Background and ObjectivesRelatively little research investigated whether experiences during young adulthood have long-lasting consequences for older age loneliness. This article examines whether deviations from culturally based scripts regarding family transitions represent risk factors for later-life loneliness. Moreover, it analyzes whether and in which conditions long-term associations between family transitions and loneliness differ across nations.Research Design and MethodsThe analyses use micro-level data from the Generations and Gender Survey Wave 1 for 12 European countries. The sample comprises 61,082 individuals aged 50–85. The research questions are addressed using a step-wise approach based on linear regression analyses, meta-analyses, and meta-regressions.ResultsResults show that never having lived with a partner and childlessness are most strongly related to later-life loneliness. Whereas early transitions are unrelated to later-life loneliness, the postponement of partnership, and parenthood are associated with higher levels of loneliness compared to having experienced these transitions “on-time”. Childlessness is more strongly associated with later-life loneliness in more traditionalist countries than in less traditionalist ones.Discussion and ImplicationsThis study reveals that individuals with non-normative family transitions are more exposed to loneliness in old age, and that this exposure is related to societal context. In traditionalist contexts, where people rely on families for support, older adults who have experienced non-normative family behavior, and childlessness in particular, may be particularly at risk of loneliness.

In this article, the authors study the effects of family formation on criminal careers for 540 high-risk men and women in the Netherlands. In a prospective design, spanning 21 years, the authors analyzed complete data on offending, marriage, parenthood, and a large set of background information. Random effects were used to model the relation between family-life events and offending, controlling for possible confounders. Findings for men support the hypothesis that marriage promotes desistance from serious offending. Males additionally benefit from parenthood, and from having a first child in particular. Furthermore, although parenthood reduces offending more strongly than marriage, the “full family package” brings the most benefit. Female offending patterns were not significantly influenced by marital status or motherhood.

An individual choice paradigm, focusing on individual preferences and values, has long dominated our understanding of socio-demographic outcomes. Recently, a trend towards an unequal choice paradigm, stressing how inequality in opportunities structures socio-demographic outcomes, is observed. This chapter outlines these changes and argues for a comparative perspective to examine how childhood disadvantage impacts these socio-demographic outcomes. The expectation is that the consequences of childhood disadvantage for demographic outcomes in young adulthood and for socio-economic and well-being outcomes in middle and late adulthood depend on the opportunities that national contexts offer to abate the adverse impact of economic and social deprivation. Subsequently, all chapters of the book are briefly introduced and their contribution to understanding this key issue is discussed.