how various factors, *Field research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Research Initiatives Grant 9801645. The Illinois Manufactured Housing Association (IMHA) generously provided the research team with in-kind support of an office unit in the study park. The park owner supported the research in many ways as well. Marni Basic made a substantial contribution to both project management and fieldwork. Manuscript preparation was supported by a National Institutes of Health– National Institutes of Child Health and Development RO3 Grant HD047608-01. Findings were presented at the annual meetings of the National Council on Family Relations held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in November 2003. We thank Alexis Walker and Megan Notter for many insightful suggestions during the preparation of this article. **Katherine A. MacTavish is at the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 325C Milam Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331 (kate. mactavish@oregonstate.edu). Sonya Salamon is at 33 Bevier Hall, MC-180, 905 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801 (ssalamon@uiuc.edu). Family Relations, 55 (April 2006), 163–174. Blackwell Publishing. Copyright 2006 by the National Council on Family Relations.