PSYC 235 Week 3 Life Line Example

Life Line Project: Three Generations of One Family Compared, the Timing of Life Events and Social Roles From 1948 to Today

Method

For this project I interviewed my maternal grandmother, Ruth, born in 1948, by phone for about an hour, and my mother, Linda, born in 1972, in person over two evenings. I asked each about the ages at which major events occurred and when she first felt like an adult. Both agreed to the information shared here; names have been changed. My own life line is from my records and memory.

Timing of Education, Work, Marriage and Parenthood

The three life lines show a clear shift in the timing of early adult roles. My grandmother finished school, married and became a mother within three years. My mother spread the same transitions over six years, and I have finished school and started work but not yet married or had children. Bjorklund (2015) describes the social clock, the shared expectations a society holds about when events should happen, and notes that these expectations have loosened as education has lengthened and economic pressures have changed. By my grandmother's clock, my mother married late and I am very late; by mine, all three of us are on time for our own cohorts. Education explains much of the difference. My grandmother began work at 17, while my mother and I each spent four more years in school, which pushed marriage and parenthood later. Economics also played a part: my grandmother and grandfather bought a house at 21 on one income, while my mother and father needed two incomes and waited until 30, and my fiance and I are still saving for a down payment.

Roles in New Orders

The life lines also show roles arriving in different sequences. My grandmother became a grandparent at 47, before she became a caregiver for her own mother at 58. My mother, in contrast, became a caregiver at 49, when my grandmother had a stroke, and has not yet become a grandparent. Bjorklund (2015) describes the middle generation as often carrying responsibilities in two directions at once; my mother cared for her mother while still helping me with rent after college. Because the generations are spaced further apart, my mother may become a grandparent later than her mother did, and she may face caregiving and grandparenting at the same time.

Defining Adulthood

The most interesting difference came from the question about feeling like an adult. My grandmother and mother both named the birth of a first child, while I named the month I began paying all my own bills. Recent studies help explain this. Walczak (2023) surveyed 303 Polish emerging adults and found that responsibility and independence, including financial independence, were the most common markers of adulthood, while marriage, parenthood and finishing school had lost importance. Vleioras (2021) compared 73 emerging adults with their parents and found that both generations ranked accepting responsibility for one's actions highest and agreed strongly on the order of criteria, though the young adults rated the criteria as less important overall. My family fits both findings: all three of us talked about responsibility, but my mother and grandmother tied it to parenthood, while I tied it to financial independence.

Completing these life lines made me see my own timing less as a delay and more as a pattern shared by my generation, and it gave me a new appreciation for how early my grandmother took on adult responsibilities. It also made me curious about the next generation: if my children follow the trend, their life lines may look as different from mine as mine looks from my grandmother's.

References

Bjorklund, B. R. (2015). The journey of adulthood (8th ed.). Pearson.

Vleioras, G. (2021). What is adulthood? A comparison of the adulthood criteria of Greek emerging adults and their parents. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 182(6), 495-500. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.2021.1957761

Walczak, A. (2023). What does it mean to be an adult? Adulthood markers in the perspective of emerging adults. Emerging Adulthood, 11(6), 1335-1345. https://doi.org/10.1177/21676968231194887