Glen Elder’s Life as a Life-Course Journey

[An introduction paragraph here talking about the life course and briefly what it is and that what follows is Glen Elder’s early to mid life as a Life-Course journey]

Formative Early Themes    [Chart]

Parental Influences
Social Change In
 Life Experience
College & Graduate School
The Berkeley Years

Mother’s Life & Biographical Perspective  
1905-1998 / Urban Child / Married in ‘32 / 2 sons        [Photo]
Worklife – English literature teacher, H.S.; Girls’ basketball coach
Community – leadership in fine arts, church
• Avid reader of historical biographies

Father’s Influence: Doing Big Things
1901-63 / Farm Childhood / College graduate           [Photo]
Career sequence:
coach  —> medical career  —> farmer
Thrived on doing “innovative things”
Agentic role model

Life-Shaping Changes     [Timeline]

1929-41
  The Great Depression (Cleveland, Ohio)
1934       Birth of Glen Elder
1941-45
  World War II, War & Homefront
1949 – Family move to Pennsylvania farm

Higher Education And Life Transitions   [perhaps another Timeline]
To Penn State – From Agriculture to Social Psychology (1952-57)
Dean of Men’s Staff, Kent State University (1957-58)
MA Thesis, Kent State – on “Transition to College.” Used “recalled events, influences.”

A Carolina Ph.D. and Serendipity     [Photo – caption???]
•    Thinking of “young lives” while using survey data.
•    Exposure to developmental study monographs in UNC library.
•    Meeting new Berkeley Institute Director John Clausen, who offered a job at Berkeley.

Studying People Over Time – The Berkeley Experience
•    Oakland Growth, Ss born 1920-21, N=185. Director, Harold Jones.
•    Berkeley Study, Ss born 1928-29, N=212.
•    Both studies were collecting data by 1930-31

[Photo Main Gate – University of California- Berkeley ]

Discovering the Oakland Archives     [Photo???]
•   Data collection – parent interviews, peer and staff observations, Ss reports.
•   Serendipity again! Evidence of “ongoing family change” – from 1929 to 1933 income.
•   Qualitative data materials. Enabled “recoding.” Can address new questions!

Thinking About Lives

  • Variation in timing and effect of life events and social roles – psychologist B. Neugarten, 1950s. Life cycle of generations and socialization.
  • Birth cohorts as a population perspective on social change and life patterns – demographer Norm Ryder (1965).
  •  A survey codebook on pathways – through life, work, family, leisure. Saw how lives might be represented.

What Perspective?

The Life Course Framework: Its Research Traditions, 1960s
Person            [Chart]    [Photo]
Life-span Concepts of Development
Life Context

Social Roles and Age and Relationships Temporality

Linking Career to Emerging Field ─ Life Course Studies
• Career – Studying Lives in Changing Times, 1962 – .
• 1st job at UC-Berkeley (‘62) on studies of people over time.
• Emerging field of longitudinal and life course studies.

[How much to include on this particular page and if any of the bold heads need more explanation]

 

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