Settersten R A, Hagestad G O
Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106-7124, USA.
Gerontologist. 1996 Oct;36(5):602-13. doi: 10.1093/geront/36.5.602.
The age-normative framework has gained widespread acceptance among students of the life course since the pioneering work of Bernice Neugarten had her colleagues in the 1960s. Investigators have begun to call for new research in this area to determine how these schedules operate in contemporary American society, how they might vary by life sphere, and how they might operate differently for men and women or along other important social divisions. Building on interviews with a random sample of 319 adults in the Chicago metropolitan area, we turn our attention to cultural age "deadlines" for a series of general transitions related to education and work. While a rough, "normal biography" of educational and work life existed in the minds of our respondents, the deadlines attached to that biography were flexible guidelines for how those trajectories might unfold, not rigid, normative principles. We relate these findings to complementary evidence on family transitions, and we consider our findings in light of two lively scholarly debates. One debate concerns the degree to which various life spheres (e.g., family, education, and work) are more or less structured by age, and the other debate concerns the degree to which men's lives are more or less structured by age compared to women's lives.
自20世纪60年代伯尼斯·纽加滕及其同事开展开创性工作以来，年龄规范框架在生命历程研究领域已获得广泛认可。研究人员已开始呼吁在这一领域开展新的研究，以确定这些时间表在当代美国社会中是如何运作的，它们在不同生活领域可能会有怎样的差异，以及它们在男性和女性身上或其他重要社会划分群体中可能会有怎样不同的运作方式。基于对芝加哥大都市区319名成年人的随机抽样访谈，我们将注意力转向与教育和工作相关的一系列一般转变的文化年龄“期限”。虽然我们的受访者心中存在一个大致的教育和工作生活“正常传记”，但与该传记相关的期限是关于这些轨迹可能如何展开的灵活指导方针，而非严格的规范原则。我们将这些发现与关于家庭转变的补充证据联系起来，并根据两场激烈的学术辩论来考量我们的发现。一场辩论涉及不同生活领域（如家庭、教育和工作）在多大程度上由年龄构成，另一场辩论涉及男性生活与女性生活相比在多大程度上由年龄构成。
