ABSTRACT
A woman's life was divided into premenarchical years, childbearing years, and postmenopausal years. One research tradition was pioneered by Paul C. Glick and has to do with such major demographic events in the lives of women over their entire life span as birth, marriage, motherhood, and bereavement. There may have been some reason for suppressing the woman behind the role. It was observed long ago that there was an inverse relationship between the individuation of women and their fertility. The concept of development was first used in connection with physical growth; it dealt with the maturing of inborn potentials and implied a logical progression from one level to another. The stages of biological development are full of such discontinuities: the infant discontinues the breast at weaning; the pubescent girl and boy discontinue their childish activities; age brings its own discontinuities. Role-related stages shows discontinuities, many of them marked by rites of passage.
