ABSTRACT
Longitudinal studies of individuals moving through critical life transitions, such as from school to work, school to marriage, marriage to work, work to retirement have uncovered such diversity in sequences that they appear to be "disordered." Role domains are regulated by different timetables based less on age than on institutionalized status sequences and durations. But closer examination of life course sequences is revealing that the variability observed is not so much "disordered" as it is asynchronous. Instances of asynchronous timetables in the family and work domains abound, especially among women who have exhibited more heterogeneity in their management of multiple roles. This chapter reviews three patterns of variability in role transitions in middle and late life that illustrate age integration and the mutual contingency of roles across work and family domains. The areas include patterns of midlife reentry into education, marital dissolution associated with education, labor force participation, and family life cycle, and interdependent family-work pathways to retirement.
