ABSTRACT
A life course perspective has led to some major breakthroughs in those aspects of human development covered by the term schooling, especially in our understanding of the adolescent transition and its longer term consequences (Feldman & Elliott, 1990). This paradigmatic shift has also prompted a more interdisciplinary approach. Sociologists of the family, for example, have linked children’s progress in school to their mothers’ life histories (Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, & Morgan, 1987), and sociologists of education have progressed beyond thinking of the child’s family only as a kind of repository for college plans (Ensminger & Slusarcick, 1992). The social contexts in which children’s development occurs intersect, and that intersection is no longer being ignored.
