215Transition to empty nest (one) types. In Lithuania, eight of the nine types
of personal configurations are influenced by one of the Solo (in six cases),
Nesting one parent (five), Leaving parental home (four) and Conjugality
(two) types of trajectories. It is noteworthy that a given type of personal
network may be positively or negatively associated with one or more types
of co-residence trajectories. As a general trend, those individuals who
have lived for some years with partner and/or children are more likely to
include partner and children in their close personal relationships, while
those who have lived alone for some time are more likely to include non-
kin (friends or colleagues), as well as close kin in a lateral line. The Wo rk
type of personal network is the only one predicted in the three countries
by the same type of co-residence trajectories, namely the Solo one. As a
general trend, non-reproductive/non-parental trajectories are negatively
associated with personal networks based on the family of orientation.
Third, the selected analytical strategy—to base comparison on histori-
cal time—puts emphasis on age-related trajectories. Indeed, age plays an
important role in explaining the likelihood of following each type of tra-
jectories in the global sample. However, when considering countries sepa-
rately, we find that six of the nine types (two in each country) were not
age related. Age plays a key role in structuring personal networks in seven
of the nine cases for the entire sample. Parents configurations are the most
emblematic examples across countries, as they are mostly developed by
members of the younger birth cohort. Interestingly, at the country level,
this effect is less pronounced in Switzerland, where only two types of per-
sonal networks are influenced by the age of individuals (positively with
the Wo rk type and negatively with the Parents type), compared to four in
Portugal (positively with Friendship and Standard-nuclear and negatively
with Parents and Mixed) and Lithuania (positively with Friendship and
Beanpole and negatively with Parents and Mixed). At the macro-sociolog-
ical level of the welfare states, on the one hand, age differentially influ-
ences the structuring of personal networks, suggesting country-specific
life course regimes, whereas on the other hand the Parents type of personal
network is always more likely to be found in the younger cohort.
Fourth, it is striking that several dimensions of the social development
of countries such as the overall wealth of the country (GDP), institu-
tional regulation of the school-to-work transition, unemployment and
Linking Family Trajectories and Personal Networks