Negotiating the Life Course

Pathways through the life course have undergone considerable change in recent years. Compared to previous generations, young adults today have a much wider range of choices and opportunities, as well as constraints, than in the past. Some of these changes are the result of demographic shifts, such a [...]
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Pathways through the life course have undergone considerable change in recent years. Compared to previous generations, young adults today have a much wider range of choices and opportunities, as well as constraints, than in the past. Some of these changes are the result of demographic shifts, such as declining fertility rates, declining marriage rates and increased rates of cohabitation and divorce. Others are the result of shifts in the labour market, the expansion of the educational system, globalization and technological change which have opened up new opportunities and constraints that impact the individual life course and patterns of family formation and dissolution. This book presents findings of longitudinal analyses examining these transitions, from leaving home to retirement, the ways in which individuals and couples negotiate and organise the competing demands of paid and unpaid work during their lives, and the consequences of these arrangements for the division of labour, educational attainment and occupational achievements.