Abstract
As a theoretical orientation, the life course brings a contextual, dy namic, and temporal perspective to studies of families and lives in the past and present. Building upon literature reviews in the mid-1970s, this essay examines some elementary distinctions of life-course analysis, including the links between age, temporality and the life course; the dynamics of interdependent lives; and the unit of analysis problem. Emerging conceptual and research approaches to the household exemplify these distinctions. The relation between social change and the life course remains one of the more central and challenging areas of life-course study.

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