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Background: This study investigated associations between work-family life courses and biomarkers of inflammation and stress in mid-life among British men and women. Gender differences in these associations were also explored.
Methods: A novel statistical method—multi-channel sequence analysis—defined work-family life courses between the ages of 16...
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... Generation X women are especially more likely to be employed and have both work and parenting responsibilities (Hochschild & Machung, 2012). Research suggests important implications of these sociodemographic differences for health, such as significant links between being partnered and better mental and physical health, and between inconsistent employment and worse midlife health (Carr & Springer, 2010;Lacey et al., 2016). ...
This commentary on the special issue of Prevention Science, "Toward a Lifespan Prevention Science: A Focus on Middle and Late Adulthood" reviews the studies included in the issue, compares findings, and makes recommendations for future directions in this emerging field. Articles in this issue addressed a number of the key elements of prevention science, including identifying proximal and distal risk and protective factors that play a role in middle and late adult health and well-being, providing preliminary evidence for a preventive intervention to moderate stress reactivity, and proposing a theoretical approach to preventing substance misuse across the lifespan. Our commentary centers around three critical areas for mid and later life prevention science: the importance of theory building, a focus on alcohol and its role in midlife health, and health disparities. Each of the articles in this issue touched on at least one of these areas. We conclude that a focus on prevention in mid and later life has strong potential, and further research is needed.
... • By age 32, 60% had attained more than a high school degree 14 coronary heart disease risk factors (Hardy et al, 2009); premature death (Olausson et al, 2004;Henretta, 2007); stress biomarkers (Lacey et al, 2016a) and BMI (Lacey et al, 2017) (see Table 4). Both Olausson et al (2004) and Henretta (2007) report higher rates of premature death for teen mothers compared to older mothers even after controlling for SES in both early and later life. ...
Studies examining the relationship between young maternal age and maternal outcomes are often cross-sectional or short term. We review birth cohort studies that investigate life course outcomes of teen mothers past age 25. Strengths of birth cohort studies include a focus on a complete cohort, rather than a sample, and prospective data collection beginning before or at birth. Limitations are high cost, attrition and unmeasured background factors. Some 20 studies from six countries met study criteria. This narrative review describes how teenage mothers fare as adults, identifies factors that modify outcomes and examines whether outcomes reflect specific time periods or cohorts.
Childhood disadvantage was a greater marker of teen mothering in more recent cohorts, even in countries with strong social welfare programmes. The effects of young maternal age on all outcomes diminished when strong controls adjusted for selectivity into teen mothering.
... As young people transition to adulthood, their work and family choices can have long-term consequences for their health, which makes understanding how they balance work and family lives crucial (Lacey et al., 2016). Earlier, it was shown that work-family trajectories were associated with health at different life stages (Machů et al., 2022). ...
... Previous studies examining work-family trajectories in older cohorts in various countries (e.g. Aeby et al., 2019;Lacey et al., 2016) found more differences between women and men with men's trajectories being characterised by steady employment and women's trajectories being more complex and diverse, i.e. trajectories of women had higher within-person and between-person differentiation. A study comparing the work-family trajectories between ages 16-42 years of UK women and men across three birth cohorts born in 1946, 1958 and 1970 concluded that trajectories of women and men were becoming more similar (e.g. ...
During young adulthood, several transitions in work and family lives occur, but knowledge of the work-family trajectories of the current generation of young adults, i.e. people born in the 1990s, is lacking. Moreover, little is known about whether the mental health status before the start of the working life may shape work-family trajectories. We used 18-year follow-up data from the TRAILS cohort study of individuals born between 1989 and 1991 (n = 992; 63.2% women). Internalising and externalising problems were measured with the Youth Self-Report at ages 11, 13 and 16 years. Monthly employment, education and parenthood states were recorded between 18 and 28 years. Applying sequence analysis, we identified six work-family trajectories in women and men. The first five trajectories were labelled: long education, continuous education and work, education and work to work, early work, and inactive. The main difference between trajectories of women and men was in the timing of parenthood, thus the remaining trajectory of women was labelled active with children, and the remaining trajectory of men active. Women who experienced externalising problems in adolescence were more likely to belong to the trajectory characterised by parenthood. Men who experienced internalising problems in adolescence were more likely to belong to the trajectory characterised by a long time spent in education. The TRAILS data allowed us to consider timing, duration and ordering of the work and family states in young adulthood, and to use multiple assessments of mental health in adolescence. Further research needs to examine the mechanisms through which early mental health affects later work and family outcomes.
... Positive values of GS indicate better health. study urges the need for future studies to account for objective measures of the stress response, such as inflammatory markers (Kamper et al., 2021;Lacey et al., 2016;Schaap et al., 2006). ...
Combining work and family roles can have beneficial consequences on health but could also result in chronic stress and adverse health outcomes at older ages. This study aimed to examine combined employment, parenthood, and partnership histories of men and women during the childbearing period (ages 15-49), and to investigate the links of these work and family roles with physical functioning later in life. We used data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with retrospective information on employment, parenthood, and partnership histories for 18,057 men and 20,072 women (n = 38,129) living in 28 different countries belonging to six European welfare clusters. We applied multichannel sequence analysis (MCSQA) and hierarchical clustering to group work-family trajectories into 12 clusters for men and 15 clusters for women. We assessed the association between work-family life courses and grip strength by estimating multivariable linear regression models. Delayed work and family transitions, unstable employment, and the absence of combinations of work and family roles between age 15 and 49 were associated with weaker grip strength in later life for both men and women. Results differed by gender and were framed by the welfare context in which gendered work and family responsibilities unfold across individual life courses. The findings make an important contribution to the domain of gender and health in later life and stress the need to engage more with issues related to the mechanisms linking work and family trajectories to poor health in later life.
... Selection into different pathways on the basis of sociodemographic characteristics and health drives their potential to influence inequality, and adjusting for these predictors is important when assessing whether they are associated with changes in subsequent health. Past research suggests that gender strongly shapes patterns of paid employment and that due to women's dual roles as workers and primary caregivers, they show greater heterogeneity in employment pathways and have a lower likelihood of steady, full-time employment than men (e.g., Han and Moen 1999;Lacey et al. 2015;Wahrendorf 2015). Because they often leave early or delay entry into the labor force due to childbearing and primary parenting responsibilities in early adulthood to midadulthood, women are more likely to show a growing attachment to the labor force or intermittent paid work histories, although there is considerable variation among women by socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and other sociodemographic characteristics (Lu et al. 2017). ...
Our study bridges literatures on the health effects of job loss and life course employment trajectories to evaluate the selection into employment pathways and their associations with health in the short and medium terms. We apply sequence analysis to monthly employment calendars from a population-based sample of working-age women and men observed from 2009 to 2013 (N = 737). We identify six distinct employment status clusters: stable full-time employment, stable part-time employment, stably being out of the labor force, long-term unemployment, transition out of the labor force, and unstable full-time employment. After adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics and health at baseline, those who transitioned out of the labor force showed significantly poorer self-rated health at follow-up, whereas steadily part-time employed respondents still showed a greater risk of meeting criteria for major or minor depression. The findings have important implications for how social scientists conceptualize and model the relationship between employment status and health.
... 8 With the increasing availability of retrospective information from occupational cohort studies collecting data on exposure duration, timing and its sequential character over time (including job changes and periods of unemployment), this analytical shift can now be applied. [12][13][14][15] In this context, a typology of health-adverse employment histories has been proposed with a distinction between precarious careers (eg, temporary contracts and frequent job changes), discontinuous careers (eg, unemployment interruptions) and disadvantaged working careers (eg, cumulative disadvantaged occupational positions or downward mobility). 16 As in the case of the work stress models mentioned previously, these types of employment histories involve-although to a different extent-recurrent threats to, or loss of important psychosocial needs of working persons, such as job security and continuity, 17 control and autonomy, 3 Original research reward. ...
Background:
Most studies on the health impact of occupational stress use single-point measures of stress at work. This study analyses the associations of properties of entire employment trajectories over an extended time period with a composite score of allostatic load (AL).
Methods:
Data come from the French CONSTANCES cohort, with information on adverse employment histories between ages 25 and 45 and a composite score of AL (based on 10 biomarkers, range 0-10) among people aged 45 or older (47 680 women and 45 035 men). Data were collected by questionnaires (including retrospective employment histories) or by health examinations (including blood-based biomarkers). We distinguish six career characteristics: number of temporary jobs, number of job changes, number of unemployment periods, years out of work, mode occupational position and lack of job promotion.
Results:
For both men and women, results of negative binomial regressions indicate that adverse employment histories are related to higher levels of AL, particularly histories that are characterised by a continued disadvantaged occupational position, repeated periods of unemployment or years out of work. Findings are adjusted for partnership, age and education, and respondents with a health-related career interruption or early retirement are excluded.
Conclusions:
Our study highlights physiological responses as a mechanism through which chronic stress during working life is linked to poor health and calls for intervention efforts among more disadvantaged groups at early stages of labour market participation.
... Positive values of GS indicate better health. study urges the need for future studies to account for objective measures of the stress response, such as inflammatory markers (Kamper et al., 2021;Lacey et al., 2016;Schaap et al., 2006). ...
... Moreover, previous studies differ in the way in which health is measured, and this may be the reason why findings are not always consistent. Recent literature using objective measures (biomarkers in particular) (Grundy and Read 2015;Hardy et al. 2007;Lacey et al. 2016) has shown that number of children is not significantly associated with health later in life, or that the association disappears after controlling for health behaviours and lifestyle. Hence, it is relevant to compare different measures of the same health conditions to have a more comprehensive picture. ...
Understanding the association between fertility histories and health later in life is necessary in the context of ageing societies. Past literature has generally found a U-shaped relationship between parity, age at first birth, and several health-related outcomes. However, these findings differed to some extent depending on the country under analysis and on the measures of health considered. As such, using wave 3 (2008–2009) and 5 (2013) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this work aimed to answer the question: “Are fertility histories associated with the presence of chronic conditions later in life in Europe?” The analysis included 11 European countries and compared results using two different measures of chronic conditions: self-reported chronic or long-term illness and chronic diseases diagnosed by a doctor. Results showed that age at first birth is more relevant than parity for health outcomes at older ages. Moreover, in socio-democratic and continental countries, the association between fertility and chronic conditions—in particular between age at first birth and long-term illnesses—is statistically significant among women, but not among men. Finally, the association between fertility history and health was similar when using self-reported measures and chronic diseases diagnosed by a doctor.
... While childbirth and child-rearing are stressors that impact women more than men, the male breadwinner model puts more responsibility on men to provide a decent income. These differencing life pathways, encompassing disparate levels of risk exposure, result in pronounced health differences by sex in later life (Arber & Ginn, 1993;Lacey et al., 2016;Lu et al., 2017). Therefore, we expect to find sex differences in levels of AL in later life, but the direction of these differences is uncertain. ...
Are challenging life courses associated with more wear and tear on the biological level? This study investigates this question from a life-course perspective by examining the influence of life-course risk accumulation on allostatic load (AL), considering the role of sex and birth cohorts. Using biomarker data collected over three waves (2004, 2008, and 2012) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (N = 3,824) in a growth curve framework , AL trajectories over a period of 8 years are investigated. Our results illustrate that AL increases substantially in later life. Men have higher AL than women, but increases are similar for both sexes. Older cohorts have both higher levels and a steeper increase of AL over time. Higher risk accumulation over the life course goes hand in hand with higher AL levels and steeper trajectories, contributing to the body of evidence on cumulative (dis)advantage processes in later life.
... Our finding that mortality rates are differential across lifecourse types, but that causes of death are not, show that this trend is not attributable to an increase in any single health condition, per se. It is not clear which pathophysiologic mechanisms are operating to create these trends, though previous work that has shown that women who started families earlier, and single working mothers, have elevated metabolic and inflammatory markers (McMunn et al., 20152015;Lacey et al., 2015;Lacey et al., 2016) which could be implicated in many health outcomes. Our sensitivity analyses examining health behaviors show that type 3 women (working and non-working never-married mothers) report higher levels of smoking and poorer overall health, consistent with a health profile that may increase mortality via multiple disease pathways; however, type 4 women (working, never-married non-mothers) do not exhibit the same health behaviors, yet had similarly elevated risks. ...
Background
Women’s social roles (partnership, parenthood, and worker status) are associated with health, with more roles being associated with lower mortality rates. Few studies have examined social roles using a lifecourse perspective to understand how changing role dynamics affect health over time. Sequence analysis is one analytic technique for examining social trajectories.
Methods
Work-family trajectories were determined using social sequence analysis. We estimated mortality using age-standardized mortality rates and Poisson regression and examined the impact of personal income as a mediator.
Results
We identified 5 trajectory types according to probability distributions of work/marriage/child-rearing status and descriptions in previous research: Non-working, married, later-mothers; working divorced mothers; working and non-working, never-married mothers; working, never-married non-mothers; and non-working, married earlier-mothers. Our reference group, non-working, married, later-mothers had the lowest mortality rates (1.47 per 1000 person-years). Adjusting for confounders, timing of childbearing did not impact mortality rates for married, non-working women. Working, never-married non-mothers and working and non-working, never-married mothers had the highest adjusted rates of mortality (RR = 1.81 and 1.57, respectively) these effects were attenuated slightly by the addition of household income in the model. Mortality rates for other trajectory groups were not significantly elevated in adjusted models.
Conclusions
Mortality rates vary by work-family trajectories, but timing of childbearing does not meaningfully impact risk among women in this population, likely because few of the women who were married and had children also worked full-time. Household income has some mediating effect among those at highest risk of early mortality.
