Essays
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Aging and the Life Course - O'Rand, Angela M.
This essay reviews major elements of aging and life course research, its foundations, frontiers, and research challenges. This research examines how human lives are organized and manifested across the life span in different environments. The first foundation of life course research is the historical observation of the institutionalization of the life course; that is, how it became standardized in industrialized contexts through the operation of work, family and state institutions and how it is increasingly destandardized in the new global economy. The second foundation is the examination of the life course as a process that is manifold and cumulative: manifold because it consists of intertwining roles and events over time and cumulative because it consists of sequentially contingent transitions and path‐dependent processes. The third foundation is the recognition of the formative and enduring impact of exposures to severe life conditions or major sustained macro events such as wars or disasters. The stress process is the fourth foundation that addresses how stresses over the life course shape its trajectory. Finally, cognition and emotion over the life span serve as a foundation for the major psychological experience of aging. Three frontiers of life course research are highlighted: the individualization of the life course and the devolution of risk; cumulative advantage and cumulative disadvantage as major processes of life course inequalities; and biological processes and the life course. The essay ends with consideration of life course data and methods and the challenges of interdisciplinary research. -
Becoming Adult: Meanings of Markers to Adulthood - Settersten JR., Richard A.
This essay examines a range of meanings and markers of adulthood, from biological to social, psychological, and legal. It describes a shift from more universal and traditional definitions of adulthood, which were also heavily gendered, to an increasingly diverse and personalized set of definitions. This shift reflects the prolonged, complex, and highly unequal spectrum of pathways that young people take into adulthood today. And yet, public perceptions of what adulthood is supposed to look like, and even the views of young people themselves, are often anchored in an earlier historical era. The clash between outdated ideas and the new realities of adulthood create a major set of contradictions for young people. Two contexts are shown to be crucial in determining individuals' actual and perceived progress toward adulthood: families and institutions of higher education. But in these contexts, too, young people receive contradictory signals about their status. The essay concludes with thoughts about the changing meanings of what it means to be “young” and “adult” today. -
Evidence of Causation—The Contribution of Life Course Research, Part I: Dominant Models of Causal Inference and Their Limitations in Life Course Research - Blossfeld, Hans‐Peter
Life course research has been increasingly criticized for relying only on observational data where processes by which subjects select themselves (or are selected) into the states of a causal variable are not under the control of the researcher. The primary objectives of this essay, the first in a two‐part set, are to discuss two dominant models of causal inference and to identify the uses and limitations of randomized control trials (RCTs) and quasi‐experimental designs for answering life course questions. -
Evidence of Causation—The Contribution of Life Course Research, Part II: Causation as Generative Process - Blossfeld, Hans‐Peter
This is the second part in a pair of essays on causal inference in life course research. The first part presented the dominant models of causal inference and their limitations in life course research. This essay develops the idea of “causation as generative process,” offering a quite promising model for inferences in life course research. -
Learning Across the Life Course - Allmendinger, Jutta
Owing to intense changes in educational demands in a globalized world and demographic shifts in almost all developed countries, structures and content of educational and vocational training have to adapt. Specificity refers to the need for a broad‐based education, allowing people to train for more than one occupation. In terms of content, social skills must be taught to embrace diversity. Educational institutions need to be open for all stages in the life course. Moreover, possibilities of disconnecting time and space owing to progress in educational media need to be explored. -
Lifecourse and Aging - Hazan, Haim
This essay addresses the need of peoples everywhere to think about the human life span as a series of discretely identifiable stages here characterized and analyzed as a series of fundamental dimensions around which dominant cultural beliefs are commonly organized. They include: Universality versus diversity; determinacy versus indeterminacy; social time versus experienced time; and course versus cycle. Each dimension is described and exemplified, resulting in a framework to guide future studies of aging and the life course. -
Modeling Life Course Structure: The Triple Helix - Schuller, Tom
Researching the life course—the way our lives are structured into particular stages and sequences—opens up a huge range of issues and perspectives. I begin with selected synoptic approaches that give a sense of this multidimensionality, such as the levels at which it applies and the linkages between individual life courses and their social contexts. I discuss particular concepts that figure prominently in the analytical toolbox of life course research, notably stages, transitions, and trajectories. -
Social Change and Entry to Adulthood - Mortimer, Jeylan T.
The effects of social change on the transition to adulthood are manifest in large‐scale societal and institutional changes, alterations in relationships and networks, and shifts in individual psychological orientations and behaviors. This essay reviews key foundational work that has established the framework for our understanding of social change and the transition to adulthood, highlighting Mannheim and Elder's theoretical contributions and early empirical studies of age norms, status attainment, and the timing and sequencing of adult role markers. It then describes major ongoing programs of research on the movement from school to work, pathways of transition, familial financial and residential support of transitioning children, and both adult roles and character traits as sources of adult identity. Finally, in view of ongoing societal trends, it calls for future studies of inequality and its implications for the diverging destinies of youth that depend on their social class origin, race, and gender; shifts in the bases of youth age‐related and other identities; the consequences of social media for transitional dynamics; and the implications of transitional patterns for young adult health, cross‐national comparative studies, and youth responses to climate change. -
Social Inequality Across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency - Heckhausen, Jutta
Social inequality is rising around the globe with devastating consequences for individuals and societies. Modern societies allow social mobility but vary greatly in the extent and means by which it is hampered or facilitated at different points in the life course. Motivational and lifespan developmental psychology view individuals as agents of their development, and specify sequential models and strategies for adaptive developmental agency. Individual differences in planful goal selection, optimism, action‐orientation, and goal disengagement capacities are critical for adaptive developmental agency, especially under conditions of major age‐graded changes in opportunities, unexpected losses, or increasing uncertainty and destabilization of life courses.