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This chapter focuses on the heterogeneous pathways (including marital and cohabiting union and parenting histories) through which people navigate their family life courses from adolescence through mid-life, and their implications for union dissolution in middle and later life. The analyses draw on data (retrospective, cross-sectional) from the 2011 and 2017 Canadian General Social Surveys. The study sample includes individuals aged 50 and over (n = 14,547) who were in a union at age 50. Sequence analyses are used to identify the most common family life course trajectories among these individuals from adolescence through midlife (ages 15–50). Logistic regression analyses then address the implications of these trajectories for union dissolution in middle and later life (ages 50+). The results reveal four main family trajectories that characterize the earlier years of the adult life course: married with children, cohabiting with children, single or cohabiting without children, and married without children. These family trajectories, together with their level of complexity, play an important role in relation to both marital and cohabiting union dissolution outcomes in later life.

This research aims to analyze, from the perspective of family life trajectories, the intergenerational changes in the reproductive strategies of Costa Rican households. The four strategies explored are fertility and marriage, educational, economic, social and symbolic. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction strategies is the frame of reference to study these strategies. Also, the second demographic transition (SDT) is used to contextualize intergenerational changes. The family life trajectories of three generations in different geographic locations and socioeconomic contexts were reconstructed through interviews. A generational triad was chosen for the interviews; the generational triad refers to three generations of the same consanguineous family. One interview was conducted per generation in each triad, 3 per triad, and 15 in total. Generationally, changes in the types and forms of households are identified; they are dynamic households that change their composition as part of the kinship and family support networks undertaken. The first generation with a single marriage, secondary economic role, not least, but within the priority household. Second generations of one or more unions, in the cases of second unions, unlike the first ones, are unions with shared responsibilities. And the third generation with an independent life, living in an apartment with roommates, or who at their parents’ age still live in the dwelling with them, at ages when they already had families and independent life. Finally, this work seeks to discuss whether the dynamics of household transformations are influenced by the socioeconomic context of each household and each generation.

This research seeks to provide a historical review of the life cycle concept in marketing. The paper aims to show the development of traditional life cycle models and links to the life course perspective.

The authors relate to life events and transitions in consumers' life trajectories, life status, role transitions, and role identities as determinants of consumer behavior. The paper reveals future research potential in the field. Essentially, the authors demonstrate the need for life cycle models grounded on empirical data and discuss related methodological issues.

This paper provides a temporal systematization of theoretical and empirical life cycle research. The major outcome is an outline of conceptual and methodological research directions that enable researchers to follow the life course perspective and to derive empirically grounded life cycle models.

Providing chronological literature compilations and an evolutionary review of life cycle research, the authors identify future research directions. To encourage empirical development of the concept, the article also refers to the related methodological literature.

Both marketing thought and practitioners benefit from the insights presented. Marketing managers may better address consumers' changing needs over their lifetime, strengthen customer loyalty and reduce brand switching, thereby enhancing customer lifetime value.

This paper adds to the study of the consumer life cycle by providing a comprehensive anthology of life cycle research from 1910 to 2010. It shows major research streams and reveals future research potential in marketing.

In recent years, Asian countries have experienced rising rates of premarital cohabitation, mirroring a similar trend that could be observed in many European countries several decades ago. As international differences in these trends are often attributed to institutional and societal differences, this study explores how China’s and Germany’s welfare and cultural regimes relate to national differences in the timing and prevalence of premarital cohabitation and direct marriage.

On the basis of two post-hoc harmonized surveys (pairfam for Germany; CFPS for China), descriptive analyses and logistic regressions were conducted. A higher standardization of partnership trajectories during the transition to adulthood was observed in China; this being probably related to China’s collectivist and Germany’s individualistic culture. While urban–rural differences prevail in China, and are attributable to China’s hukou system, East and West Germans differ considerably in this regard, a finding which can be traced back to regional differences in historical legacy. Discrepancies in economic modernization explain why the likelihood of experiencing these events differs for individuals in the Eastern and Western Chinese provinces.

Besides these differences, the two national contexts resemble each other in the prevalence of educational hypergamy, as well as in greater rates of cohabitation prior to first marriage, in contrast to direct marriage, seen among wealthier individuals and those with higher education. For the first time, the effects of cultural and institutional differences on the transition to adulthood were compared between a collectivistic vs. individualistic cultural regime and a productivist vs. corporatist conservative welfare regime, enabling researchers to draw conclusions about the link between cultural and welfare regime types and partnership patterns.

The goal of this chapter is threefold: to bring the context of disability into literature on fathering; to bring voices of fathers into scholarship on parenting children with disabilities; and to examine what individual stories about a very particular kind of fatherhood might reveal about the cultural narrative of the good father, and the reflexive nature of cultural narratives and individual stories.

Transcripts of in-depth, life course interviews with 14 parents of seven young adults, and older teens with severe impairments associated with a variety of diagnoses were analyzed using narrative analysis strategies. Transcripts of the fathers’ interviews provided primary data and transcripts of the mothers’ interviews were used as supplemental material.

Fathers included in this study drew from normative notions of masculinity and widely circulating cultural narratives of fatherhood, even while participating in caregiving tasks that are at odds with this narrative. Five specific narrative tensions that highlight cultural understandings of the “good father” were evident in these stories: (1) evoking masculinity in the context of care work; (2) providing financial security in the context of the high cost of disability; (3) maximizing potential in the context of realistic expectations; (4) protecting in the context of uncertainty and helplessness; and (5) finding a “new normal” in the context of the unexpected.

Findings add to what is known about mothering children with disabilities. Results also add a new dimension to fatherhood studies by illustrating how widely circulating cultural narratives of fatherhood are adapted in stories about fathering children with life-long assistance needs, and how individual stories might serve as a platform for social change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation with the future of young-adults Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) in Italy. The study of temporal experiences allows to understand how subjects represent their own condition and construct their biographies in an age of uncertainty.

The study follows a qualitative approach to allow participants to express their own experiences and representations through narratives. The 12 cases considered are illustrative of the different orientations detected in the group of 36 young people involved in the research.

Young-adults NEET have problems in acquiring a recognized social status and in designing future orientations. The difficulties to project themselves in time hinder the attainment of a sense of biographical continuity as well as the process of identity construction, which tends to be increasingly detached from the planning sphere.

The study adds to the literature on the issue of young people NEET, contributing to differentiate the social conditions of this group by referring to their experiences, social belongings and resources. The analysis sheds new light on the agency of young people, that conceive biographical strategies in relation to the scenarios they envisage.

This paper explores some social‐psychological aspects of South Asian young adults in Denmark, including identity processes through social relations across geographical borders and psychological diaspora consciousness, and is a follow‐up of a project conducted in the mid‐nineties, in Denmark (N = 14). Diasporic conceptualisations focusing on human‐centredness and processes in migration, combined with a lifecourse perspective, provide the theoretical framework for this study. The method used is in‐depth interviews, analysed through condensation and meaningful categorisation of the narratives. The young adults are perceived as active actors in relation to their life situation. The results show the young adults', as well as the parental generations', re‐interpretation of the self, other and home. They also show that the young adults' diasporic identities involve the countries of origin as well as the Scandinavian welfare societies. However, the myth of return is not supported, although the countries of residence have adopted increasingly restrictive migration policies in the past years.

Consecration represents the most definitive form of legitimation in every cultural field. Complementing previous research focused on individual, contextual, and structural conditions underpinning consecration, this paper takes a sequence analytical perspective and explores whether diverse creative trajectories are more frequently associated with consecration. We introduce the notion of signature style and the pace of category spanning as key features for consecration. We argue that a consecrated signature style is just as likely to result from a producer’s adherence to a specific style over time or from a consistent (and fast-paced) category-spanning creative trajectory. The resulting identity will be specialist in the first case, eclectic in the second. We analyze the stylistic trajectories of 863 electronic music artists and find robust support to our hypothesis. The analysis is corroborated by further exploratory findings that identify intriguing questions for future research. By examining the organization of creative journeys in the career of cultural producers, this paper emphasizes the importance of considering the unfolding and rhythm of creativity over time. This temporal perspective sheds new light on the dynamics of distinctiveness and consecration in cultural fields.