Abstract
Life course sociologists are increasingly concerned with how the general character of biographies is transformed over historical time--and with what this means for individual life chances. The individualization thesis, which contends that contemporary biographies are less predictable, less orderly and less collectively determined than were those lived before the middle of the 20th century, suggests that life courses have become both more internally dynamic and more diverse across individuals. Whether these changes reflect expanding opportunities or increasing jeopardy is a matter of some debate. We examine these questions using data on the employment, marital and parental histories, over the ages of 25-49, for five birth cohorts of American women (N=7150). Our results show that biographical change has been characterized more by growing differences between women than by increasing complexity within individual women's lives. Whether the mounting diversity of work and family life paths reflects, on balance, expanding opportunities or increasing jeopardy depends very much on the social advantages and disadvantages women possessed as they entered their prime working and childrearing years.
Highlights
Understanding historical change in the biographies of individuals has become a central focus of life course research
We advance the discussion of individualizing life courses in several ways: (1) we focus on adult females during a period of rapid social change in women’s life courses; (2) we analyze both work and family biographies; (3) we examine these domains separately and in combination; (4) we distinguish the between-person and the within-person dimensions of life course change; (5) we use data for the US, a nation seldom considered in the investigation of individualization processes; and (6) we investigate the social patterning of change processes
Examining women’s work and family biographies separately for each domain reveals an important facet of changing life courses: differentiation and de-standardization processes for employment, marriage and parenthood do not run in the same direction, and sometimes fail to trace patterns predicted by the individualization thesis
Summary
Understanding historical change in the biographies of individuals has become a central focus of life course research. The twin themes of opportunity and jeopardy, as they pertain to the individualization of women’s adult biographies, are only beginning to be explored in the life course literature Findings from this small body of work speak to two key dimensions of life course change: (1) growing diversity between life courses, as trajectories in key domains lose their putative universal character; and (2) increasing fluidity within individual life courses, as patterns of employment and marriage grow increasingly unstable (Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2010; Bruckner & Mayer, 2005). The paper concludes with a brief summary of our findings and a discussion of their implications for individualization processes, expanding opportunities and growing jeopardy
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