ADOLESCENCEemployment opportunities according to age ren-
ders the life course more orderly and calculable
(Beck 1992; Kohli 1986). Also, as the state in-
creased the number of rights that an individual
could claim on a universalistic, standardized basis,
it also restricted the individual’s right to organize
many aspects of life (e.g., with respect to education
and entry into, and exit from, the labor market)
(Buchmann 1989).
Evidence from historical demography suggests
that the transition to adulthood has indeed be-
come more standardized. Examining the preva-
lence of different female life-course patterns (e.g.,
spinster, dying mother, widowed mother) among
cohorts of women born between 1830 and 1920,
Uhlenberg (1969) observes a convergence on the
‘‘typical’’ pattern, involving marriage, having child-
ren, and surviving with husband until age 55.
Among women born in 1830, about 21 percent
experienced this ‘‘typical’’ pattern in contrast to
about 57 percent of women born in 1920. In
addition, the age range in which women typically
married and had children narrowed. The primary
factor promoting standardization of the life course
was improvement in mortality due to the manage-
ment of contagious and infectious diseases such as
smallpox, typhoid and scarlet fever, diphtheria,
and measles. Similarly, the time it took 80 percent
of both men and women to leave the household of
origin, marry, and establish their own households
decreased markedly between 1880 and 1970 among
those who experienced these transitions (Modell
et al. 1976). A considerable body of evidence
suggests that the transition to adulthood was stand-
ardized between about 1830 and 1960, as meas-
ured by a constriction of the time in which most
people pass through a range of transition markers
(for further discussion, see Shanahan forthcoming).
Theoreticians have emphasized the critical role
of ‘‘modernity’’ in explaining this long-term pat-
tern, but this formulation, with its connotation of a
monotonic pace and continuous process, has not
been supported by empirical study. Instead, age
standardization has been affected by historically
specific conditions, including improvements in
health (Uhlenberg 1969) and age-grading in the
school system (Hogan 1981). And as historians
have noted, legal reforms, public debates about
the rights and responsibilities of age groups, and
cultural innovations have come into play at differ-
ent times and with varying degrees of import (Kett
1977; Modell 1989; Zelizer 1994). Evidence thus
points to a long-term trend of compression of the
transition markers, but that trend reflects mani-
fold factors proceeding at an uneven pace.Variability: The complex sequencing of tran-
sition markers. Variability is found in the increas-
ing complexity of role overlap and sequencing
during the transition to adulthood. Theorists of
modernity maintain that as individuals were freed
from the traditional constraints of family and lo-
cale, they were able to exercise more agency in the
construction of their biographies (e.g., Beck 1992;
Giddens 1991). Consistent with these arguments,
Modell, Furstenberg, and Hershberg (1976) ob-
serve that as transition markers occurred in briefer
periods of time, they exhibited greater diversity in
their sequencing. Between 1880 and 1970, the
familial and nonfamilial transition markers increas-
ingly overlapped, creating variability in the transi-
tion to adulthood in the form of more sequence
patterns of school completion, leaving home, start-
ing a family and career, and becoming a parent.Hogan (1981) provides important empirical
evidence for variability in the sequencing of mark-
ers among cohorts born between 1907 and 1946.
The percentage of men experiencing an ‘‘interme-
diate nonnormative’’ order of transition markers
(beginning work before completing school or mar-
riage before beginning work but after school com-
pletion) increased from about 20 percent in the
cohorts born between 1907 and 1912 to about 30
percent for men born in 1951. The prevalence of
‘‘extreme nonnormative’’ ordering (marriage be-
fore school completion) increased from less than
10 percent among cohorts born between 1907 and
1911 to over 20 percent for cohorts born between
1924 and 1947. ‘‘Modernity’’ has a large negative
effect on the prevalence of the normative pattern,
but a large positive effect on the prevalence of the
extreme nonnormative pattern. That is, in histori-
cal times marked by greater educational attain-
ment, lower infant mortality, greater longevity,
and fewer youth in the adult labor market, men are
more likely to make extremely nonnormative tran-
sitions to adulthood. Evidence thus suggests a
trend toward individualization of the life course as
found in the increased variability in the sequencing
and overlap of transitions (for further discussion,
see Shanahan forthcoming).