The Institutionalization of the Life Course: Looking Back to Look Ahead

In this article, I review the issues posed 20 years ago in my model of the historical institutionalization of the life course. I (a) recapitulate the claim that the life course has become one of the major institutions of contemporary societies; (b) discuss what has been learned in the meantime, both with respect to the dynamics of social change and to how the sociology of the life course is able to conceptualize them; (c) examine current trends toward an erosion of the institutionalized life course and the structural anchors that keep it in place; and (d) focus on life course politics and their effects on the future of the life course.