Living the Gendered Life Course in Time and Space

Abstract

I have always been interested in the life course, with age performing as a social marker related to the time and timing of events. My father’s tales about the Great Depression were stories about the way historical and biographical events shape life chances and life quality depending on when they occur. (In his mid-20s, he had worked for years to save money to go to college and lost it all. But he then found a sense of purpose as a soldier in the Second World War.) My own life too has been a study of transitions and timing in context. I was widowed at age 32 and recoiled in horror when 70- or 80-something women would come up and hug me and say they were widows, too. I knew our age difference made me not “like them” but couldn’t really formulate that notion until as a graduate student I read work by Bernice Neugarten. I never met Bernice, but her insights into time and timing norms became a key theme in my own work.