title: Individualization, opportunity and jeopardy in American women's work and family lives: a multi-state sequence analysis.
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.
authors.affiliation: Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 3M7. Electronic address: dworts@chass.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Worts
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Electronic address: a.sacker@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sacker
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Electronic address: a.mcmunn@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: McMunn
authors.affiliation: Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 3M7. Electronic address: peggy.mcdonough@utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Peggy
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: McDonough
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008016:Life Change Events; D008875:Middle Aged; D012922:Social Change; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States; D014931:Women, Working / Q000523:psychology
keywords: De-standardization; Individualization; Life course; Optimal matching analysis; Sequence analysis; Social inequality