Family Development and the Life Course: Two Perspectives on Family Change

Abstract

This article assesses family development and life course approaches for studying family change. After a brief description and critique of each a discussion of selected studies illustrates the research concerns that emerge within the 2 frameworks. Life course analysis forces us to consider how societal events affect the families experiencing them as well as changes in the family institution over broad sweeps of time. An awareness of the time-dated nature of finds should give us a healthy skepticism about how long we can count on them to hold for families. Period effects may make even longitudinal studies of certain changes in the family lives of the same sample less useful. For example the increasing labor force participation of women including mothers of infants and toddlers means more are continuously employed throughout their prime work years. Research findings based on data from the 1970s when this was less common may not be generalizable to the 1990s. By attacking the stage classifications in the family development perspective life course scholars have encouraged a commendable reconsideration of the whole concept. As guidelines to the progression of family careers these scheme are useful but they quickly become controversial as they become more specific. The dialectic between the family development and life courses studies highlights some recurring issues about family change: 1) why families stay together and how these sources of cohesion change over time 2) whether the importance of families as a source of emotional support waxes and wanes over time and 3) how events in previous periods limit family relationships in future years.