The bioecological model from a life course perspective: Reflections of a participant observer.

AbstractInformed by the life course perspective, this paper investigates whether and how employment and family trajectories are jointly associated with subjective, relational and financial wellbeing later in life. We draw on data from the Swiss Household Panel which combines biographical retrospective information on work, partnership and childbearing trajectories with 19 annual waves containing a number of wellbeing indicators as well as detailed socio-demographic and social origin information. We use sequence analysis to identify the main family and work trajectories for men and women aged 20–50 years old. We use OLS regression models to assess the association between those trajectories and their interdependency with wellbeing. Results reveal a joint association between work and family trajectories and wellbeing at older age, even net of social origin and pre-trajectory resources. For women, but not for men, the association is also not fully explained by proximate (current family and work status) determinants of wellbeing. Women’s stable full-time employment combined with traditional family trajectories yields a subjective wellbeing premium, whereas childlessness and absence of a stable partnership over the life course is associated with lower levels of financial and subjective wellbeing after 50 especially in combination with a trajectory of weak labour market involvement. Relational wellbeing is not associated with employment trajectories, and only weakly linked to family trajectories among men.

Download Full-text

Persistent short-term imprisonment: Belonging as a lens to understand its shifting meanings over the life course

Incarceration ◽

10.1177/2632666321989018 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 263266632198901

Author(s):

Marguerite Schinkel ◽

Keyword(s):

Life Course ◽

Sense Of Belonging ◽

Life Course Perspective ◽

Criminal Punishment ◽

Short Term ◽

Men And Women ◽

The Life Course ◽

Looking Back

This article takes a life-course perspective to the meaning of persistent short-term imprisonment and introduces the significance of ‘penal careers’. Examining a total of 62 interviews with men and women in Scotland with long careers of (progression through) criminal punishment, it uses to the concept of belonging as a lens to interpret their experiences. While some participants already felt early on in their career that they belonged in prison because of their shared characteristics with other prisoners, the repetition of imprisonment meant that they increasingly felt displaced from life outside and saw life in prison as ‘easier’ and ‘safer’. Nevertheless, looking back on their many sentences, they felt their cumulative meaning was ‘a waste of life’. The article concludes by considering steps towards tackling the conditions that create this sense of belonging in a place of punishment.

Download Full-text

Foster Care in a Life Course Perspective

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ◽

10.1177/0002716220976535 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 692 (1) ◽

pp. 227-252

Author(s):

Fred Wulczyn

Keyword(s):

Foster Care ◽

Life Course ◽

Social Services ◽

Foster Children ◽

Foster Parents ◽

Local Variation ◽

Life Course Perspective ◽

State And Local ◽

Policy Priority ◽

The Life Course

To understand what placement outside of one’s home means to the young people involved, we must understand foster care from a life course perspective. I analyze young people’s experiences in foster care from this perspective, accounting for when foster care happens, how long it lasts, and what happens when foster care placements end. I show that the population of children coming into foster care is younger and less urban than it was 20 years ago. I also show reliable measures of exposure to foster care over the life course. Children who enter care early in life are the children who spend the largest proportion of their childhood in foster care—a fact that rarely weighs on the policymaking process. We know very little about state and local variation in foster care placement rates, not to mention the influence of social services, the courts, foster parents, and caseworkers over foster children, so I close by arguing investment in research should be a clear policy priority.

Download Full-text