Negotiating the Life Course

Abstract

Despite dramatic changes in family life over the past several decades, survey data demonstrate that a 'standard' family life course remains a goal for the vast majority. The ideal family life course is to have a stable partnership with two or more children, and to have all of one's children with the same partner. Achievement of a standard family life course may, however, depend on the opportunities and constraints encountered along one's life path, in particular those associated with the pursuit and attainment of higher education. Analyses of survey data from France, Sweden and the United States document the family experiences to age 40 of persons born in the 1950s. Overall, about half of the cohorts had experienced a standard family life course. For women, education had both positive and negative in fl uences – greater childlessness but more stable childbearing unions. For French and Swedish men, fatherhood and union stability were both associated with higher education. Educational differences in family transitions – especially childbearing out of union and dissolution of unions with children – are much greater in the U.S. than in the other countries, resulting in a signi fi cant educational gap in the likelihood of achieving a standard family life course that is not observed in Sweden or France. A fundamental principal of life course theory and research is that circumstances and events early in life have life-long implications for an individual's opportunities, choices and outcomes (Elder et al. 2003 ; Mayer 2005) . Pathways from childhood through young adulthood to adult economic attainments have been intensively studied. Research on the consequences of early life experiences for adult health and survival is more recent but already quite well developed. When it comes to a third key component of the life course – attainment of a stable and nurturing family life – we have a considerable portfolio on relationships between early life experience and particular family transitions in adulthood. But we do not have the cumulative picture of family experience over the life course as has been developed for wealth and health. Educational attainment is the key marker of advantage on the threshold of the adult life course. Education is without doubt the most important determinant of economic well-being later in life. Education is also strongly associated with better health throughout life and greater longevity. Furthermore, the gap between the less well and better educated on both dimensions appears to accumulate over the life course. Differences by education in the timing or occurrence of most family transitions – cohabitation and marriage, childbearing, separation – are also well documented. It is less clear, however, that education produces a smooth pathway toward the most advantaged or normative family life course. In this chapter, we argue that – despite dramatic changes in family life and the broader contextual factors driving those changes, such as those documented in the previous chapter – a 'standard' family life course remains a goal for the vast majority. Achievement of a standard family life course may, however, depend on the opportunities and constraints encountered along one's life path, in particular those associated with the pursuit and attainment of higher education. We use data from surveys conducted in the 1990s in France, Sweden and the United States to document the family expe-riences to age 40 of persons born in the 1950s. We fi nd that, overall, about half of the cohorts had experienced a standard family life course, that educational differences in family transitions and the standard family life course are much greater in the U.S. than in the other countries, and that education has different implications for the family life courses of men and women.