189common household (co-residence), especially with family members, may
have a cumulative effect by strengthening these bonds, whereas with oth-
ers, such as temporary housemates, the effect may be more ephemeral
and may not translate into the inclusion of these ties in current personal
networks. Thus family trajectories based on co-residence, such as the
experience of growing up as an only child or with siblings, leaving the
parental home once and for all or having to return later for economic
reasons, living alone or with housemates, becoming a parent, divorcing
and repartnering, and so on, will differentially influence the composition
of personal networks. Globally, any life transition will add, suppress, or
modify existing ties in the social network in which an individual is
embedded. To formalize the ways in which social context and life transi-
tions are interdependent, Abbott ( 2001 : 157) considers “entity processes”
that unfold at the interplay of macro and micro levels, using birth, death,
merger (e.g., marriage), and division (e.g., the departure from the paren-
tal home or divorce) as central events of social processes. He distinguishes
several of these processes, which may or may not be associated with
changes at the macro level. The first process is microtransformation, which
results, for example, from turnover in the network of individuals with
different properties (for instance mother, spouse, or child). The second
process, internal metamorphosis, describes internal changes in the network
without turnover (such as through ageing or as a consequence of a (non-)
normative event). A microstructural change occurs through the emergence
of internal hierarchies that lead to internal divisions (such as siblings or
parent–child coalitions). Consequently, the influence of a life transition
on a personal configuration will vary according to the context in which it
occurs. For instance, adding a new child to the network does not have the
same impact if she is the first or the fifth, or if at that time one of the
biological parents lives or not outside the household.
The aim of this chapter is to investigate the impact of co-residence
trajectories on the development of personal networks of individuals of
both sexes who belong to one of two birth cohorts (1950–1955 and
1970–1975), paying attention to two different age spans (15–35 and
35–55).^1 Drawing on a cross-national comparative perspective, we focus
on the impact of co-residence trajectories encompassing major household
arrangements that are typical of earlier or later life stages on the composi-
Linking Family Trajectories and Personal Networks