Here we present an analysis of young people’s orientations to the future in the context of intergenerational relations. We draw on qualitative interviews to examine how young people from less privileged backgrounds use their family as an anchor when mapping the landscape of possible futures. Further, we use extensive quantitative material from structured surveys to provide contextual information on how young people’s imagined futures are shaped by the earlier generation. The study shows that the ingredients with which young people concoct their futures are in many ways grounded in their families’ attempts to provide the most favourable support they can manage within the structural constraints and on the basis of the affordances that are available to them, but largely regardless of their class background. Our analysis also emphasises that there is a wide range of trajectories between academic careers conventionally understood as ‘successful’ and the careers resulting in ‘social exclusion’.