This proposed study consists of a program of research on both the determinants and impacts of various roles configurations of women over their adult years. One overriding goal concerns the nature of women's employment, family and community involvement over the life course for different age cohorts. A second goal involves the relationship between women's role trajectories over the life course (spanning the last three decades) and the subjective appraisals of their situations. A third goal is intergenerational: to systematically assess the transmission across generations of goals, orientations and satisfactions as it is mediated by the life experiences of mothers. The proposed research is greatly facilitated through the use of an existing 1956 archive as the first wave of a panel analysis. Data collection will consist of follow-up interviews with the surviving original respondents as well as interviews with their adult daughters. Specific objectives include: (1) To identify the patterning of specific roles (employment, family and community) over the life course, including their interdependence, timing, duration and sequencing. (2) To investigate the relationships between individual orientations and role attachments in the early adult years and subsequent role configurations over the life course. (a) To refine the concept of role captivity and to assess its effects on subsequent role transitions. (b) To investigate how role strains as well as life satisfactions and well-being in the early years shape the life patterning of roles. (c) To explore the significance of gender role expectations and values in early adulthood as they are played out in the choices women make concerning marriage and family, employment and community involvement. (3) To assess the extent to which continuities and changes in various role attachments over the life course affect individual values, satisfactions and well being in their later years. (4) To specify the relationships between women's life experiences and their daughters' experiences and orientations as adults.
| Robison, J; Moen, P; Dempster-McClain, D (1995) Women's caregiving: changing profiles and pathways. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 50:S362-73 |
| Moen, P; Robison, J; Dempster-McClain, D (1995) Caregiving and women's well-being: a life course approach. J Health Soc Behav 36:259-73 |
| Moen, P; Robison, J; Fields, V (1994) Women's work and caregiving roles: a life course approach. J Gerontol 49:S176-86 |
