ABSTRACT
Parenthood is both one of the most central of adult social roles and also a subjective experience endowed with particular meanings fashioned over a lifetime. Although a couple may anticipate and plan for the first birth and the transition to parenthood, evidence from studies of the transition to parenthood suggests that prospective parents cannot fully anticipate the significance of caring for the baby (Bibring, 1959). Furthermore, as the psychoanalyst Therese Benedek (1973) observed, once a woman or man has become a parent, one is a parent as long as there is memory; Benedek also suggests that even following the years of active parenting, mothers and fathers continue to feel particular responsibility and affection for their offspring. Across the course of life, parents continue to induct their offspring into new roles through forward socialization just as offspring continue through backward socialization to influence parental conceptions of self and management of such adult roles as being parents of yong adults. This process of continued reciprocal socialization across the course of adult life is experienced by both parents and offspring in ways shaped by their own conceptions of self, their unique life history and accompanying memories and hopes, and living in a particular time and place.
