ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the women's lives across the individual life course. It looks at the patterns that emerge across all the women's lives, highlighting intersections of career and childbirth. The chapter explores the lives of four of the women in more detail illustrating how marriage, childbirth and later the birth of grandchildren intersected with and impacted on labour market participation. Norbert Elias, when writing about the adjustment of young workers, briefly considered the possible differing transitional experiences of young women and men. Building upon themes developed in The Civilising Process and The Civilising of Parents, Elias wanted to understand how young workers acquired the behavioural standards of the workplace and internalised adult behaviours such as self-restraint and foresight. According to Elias, the prolonged separation of young people from adults and their indirect knowledge of the adult world are consequences of the increased separation of work from family life that occurred as part of the Industrial Revolution.
