Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of '73 (review)

Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of '73 tracks the educational, work, and family experiences of men and women who graduated from Ontario high schools in 1973 and follows both the anticipated trajectories and unanticipated turning points in their lives over the next twenty years. The main findings are not surprising: upward occupational mobility is common, and both poor socioeconomic resources and being born female constrain one's opportunities, just as in previous birth cohorts. Rather, the authors' most important contribution is their thoughtful discussion of the complex interplay between agency and structure and the importance of adaptation and resilience as they track a cohort whose lives were punctuated by educational reform during their childhoods in the 1960s, evolving norms about gender and sexuality during their early teen years in the early 1970s, and a flagging economy as they entered the labor market during the mid-1970s. For members of the class of 1973, the life course is characterized by individuation and creative adaptation, rather than strict adherence to institutional timelines and early-life expectations.

Opportunity and Uncertainty is based on data from the Class of '73 study. The study began in 1972, when the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities (MCU) first measured the educational aspirations of high school students as a way to gauge future enrollment patterns. The original sample included roughly 2,500 grade 12 students from randomly selected classrooms in Ontario. Anisef and colleagues then conducted structured follow-up interviews in 1973, 1974, 1988, and 1994 and in-depth qualitative interviews with a small subsample in 1995.

Drawing on rich data spanning more than twenty years, Opportunity and Uncertainty documents patterns of educational attainment, intergenerational social mobility, the school-to-work transition, marriage, and childbearing among adults now in their mid-40s. Several important themes of life course sociology resonate throughout the analysis. First, the authors underscore the persistent impact of social structure and the constraints imposed by gender, class, region, and ethnicity. Second, birth cohort is a useful construct for conceptualizing the complex interplay between biography and history, yet within-cohort variations may be more telling than between-cohort variation in life course experiences.

Third, and perhaps most important, Anisef and colleagues show the power of personal agency in the life course. The qualitative data highlight the ways that personal preferences, such as a passion for travel; personal crises, such as substance abuse; personal revelations, such as discovering that one is gay; and chance events, such as an encounter with a potential role model who discovers a young adult's unrecognized talent, may open doors to unexpected opportunities. Although idiosyncratic experiences may be powerful forces that set the individual's life course on an uncharted direction, these experiences typically are not measured in large-scale data sets. The authors underscore that the standard linear models typically used in life course research may not be appropriate for modeling and characterizing the lived experience of young adults today. Most quantitative approaches to studying the life course focus on the "normative" path, or on identifying the specific characteristics that affect the timing and likelihood of important life transitions such as marriage and entry to the labor market. By considering the powerful impact of nonnormative experiences on the life course, the authors bring into sharp focus the meaning of agency; agency is best invoked and enacted when the road map for one's future is uncertain.

Despite its many strengths, Opportunity and Uncertainty is still susceptible to the criticisms aimed at most studies based on nonrepresentative longitudinal data sets. Response rates are not optimal; the 1994 sample includes only 31 percent of the original sample. However, a detailed appendix documents the sources of sample attrition, and the authors take great efforts to contrast characteristics of their analytic sample...