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Social Change and the Timing of Family Transitions in West Germany

This article addresses the timing of family transitions in early adulthood. Theoretical and empirical analyses are used to investigate the appropriateness of the notions of destandardization, differentiation and individualization for characterizing recent changes in West German life courses. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) are used for a comparison of (West German) birth cohorts and the respective timing of moving out of the parental home, first marriage and first parenthood. These transitions have, in fact, undergone a certain temporal destandardization. However, the results suggest that this destandardization is limited to certain dimensions, is clearly socially structured and is in part brought about by changing structural conditions. Furthermore, these changes in timing can be partly explained by differentiation according to education. Individualization, too, is only applicable to a certain degree and in particular to women's life courses.