Social Disparities in Destandardization-Changing Family Life Course Patterns in Seven European Countries

It is generally assumed that life courses in European societies have become less orderly and more destandardized in recent decades. Focusing on the family sphere, the article examines to what degree patterns of destandardization are stratified by educational attainment across seven European countries. Using data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) and the National Educational Panel Survey (NEPS) (n = 70,228 respondents), the article adds to the methodological discussion of destandardization by implementing both abstract analyses of life course dissimilarity, which focus on the 'timing' of events; and specific analyses of common episode orders, which relate to the 'order' of events. While European countries differ considerably with respect to dominant life course patterns in early adulthood, a consistent finding is that destandardization is more pronounced among individuals with lower than with higher levels of education.