Career set: a resource through transitions and crises.

Following Foote the life histories of twenty-seven white, middle-aged, middle class, American mothers were analyzed for career-like components [4]. Motherhood dominates the lives of these women but is only one of several careers which ebb and flow throughout their lives. Treating careers as developmental subdivisions in the life course, we understand how women can progress through life transitions and crises. Properties of careers, such as the emergent symbols of success, the clockwork which sets the time limits for career objectives, and the bargaining which these women undertake to work out career conflicts, all contribute to the understanding of how career is placed beside career to create each woman's career set. The career set acts as a social and personal resource, providing consistent and continuous meaning throughout major periods of time even in the face of major career stress or loss.

The meaning of engagement.

A distinction should be made between disengagement as a means of conceptualizing and as a means of explaining changes that take place with aging. The author is critical of those aspects of Disengagement Theory that emphasize inevitability, determinism, the separation of the individual from society, and the "crucial phase" model of development. An alternative viewpoint is sketched from the interactional analysis approach. Attention is given to the constant reinterpretation of self and situation, with consequent modification of actions. The facts of Disengagement Theory as seen from this perspective take on new meaning. Age-related changes are the outcome of the social circumstances within which they take place, along with the cultural values operating in that context.