The Gerontologist, Vol 36, Issue 2 239-247, Copyright © 1996 by The Gerontological Society of America

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Stress and the life course: a paradigmatic alliance

LI Pearlin and MM Skaff
Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park 20742- 1315, USA.

Research both into the stress process and into the life course is concerned with changing lives. Yet, the conceptual paradigms that guide the work of these two fields are largely segregated, borrowing little from each other. This article explores some of the junctures at which the study of social stress might benefit from life-course perspectives and, conversely, those at which life-course research might profitably employ the vantage points of stress research. In the first case, an awareness of life-course trajectories can sensitize stress researchers to the restructuring of lives across time, particularly to the shifting landscape of stressors to which people are exposed and changes in their access to resources in dealing with the stressors. For its part, stress research may be useful in clarifying some basic life-course constructs. Thus, it can direct attention to conditions that help to define the experiential distinctiveness of historical cohorts and to conditions that produce intracohort variations. It is also useful in providing an interpretive framework for understanding how the timing and sequencing of transitional events impact people's lives. The perspectives of the stress process, finally, are also relevant to the critical appraisal of the constructs of life satisfaction and successful aging.

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