Time is both destiny and necessity for all human societies, even if their language does not have a separate concept for it. (Adam 1990, p. 9)

Introduction

It is customary to equate Chronos in Greek mythology with time.Footnote 1 In later Greco-Roman mythology a different figure, Khronos, was the god of time and was depicted as Aion, eternity personified. Time has been a main subject for philosophy but the purpose of discussing the topic here is that time and temporal processes are at the basis of a biographical life course perspective, it is at the foundation of what life course research is about.

Conceptions of time have changed over the centuries and across cultures (Adam 2004). In the Western world Modernity is named as an epochFootnote 2 when many previous concepts and practices changed as secular notions took over for ideas about a religious world order (Kumar 1995). Notions of time was said to have taken on new meanings with the advent of industrialisation and capitalism, which involved a shift from task-oriented to clock-oriented work, thus making time a means of social control of workers (Thompson 1967).

Psychologists have studied time and the human mind and come up with a number of conceptualisations of how time is experienced and approached. From these studies it has been suggested that the mind functions on a temporal framework (Adam 1990).Footnote 3 This is in line with Mead’s theory about the self and the mind discussed earlier: both are temporal/processual and social and are thus of specific relevance. The first section of this chapter is devoted to an in-depth discussion about Mead’s ideas on time and his temporal notion of the self.

Historical time is a dimension that is prominent across the chapters of this book. The discussion in this Chapter is specifically related to history as a level of temporality in its own right in biographical life course studies. The section provides examples from research that has taken upheavals and changes in contexts over time into consideration, such as studies of cohorts before and after unification in Germany. This section will also discuss examples of how the institution of the family is a middle level of temporalities that brings an added layer of time contexts to bear on analyses. Tamara Hareven’s pioneering work on this is discussed as an essential analytical framework. Variations in terminologies in this research tradition will be discussed throughout the chapter in view of the temporal levels they relate to and the historical contexts they originated in.

The biographical level is divided into phases and stages that are socially and biologically defined in specific contexts. These phases are demarcated by chronological age and by social norms that vary between periods and places. The timing of events in the life course is related to periods of transitions between specific phases. In life course research much attention has been on the transition from youth to adulthood. A section of this chapter discusses this theme in more detail and also problematises the definition and status of the adult individual and discusses different notions of adulthood associated with gender and social class.

During the period of the revival of biographical research in Europe gendered aspects of the social world were in focus. A specific section of this chapter discusses the biographical level and how time has been of particular relevance in studies of gender differences in temporal experiences; how time is perceived and related to. Key texts on gender and time from the 1980s and 1990s are presented with reference to important traits in their contemporary periods. Closely associated with discussions of gender and time, are the temporal methodological aspects of biographical interviews. They are discussed here rather than in the chapters specifically assigned to methodology since the topics they cover overlap with temporal concerns taken up in this chapter specifically.

Mead’s Notions of Time and the Temporal Self

Mead’s texts have been given a brief presentation in the chapter on the origin of biographical research. As stated earlier in pragmatist philosophy knowledge is not obtained by abstract thought such as in Cartesian philosophy. Nor is knowledge timeless. Knowledge is social, and is based on addressing problems that occur in specific times and places,

This location of the problem in the experience of the individual in its historical setting dates not only the problem but also the world within which that problem arises. […]

Such worlds dated by the problems upon whose solutions they have appeared are social in the sense that they belong to the history of the human community, since reflective thought is a social undertaking and since the individual in whose experience both the problem and its solution must arise presupposes the community out of which he springs. (Mead 1938)

The social and temporal aspects of reality are underlined in this quote. In contrast to the individualism of Cartesian perspectives, pragmatism addressed the individual in her or his social setting. The importance of the historical context is that it dates both the problem and the solution arrived at in a social environment.

Mead’s focus on time and temporality has been acknowledged as ground-breaking not only for studies related to biographical and life course studies, but the social sciences in general.

Barbara Adam (1990) said about Mead:

Mead’s temporal theory of time (…) affects the very foundations of social theory. It goes far beyond mere scientific trimming. Taken on board, it radically alters the way social reality may be understood and theorised. (p. 38)

Perhaps a pioneering quality of Mead’s texts is in their involvement not only with other social science writings but with philosophy and subjects in the natural sciences. Challenges to the mechanistic world view, and thus to ‘standard’ notions of time, were an important element of philosophy and physics at the turn of the twentieth century. Mead’s writings on this are a conversation with the texts of his contemporaries Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955). The Philosophy of the Present, which was published in 1932 after Mead’s death, is a collection of lecturesFootnote 4 that he had intended to edit and revise for publication later. The questions he addressed in this volume were concerned with contemporary issues of the age; the relativity of time and the processual approach to both the social and the physical worlds.Footnote 5

In another collection of his writings published posthumously, Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1936)Footnote 6 a chapter discussed Bergson’s ideas in relation to Whitehead. Mead was particularly critical of Bergson’s idea of elan vital as an inherent movement in nature. However, he acknowledged that Bergson’s ideas represented a break with a Newtonian mechanistic world view and that his doctrine ‘is one which implies that there is a process of evolution going on in nature, a process in which there is a constant creation of that which is new’ (p. 295). Bergson’s emphasis on that which is ‘in flux’ was his approach to time,

The fundamental process going on in all things Bergson said appears in what we call “time”, or duration, as distinct from space. And one of the fundamental tenets of his philosophy is that this duration, this process which is going on, can never be presented adequately in spatial terms’. (pp. 296–297)

Spatial statements of time involved instants of time as discrete events with no relation to one another. To Bergson (and to Mead) reality was in the duration, where the past and the future were a flow in the present. Bergson was also in agreement with pragmatist thought that sought to bridge the mind-body divide of Cartesian philosophy. For both Mead and Bergson consciousness was temporal and processual. ‘The experience of the present moment is what it is because of what took place just before it, and what is about to take place’. (p. 309). How we envisage the future is in the present: ‘If the future is in the experience, it influences it (…) What we are going to do is determined by what we are doing’ (p. 300).

Mead’s concept of time is complex. It has particular relevance for biographical research because of his temporal and processual notion of the self. Learning to become a social being involves different types of play. When the child first learns to ‘take the role of the other’ it is a temporal situation: he or she is first another than self, then shifts perspective and acts as other. In the second stage of the development of the self, the ‘generalised other’ is integrated into a fully developed self (Mead 1977). There are two temporal components of the self, the ‘I’ and the ‘me’. The ‘I’ is in the present and corresponds to Mead’s notion of time where the present is the site of action, including interpretations of that which has passed; the ‘me’, and that which is to come, the future.

The “I” of this moment is present in the “me” of the next moment. (…) It is as we act that we are aware of ourselves. It is in the memory that the “I” is constantly present in experience. (Mead 1977, p. 229)

In Mead’s theory of time the ‘event’ is what makes a clear distinction between the past and the present. The event is always in the present. In his notion of the self the ‘act’ is the event that distinguishes the different phases of the temporal self and makes it a process rather than a static unit.

The self is essentially a social process going on with these two distinguishable phases. If it did not have these two phases, there could not be conscious responsibility and there would be nothing novel in experience. (Mead 1977, p. 233)

The temporal self is presented in some detail because it has bearing on the biographical approach in life course studies.

Biographical accounts, be they autobiographically written texts by an author, or based on biographical interviews between an interviewee and a researcher,Footnote 7 invariably involve a person’s past and her or his future, as seen from the viewpoint of the present. The contextualist life course approach also views the personal present in an historical context of time and place. The interpretations done in a personal present will bear the characteristics of the present conditions of both the person and the society people find themselves in as well as their personal experiences from the past. This topic is addressed in more detail in a later section with examples from biographical interviews with women.

Historical and Intergenerational Time

‘Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both’ (Mills (1959/1980, p. 9). Understanding biographical accounts with reference to the historical period is of the essence in this approach. The term historical period refers to historical time in a chronological sense with reference to specific places, e.g. Greek Antiquity. In the life course vocabulary historical events is another central concept that refers to social upheavals, war, and disasters, that may impact individuals differently depending on their chronological age, placement in the family, and the size of the cohort they belong to (Riley 1988; Ryder 1965).Footnote 8

Historical period has an impact on all relationships and practices. The post-war baby boomers in the West, born at the start of what Hobsbawm (1994) called the Golden Years, when Keynesian economics and regulation of markets, such as capital markets and housing markets were the norm, experienced structural social mobility,Footnote 9 i.e., groups in society are moved upwards on the occupational and social ladder because of changes to the structures of education and employment. During this period the patterns of transition to adulthood changed in fundamental ways compared to what had been norms in the parent generation.Footnote 10

Some recent studies have investigated social relationships across three or more generations in families with a focus on care and work (Brannen et al. 2004), and intergenerational transmissions of values both material and immaterial (Nilsen and Vogt 2021), while others have paid more specific attention to social mobility (Bertaux and Thompson 1997). Common to these studies is the attention to generation as kinship, in line with Ryder’s definition above, and not generations as collective units of change, as in Mannheim’s approach. Intergenerational studies have the potential to transcend current compartmentalised boundaries in sociology; for example, family sociology and studies of social mobility can be considered equally crucial when studying intergenerational processes over time.

Tamara Hareven’s work, discussed in earlier chapters, set the family into a temporal framework of life course research. Relationships between generations, children-parents-grandparents, form the basis of family units that are central in all known societies. These intergenerational bonds may be strong or weak, long lasting or breached early in life. This temporal level, family time, used to be central in earlier life course studies, but for a while gradually faded from view as the individual took over as the primary focus in much research, including in biographical studies. Hareven (2000) stated the importance of intergenerational transmissions in relation to historical change, ‘Each generation encounters a set of historical circumstances that shape its subsequent life history and that generations transmits to the next one both the impact that historical events had on its life course and the resulting patterns of timing’ (p. 155).

The life course is not viewed as a set of fixed stages that individuals move in and out of at particular ages. The concept of timing in the life course denotes the flexibilities involved in transitions. ‘Timing thus designates when an event or a transition occurs in an individual’s life in relation to external events, regardless of whether a transition conforms to or diverges from societal norms of timeliness’ (Hareven 2000, p. 153). Hareven suggested that three characteristics of timing were important for the understanding of life course changes. These are first timing of biographical transitions; second is the synchronisation of the biographical transitions with family ones; and third is how historical forces impact on and shape transitions and their timing.Footnote 11

The historical study of the life course offers an opportunity to understand the issues of synchronization of individual time, family time, and historical time. It enables one to study these interactions on the behavioural level through the timing of life transitions and on the perceptual level through individuals’ own perceptions of their timing of transitions in relation to the social time clocks. (Hareven 2000, p. 152)

It is of interest to note that she emphasised the families’ own time clocks, which meant that the families’ traditions and needs were at the heart of their response and adjustments to wider social change. Sometimes the periodisation of families did not fit into the established historical periodisation. The life course approach thus made feasible the study of the synchronisation of individual lives with that of the larger processes of social change. Hareven discussed how the family was an intermediary between individual timing and historical processes. Individual timing of transitions of life course phases, such as leaving the family home and finding gainful employment, could involve tensions in the family if not done in the sequence and at the times deemed appropriate by family traditions. Thus notions of timing and of timeliness vary between families within and between different societies and cultures (Hareven 2000).

Family relationships have been of interest in various disciplines and research fields beyond biographical research, not least in oral history traditions. Bertaux and Thompson (1997, 2007) for instance, emphasised the family as the primary channel of transmission of crucial practices and values such as language, land, housing, social standing, religion, aspirations and attitudes. In questions of social mobility, which has always been a key issue in sociology, the importance of the family’s role is without question. In quantitative studies however, the role of the family beyond father’s occupation and education, has rarely if ever, been an issue of interest (Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame 1997). Bertaux and Thompson on the other hand, in their biographical studies of this subject, found that individual social mobility was often generated by family dynamics over two or three generations, if not more. For instance, the number of children in a family affects the life chances of each child, so that those most likely to experience upward social mobility were those with few siblings. This said, family resources play a major part here, so that those with many siblings who came from high income and status families need not experience any fall in social standing over generations. For those with few resources the family size was more decisive for the outcome of social mobility relative to parents and grandparents. However, ‘(…) parents cannot hand down social status to their children: they can provide them with some resources, which the children may or may not appropriate for themselves and put to effective use’ (Bertaux and Thompson 1997, p. 20).

In an article comparing Norwegian and UK housing transitions in the life course using an intergenerational lens (Nilsen 2020), Hareven’s conceptual framework was helpful. Such transitions differed between the generations in both Britain and Norway as the historical changes that had affected the respective housing markets were extensive. Both countries had undergone the same type of deregulation of the housing markets in the early 1980s. The UK had had a large sector of council housing in the cities, whilst Norway, a much more scarcely populated country, had had different ways of regulating the market in the post-war era, mainly by subsidised state loans to housebuilding in the small towns and the countryside, and co-op blocks of flats in the cities. The main focus in the paper was on examining and comparing how intersecting temporalities at different levels of context impacted on the timing of moving out and subsequent housing trajectories for three generations in the same families in the two countries. The findings showed that the conditions for the grandparent generations in both countries were affected by the regulation policies in the postwar era. Working class grandparents often lived in multigenerational co-residency before they had the opportunity to move into two-generation family housing. For the parent generations the educational and housing opportunities had improved in both countries and they moved out from their parents at an earlier age. They also had opportunities to buy a flat and to enter the ‘housing ladder’ before the prices peaked. The children generations’ conditions were affected by the deregulations in the 1980s that has gradually turned questions of housing into issues of assets rather than dreams of a home. One of the conclusions relating to generational differences was for the youngest generation that,

The interviews indicated that they had all found ways of living at home in an “independent” way that did not necessarily involve financial independence but the size of their parents’ home allowed them enough “private space”. Family time and biographical time were not in synchrony as their options for not living at home were limited. (Nilsen 2021, p. 491)

This article demonstrated how period specific changes that happened gradually impacted on different generations in decisive ways. The long term effects of deregulation of housing markets are more evident in the lives of the younger generations compared to their parents’. Class differences are becoming more pronounced as the young from families who do not have the means to help towards a mortgage, have to live in rented accommodation in often dubious conditions. The steep rents make it very difficult, if not impossible, for these cohorts to save towards a mortgage in the future.

In other contexts historical changes have been more sudden and wide reaching. For instance in GermanyFootnote 12 a number of life course and biographical studies of intergenerational relations were carried out after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Hillmert (2005) did a cohort study comparing changes in the transition to adulthood between East and West Germany over time. The dataset was from the German Life History Study and included cohorts born between 1919 and 1971. These cohorts included some who had lived through economic depression, a world war, the communist era, and the fall of the Wall. During the cold war the two Germanies had different systems of education and labour markets. The east had a standardised school system whilst in the west the system was more differentiated. In the east employment was guaranteed during communism and the post-war era was characterised by high employment also in the west up until the early 1970s when unemployment increased. The housing markets in both countries were regulated. The findings from the study suggested that the market driven changes in the west created insecurities in the transition to adulthood for cohorts born in the 1950s whereas in the east the timing of transitions to adulthood remained stable over cohorts and happened earlier in the life course than in the west. After the unification the effects for the youngest in the east created a break with patterns that had been established for the older cohorts. The author concluded,

It is obvious that, with a relative lack of deterministic norms of behaviour in modern societies, institutions have tremendous significance for shape and structure of the transition to adulthood. This is especially apparent in the divergent developments of life course patterns under the conditions of two different German states. (Hillmert 2005, p. 170)

Historical and intergenerational time and temporal frameworks impact on individuals and have consequences for perceptions and experiences at the biographical level. In biographical life course research this level is divided into phases and stages that are socially and biologically defined in specific contexts.

Biographical Time and Life Course Phases

Chronological age is important in society for many reasons. Ryder (1965) stated legislation as one, which is still relevant e.g. getting a driving licence, the right to vote etc. The social element of age is related to age specific norms for timing of events in the life course, for instance education, employment, cohabitation etc. The norms for timing between phases do not only vary between societies but also across historical periods within the same society. The naming and identifying of specific life course phases are a matter of historical, social and cultural variation. However, not only phases in themselves are flexible over time, so also are terminologies and vocabularies in discussions about these in sociology and beyond. The terminology related to individual level data from qualitative approaches has changed considerably from the turn of the twentieth century to the notions that are common in contemporary research. In Thomas and Znaniecki’s work the vocabulary was that of personal documents as data, be they autobiographical writings such as diaries and letters, or interviews. In the revival period the naming of these empirical sources were discussed in detailed ways, and distinctions between various types of material were drawn.Footnote 13

It has become common to use the terms life story and biography interchangeably in today’s studies. Martin Kohli’s (1981) definition of biography is still relevant: ‘The mode by which the individual represents those aspects of his past which are relevant to the present situation, i.e., relevant in terms of the (future oriented) intentions by which he guides his present actions (Kohli 1981 p. 65). Inspired by Kohli and by Mead’s notion of the temporal self, I have defined biography as, ‘a story told and interpreted in the present, about events and experiences in the past, and expectations for the future’ (Nilsen 1996/2008 p.83).

Transitions in the individual life course, especially the transition to adulthood, have been subjects of debate in much research, within and beyond life course studies (Brannen et al. 2018; Eliason et al. 2015; Mortimer and Moen 2016; Nilsen et al. 2002; Schoon and Lyons-Amos 2016). The different phases or stages in life have also been problematised in their own right. It has become customary to make three broad distinctions between life course phases: childhood, youth, and adulthood.Footnote 14 Hareven (1978) stated that particular age groups become problematised as an issue depending on wider social and economic circumstances. Whilst childhood as a phase had been discussed for more than a century, youth was only singled out as a specific phase early in the twentieth century in Hall’s (1904) book Adolescence. This was the first instance when youth was identified and discussed as distinct from other life course phases (Jordan 1978). In the last century, and especially after WWII, young people were singled out for special attention in sociology. This was in part due to the large post-war birth cohorts and the expansion of the system of education and a booming labour market in the three decades that followed. The focus on youth in sociological research generally, and in life course research particularly, has only deepened and become more extensive since the 1960s.Footnote 15

Adulthood is considered the longest of life course phases but the social boundaries of this phase are blurred (Nilsen 2021; Pilcher 2012). It is the most taken for granted of the three defined phases and has hence not had any specific definition (Pilcher 2012). It has generally been considered to be a phase in life defined by age but also related to aspects that are ‘socially and culturally determined’ (Hareven 1976, p. 14) and it marked ‘the mature individual’ who is autonomous and independent from the family of origin (Erikson 1978). Chronological age defines when a person is considered an adult in terms of the law, with variation in age norms between countries and across historical time (Buchman and Kriesi 2011; Jones 2009). Although markers of adulthood change over different periods they have traditionally involved a series of transition events that include moving out of the parental household, getting an education, finding gainful employment, being able to support oneself financially, finding a partner and starting a family (Elder 1985). Current research has suggested that this transition can no longer be regarded as a series of discrete events in a linear sequence, especially as structural changes demand a longer time in education in preparation for gainful employment (Settersten 2004; Benson and Furstenberg 2007; Jones 2009). Ideas about adulthood are connected to overarching ideals in a given society; what values and practices are held in regard and what aims are deemed worthy of striving for, for individuals and for society at large (Nilsen 2021).

When and how to be an adult has thus been an important, but implicit, question in research. There is an association between this life course status and notions of agency. Financial independence from the family of origin has been thought of as one of the most important markers of adulthood. The very notion of independence carries with it some connotations. It is connected to individuals and individuality, and it is associated with agency and can have many meanings: freedom from coercion; detachment from relationships, or as individualistic self-sufficiency (Friedman 2003). The related concepts of agency and autonomy are both at the outset gender neutral but they are associated more with men’s lives than with women’s, and with white, upper middle class, Western men in particular over other men and women (Evans 2013). As a contrast to the concept of autonomy with all its ambiguous connotations, feminist writers launched the term ‘relational autonomy’ (Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000).Footnote 16

Empirical studies have demonstrated the diversity in interviewees’ interpretations of notions of adulthood. The variations are suggested to be systematic with reference to gender, class and historical periods. In analyses of interviews with three generation Norwegian families I made a comparison across generations, along these dimensions in interviewees’ perceptions of adulthood (Nilsen 2021). Among the findings were class and gender based contrasts that highlighted variations in notions of this life course phase and the associated transition patterns in trajectories. Relationality and independence were used as sensitising concepts in the analysis and demonstrated how ideals of adulthood expressed in interviews changed over time in the life course as both general societal ideals and personal experiences varied with circumstances. For instance gendered norms that felt confining for the grandmothers had all but disappeared in contemporary society and did not affect the granddaughter generations to a similar extent. Autonomy and freedom in important dimensions of life had become taken-for-granted for the younger generations of women. For the older generation of men there were class differences in what was considered to be an adult man. Early financial independence from family was an ideal. They associated being an adult man with what type of support they could provide for their families since the breadwinner ideology was strong in this age group (born before WWII). I named the types of issues that were associated with being an adult man as follows; among men of working class background ‘everyday bread and butter issues’ were central. Amongst upper middle class men it was a matter of ‘longer term financial support’. An apparent paradox was in the accounts of the younger generation of the middle class young of either gender. In spite of having received generous transfers of financial and other forms of support from parents and grandparents, they still insisted on ideals and personal experiences of adulthood as being self-sufficient and independent of parental resources.

Two sides of context may help to explain this. Bertaux and Thompson (1997) pointed out that when personal resources and structural forces support one another, the tendency is for the structural forces to take on an ‘invisible’ quality. The ‘structural forces’ in this instance in part referred to the privileged background that had become a taken-for-granted aspect of life. Another part of the structural forces that underpinned this were overall values and ideals in society; in Norway as in most Northern European countries ideas of independence are regarded as positive while dependence is considered negative and even shameful. Thus, the ideological backcloth of this historical period across the Northwestern hemisphere encouraged ideals of independence and self-sufficiency (Sennett 2003). The analyses indicated that from this viewpoint, intergenerational transfers become part of the ‘personal resources’ that are supported by a structural-ideological climate of independent self-sufficiency, thus intergenerational support can serve to maintain taken-for-granted ideals of independence in notions of adulthood. Being in need of support in the sense of being poor however, was a source of shame (Shildrick and MacDonald 2013). Ideas of independence ‘by necessity’ in notions of adulthood in the working class became a matter of pride in circumstances where intergenerational support was not an option and independence from welfare state benefits were for many related to personal dignity.

The biographical development over the life course thus involves going through a series of phases and stages. As the studies cited indicate, these are structurally defined and temporally framed depending on specific contexts. The gendered aspects of life course phases and biographical timing have been specific fields of study. The next section therefore provides an overview over how this topic has been approached in feminist research in the near past.

Gender and Time in Early Feminist Studies

The focus in second wave feminism was on women’s conditions in the public and private domains, with the sphere of production and reproduction, and in paid and unpaid work. Adam (1989) argued that feminist theory could benefit from including temporal dimensions into analytical concepts and framework. Temporalities of women’s lives were seen as different from men’s both in the everyday and in life course terms, and did not correspond to the individual, linear, chronological time that was considered the standard way of thinking about time in Western culture (Adam 1989; Davies 1990). According to Davies (1990) in an overview of life and work history analyses about women, time itself was not sufficiently problematised, ‘Time is treated generally as historical time, chronological time or in terms of individual social trajectories all of which are based on one particular understanding of time’ (p. 581). Based on findings from biographical interviews with women about their everyday lives, she maintained that relational time was often left out of the picture and thus important parts of women’s lives were not on the research agenda. She drew upon the concept of ‘rationality of caring’ from Norwegian sociologist Kari Wærness (1984), in particular, to pinpoint how a notion of relational time could help explore how women’s care for others affected the temporality that framed women’s lives at all levels. Davies (1990) suggested that the notion of ‘process time’ could help capture other forms of time that are invisible because of the dominant concepts of time and temporality in our societies. This term was not defined in contrast to linear/clock time, but as an important additional temporality that would capture other dimensions of social life, particularly in women’s lives. ‘Process time seems to be particularly related to caring work, emotional work, maintenance work, solidary labour, and creativity; that is, to much of the work that fills women’s lives.’, however, ‘it is possible that the term embodied time is more applicable.’ (Davies 1990, p. 583).

Glucksmann (1998) aimed to explore the potentialities of temporality as a concept for gaining a deeper understanding of differences between and within genders in relation to work particularly. She concluded that the public-private divide so important in analyses of gender, were actually distinguished by their different relations to time and the different temporalities organising both. Whereas this split had previously been thought of in spatial terms such as between home and work, Glucksmann emphasised temporality as an equally important dimension to take into consideration. Empirically she did an oral history study on women doing casual work and weaving during the inter-war years in Lancashire. Like Davies (1990) she related these differences to the division of labour between men and women in the household as well in society at large.

A number of other studies on gender and time were done in this period, many inspired by Davies’ work. Leccardi and Rampazi (1993) focussed on gendered temporalities from longitudinal data on men and women. Their analysis concentrated on temporal experiences of the past as well as thoughts about future lives. They found gender differences described in similar terms as those in Davies (1990) research. Writing in the same period, Jurczyk (1998) was inspired by Davies’ concept of ‘masculine time’ as a dominant form of time in society. She launched a similar notion of ‘feminine’ time as a ‘particular construction of women’s time’ (p. 287).

Another strand of research in the late 1990s focussed on women’s thoughts about the future with reference to their work as primary care takers in families, hence the tension between work, occupations and family was a common theoretical backcloth during this period. Oechsle and Geissler (2003) interviewed young, childless, German women in the late 1980s about their future plans. Their study adopted a life course perspective in the work-life-balance tradition rather than referring to the literature on women and time. They concluded that conflicting demands from the temporal structures of the occupational sector and family commitments affected variations in life course planning. From a similar theoretical approach McLeod and Yates (1998) did a longitudinal study of secondary school pupils in Australia in the 1990s. They concluded that girls had high ambitions but that these were thought to perhaps come into conflict with demands from caring responsibilities.

The studies above were carried out in a period when much focus was on gender specific, and particularly women specific, orientations to time based on the gender division of labour and women as primary caretakers in families. The examples show varieties of how gender and temporalities were approached in the late 1980s and the 1990s. There are a whole range of other studies from similar perspectives on this topic that could well merit mention but can for space reasons not be included here.Footnote 17

Gendered Temporal Narratives

We not only live life in time, we also talk about it within temporal frameworks. With specific relevance for biographical research are the discussions in the late 1980s about temporal aspects of biographical accounts. These were discussed with reference to the term ‘narrative’, and questions about gender specific narratives were addressed (Nilsen 1996; Riessman 1991).

The origin of the term narrative is in literary theory and linguistics.Footnote 18 Mishler’s (1991) review of narrative analysis discussed a classic text by Labov and Waletsky (1967, cited in Mishler 1991). They defined a narrative as a ‘distinctive type of “recapitulation” of experience that preserves the temporal ordering of events in the real world’ (Mishler 1991, p. 83). It is however, not straightforward to define the term precisely and for all purposes, hence many definitions are currently in use depending on what is in focus. Researchers such as Polkinghorne (1988) and Riessman (2008) who both have discussed the topic for decades, say the term may be loosely used synonymously with ‘story’.

Temporality is an important element of narrative.

The temporality of human experience is punctuated not only according to one’s own life (for example one’s fiftieth birthday) but also according to one’s place within the long-time-spans of history and social evolution (e.g. the 1980s). (Polkinghorne 1988, p. 126)

This observation corresponds with many of the insights from pragmatist thought in general, and from the contextualist life course approach in particular. In biographical research the term narrative spread quickly and was used in a variety of ways.Footnote 19 One of the most prominent researchers in the field of narrative analysis, Catherine K. Riessman, was surprised and somewhat sceptical by the term’s widespread use,

More than ten years ago, I began to be uneasy about what I called the tyranny of narrative, and the concern has only increased. It is not appropriate to police language, but specificity has been lost with popularization. All talk and text is not narrative. (Riessman 2008, p. 5)

The temporal element in a narrative approach has appealed to researchers when doing analysis of biographical accounts. But it seems wise to heed Riessman’s words and be specific about the use of terms and vocabularies whatever they are. Her (1991) studies were early examples of the usefulness of this approach to identify how gendered temporalities and narrative styles were related. A chronological narrative style was long thought to structure all biographical renderings. This notion was inspired by the classic novel focussing on the development of a single individualFootnote 20 and the narrative style is associated with Modernity in the industrialised Western world (Polkinghorne 1988). In other cultures styles of narrating are related to other forms of approaching time (Okely 1992), e.g. among the Hopi Indians (Whorf 1956).

The biography as a genre in literature was associated with Western, white, upper middle-class men (Stanley 1992). Some studies in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that one variety of narrative styles among women had more in common with diaries than with standard autobiographies (Okely 1992). But research also identified variations within gender, between women. Riessman (1991) found different narrative styles between Anglo-American women and those of Hispanic origin. Whereas the former used a chronological narrative style, the Hispanic women had an episodic organisation of their narrative. She observed how this could affect interviewers’ understanding of the story told:

The lack of shared norms about how a narrative should be organised, coupled with unfamiliar cultural themes in the content of the narrative itself, created barriers to understanding between the Anglo interviewer and the Puerto Rican narrator. (Riessman 1991, p. 217)

In this period, the late 1980s, I did a mixed-methods life course study of three cohorts of teachers and engineers for my PhD. Questionnaires were sent to three cohorts of graduates from colleges of the respective educations, and I did 44 biographical interviews with women from the total questionnaire sample of men and women (Nilsen 1992). Three years later I received a Research Council grant that made reinterviewing of a subsample of these women feasible. The original purpose for this follow-up study was not methodological but was meant to focus on how their occupational careers in the years since the first interview had developed. However, when I started reinterviewing I realised that there were methodological aspects I had not made part of the research question for this specific study. I ended up exploring what I called shifts in ‘present problem focus’, ‘The way someone understands and interprets can be seen as a result of a point of view which is grounded in her present’ (Nilsen 1996, p. 20).Footnote 21

This way of thinking about biographical interviews was not common at the time. What was in focus then was narrative style more than notions of time as such. Since I had interviewed the same women at different points in time the ‘present problem focus’ became a topic of interest when I compared interviews done five years apart. It was not that the core elements in their stories had changed, it was rather that whatever was in focus in their personal lives in the present of reinterviewing, became a filter through which the past and the future were recounted.Footnote 22 In the two cases presented in the article their present foci had changed considerably in the period, which was really not that long, between the interviews. For Grete, a 52 year old school teacher, her professional achievements were at the forefront of her concerns during the first interview. This was a lens through which she interpreted her past and how she thought about the future. At the second interview her husband, who was older than her, was retiring and she thought this might bring challenges to their marriage and their everyday life, since she would continue working. This was a worry that affected her thoughts about both past and future.

The other interviewee, a young engineer I named Vigdis, had come out as a lesbian since the first interview. She had suppressed this aspect in her life earlier and had been embarrassed of even letting herself think of the possibility of being attracted to women. When she finally came out she was surprised about how well her family and friends greeted these news. In her mind this experience was so profound that her whole past had to be re-interpreted and the way she envisaged the future was very different from her first interview.

The two accounts are examples of how Mead’s ideas about the temporal and processual self is a concept with exceptional analytic strength when used in analyses of biographical accounts. However, the processual aspects are easy to overlook in material based on only one round of interviews with the same persons. It was only in the second interview some years later that this element emerged in my analysis.

A line of discussion in this article related itself to a then prominent topic associated with narratives in biographical and autobiographical styles, the notion of ‘epiphany’Footnote 23 which had to do with a fundamental ‘turning point’ in the direction of life. It involves life shattering experience that can alter the course of a life, or give radically different meanings to, and interpretations of, past experiences and expectations for future life. In the literature interviewees who have experienced such turning points in their lives are thought to render biographical accounts that are clearly structured around the epiphany and hence ‘better’ biographies because it gives the story a clear narrative structure around a plot (Mishler 1991). Few biographical interviewees will have had these type of turning points in their lives. In the two examples cited above, Vigdis realising she had a different sexual orientation to what she had let herself believe earlier, is an example of an epiphany and a turning point. But those who do not experience such life changing events still have a life story to tell. Grete’s husband’s retirement would affect her present and future, but this phase is among the expected events in a life course,

Yet Grete’s story is just as important and significant, and can shed light not only on her personal experiences and interpretations of these, but also transcends the personal level. Both accounts thus become examples of ‘private troubles’ that are also related to ‘public issues’ (Mills 1980). (Nilsen 1996, p. 26)

Looking back on this article nearly 30 years on, I can see all the tense discussions about gender and about methods of that period present between the lines. This was a challenging time to do biographical research, especially if the focus was on women. Suffice here to say that the attention to narratives in biographical accounts that became important in these years were helpful for the development of the field. They opened up wider opportunities to relate biography to time and the temporal self in Mead’s theoretical writings.

Summary

This chapter has covered a lot of ground in its focus on the variety of ways that time and temporality are essential in biographical life course research. It started out with a brief overview of how time as a concept has varied in historical and cultural contexts and how these have been used to define and discuss the order of societal events and their relevance for human societies. Terminological shifts in the vocabularies of biographical life course research have taken place over the more than hundred years since it was launched. The various concepts were discussed in relation to the temporal levels they are related to.

Mead’s writings on time and the temporal self have been discussed with reference to their significance for the biographical life course approach and the development of this in various periods. His pragmatist views on knowledge and the social world in general were inspirations for Mills’ thoughts on the biography-history dynamic. Historical time and the impact of historical events on both topics of research and in people’s everyday lives have been addressed in a separate section. Braided into discussions in this section was the focus on the level of family and intergenerational time. Attention has been given to how sudden or gradual social change are experienced and acted upon by families and how events have affected intergenerational relations over long periods of time. The writings of oral historians such as Tamara Hareven in the US and Paul Thompson in the UK in collaboration with sociologist Daniel Bertaux in France, have been discussed as examples of such processes. More recent European and Scandinavian studies that I have been involved in, were also presented. Together these studies show how a focus on intertwined temporalities is helpful for analysing how social processes on many levels are entangled in temporal frameworks.

The biographical level is for analytical reasons divided into phases and stages that are socially and biologically defined in specific cultural and historical contexts. Life course phases have been discussed with reference to their varying age specificity in diverse societies and historical times. Likewise, the timing of events and transitions in the life course have been examined with particular attention to the phase of adulthood, and the many and varied notions associated with this phase depending on gender and social class.

Gendered aspects of the life course have been in focus since the revival period. A section of this chapter has therefore presented debates about time and temporalities as these were problematised in gender studies that were prominent during the early period of the revived biographical research. From the 1990s onwards there has been an increased focus on the temporal aspects of narrative structures in biographical accounts. This topic, whilst it could be regarded as a purely methodological one, has been discussed in this chapter foregrounding the temporal sides of debates around the themes of interviews and narratives. In Chap. 6 aspects of these discussions will be revisited within a methodological framework.