Great expectations: Constructions of the life course during adolescence

Despite numerous demographic analyses of the sequencing of life events during the transition to adulthood (Kett, 1977; Modell et al., 1976), little is known of the psychological expectancies that adolescents bring to this and other aspects of the life course experience. This research was conducted to determine whether the futures anticipated by high school and college students correspond to the demographic trends previously observed for comparable age groups (i.e., projected vs. actual age at marriage). The findings indicate that, with increasing age, adolescents acquire a shared life course perspective that is at once richer and more differentiated than that implied by previous demographic investigations. This shared life course perspective was manifest in two ways: (1) increased agreement or concordance in the types of future events anticipated, and (2) increased variability in the ages at which future events were expected to occur. These findings underscore the need to complement demographic analyses of the life course with psychological investigations of the expectancies that adolescents bring to the adulthood transition.