Who's doing more and when? Gender, parenting, and housework trajectories.

Drawing on five waves of longitudinal survey data ( = 520, 51% female, 39% with a university degree, 90% White), this study examined trajectories of women's and men's contributions to cooking, kitchen cleaning, grocery shopping, house cleaning, laundry, and overall housework from Age 25 to 50 years and explored time-invariant (traditional gender role attitudes, homemaker mother, mother and father education assessed at Age 18) and time-varying (raising children at Ages 25, 32, 43, and 50 years) predictors of housework trajectories. Growth curve analyses revealed that women contributed more to all housework tasks than men at Age 25, a gender gap maintained to Age 50. Housework increased to Age 32 and stabilized until Age 43 before declining by Age 50 for women's and men's laundry, women's kitchen cleaning, grocery shopping, and overall housework, and men's house cleaning.

Self-rated mental health in the transition to adulthood predicts depressive symptoms in midlife.

Self-rated mental health (SRMH), a single item asking individuals to evaluate their mental or emotional health, is included in some surveys as an indicator of risk for mental disorders and to monitor population health, yet little longitudinal research examines how well it predicts future outcomes. Following a life course perspective, the current longitudinal study of 502 Canadian high school seniors tracked into midlife examined to what extent SRMH at ages 20, 25, and 32 years predicted depressive symptoms at ages 43 and 50. Hierarchical linear regressions showed that lower SRMH at age 25 and at 32 years was a significant predictor of higher levels of depressive symptoms at ages 43 and 50, even when controlling for sex, participant education, marital/cohabitation status, self-rated physical health, and baseline depressive symptoms.

Family context, life transitions, and subjective well-being from age 18 to 50 years.

This study examined how family context at age 18 (parent-adolescent conflict, parental support, parent education) predicted between-person variation in subjective well-being (SWB; depressive symptoms and self-esteem) trajectories from age 18 to 50 years. Timing of leaving home, getting married, and becoming a parent were explored as life transitions linking family context to within-person variation in SWB. The sample consisted of 604 participants residing in a western Canadian city at age 18 (50% female; 15% with non-White ethnic origin; 29% had at least one university-educated parent) and tracked for up to 32 years.

Another Attempt to Move Beyond the Cross-Sectional U Shape of Happiness: A Reply.

In this reply to Blanchflower and Graham (2021), we address key points in their response to our article, which challenged the robustness of the U shape in different contexts and aimed to move scholarship on life-course happiness beyond a focus on a single cross-sectional curve. We attend to apparent misconceptions in their portrayal of our arguments, identify points of agreement, and emphasize the value of exploring diversity rather than searching for homogeneity in patterns of change in well-being across life. Future longitudinal research to uncover the complex processes that characterize and underlie human happiness will lead to greater understanding that can benefit individuals and societies.

The U Shape of Happiness Across the Life Course: Expanding the Discussion.

The notion of a U shape in happiness-that well-being is highest for people in their 20s, decreases to its nadir in midlife, and then rises into old age-has captured the attention of the media, which often cite it as evidence for a midlife crisis. We argue that support for the purported U shape is not as robust and generalizable as is often assumed and present our case with the following arguments: (a) Cross-sectional studies are inadequate for drawing conclusions about within-person change in happiness across the life span; (b) cross-sectional evidence with respect to the ubiquity and robustness of the U shape in general levels of happiness and life satisfaction is mixed; (c) longitudinal support for the U shape in happiness and life satisfaction is also mixed; (d) longitudinal research on subjective indicators of well-being other than general levels of happiness and life satisfaction challenges the U shape; (e) when asked to reflect on their lives, older adults tend to recall midlife as one of the more positive periods; and (f) a focus on a single trajectory of well-being is of limited scientific and applied value because it obscures the diversity in pathways throughout life as well as its sources. Understanding happiness across the life course and moving the research field forward require a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach.

Wanting To Be Remembered: Intrinsically Rewarding Work and Generativity in Early Midlife.

Previous research on generativity, the desire to leave a legacy through establishing and guiding the next generation, has focused primarily on family life and civic engagement as pathways to midlife generativity. This paper proposes that intrinsically rewarding work can also be associated with a heightened sense of generativity in midlife. We test this hypothesis with data (n = 369 employed individuals, approximately 43 years old) from the 2010 wave of the Edmonton Transitions Study.

The anger-depression connection: Between-persons and within-person associations from late adolescence to midlife.

Six waves of data from 944 Canadian high school seniors surveyed for 25 years (age 18 to 43) were analyzed to compare three models of the temporal associations between expressed anger and depressive symptoms (anger→depression; depression→anger; anger↔depression) and a between-persons differences only model (↑anger = ↑depression). Perceived availability of social support was examined as a mediator of the anger-depression association. Random intercept cross-lagged panel analyses supported the between-persons differences only model, controlling for sociodemographic variables, within-time covariances between construct residuals, and autoregressive stabilities: Individuals who were higher on expressed anger tended to be higher on depressive symptoms and, within individuals, neither fluctuations in anger nor depression appeared to influence the other across intervals ranging from one year to 18 years.

The Rise and Fall of Depressive Symptoms and Academic Stress in Two Samples of University Students.

Self-reported depressive experiences are common among university students. However, most studies assessing depression in university students are cross-sectional, limiting our understanding of when in the academic year risk for depression is greatest and when interventions may be most needed. We examined within-person change in depressive symptoms from September to April.

Pathways between self-esteem and depression in couples.

Guided by concepts from a relational developmental perspective, this study examined intra- and interpersonal associations between self-esteem and depressive symptoms in a sample of 1,407 couples surveyed annually across 6 years in the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relations and Family Dynamics (pairfam) study. Autoregressive cross-lagged model results demonstrated that self-esteem predicted future depressive symptoms for male partners at all times, replicating the vulnerability model for men (low self-esteem is a risk factor for future depression). Additionally, a cross-partner association emerged between symptoms of depression: Higher depressive symptoms in one partner were associated with higher levels of depression in the other partner one year later.

Better late than early: Marital timing and subjective well-being in midlife.

Drawing on data from 405 Canadian adults surveyed as high school seniors (Age 18) and again in midlife (Age 43), the present study examined whether marital timing, a variable rooted in the age norm hypothesis (whether marriage was early, on time, or late in relation to peers), might contribute additional insight into the well-documented association between marital status and subjective well-being (SWB; happiness, symptoms of depression, and self-esteem). The analysis also considered 3 alternative explanations of the marriage-SWB link: the social selection hypothesis, social role theory, and the adaptation perspective. Path analysis results demonstrated marrying on time or late compared with marrying early predicted fewer symptoms of depression in midlife, offering some support for the age norm hypothesis.

Tracking affect and academic success across university: Happy students benefit from bouts of negative mood.

We examined how positive and negative affect covary within individuals over time and how patterns of association between affective traits and states relate to academic success across 4 years of university. Participants were 187 full-time first-year students at a large Canadian university who completed questionnaires about recent affective experiences in 6 waves across 4 years. Grade point average for each year of study was provided by the registrar's office.

Skip the dishes? Not so fast! Sex and housework revisited.

Using data from 1,338 couples who remained partnered over the first 5 waves of the German Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam) project, this study investigated longitudinal associations between male partner contributions to housework and couple sexual satisfaction and frequency. The effect of 2 housework variables was examined: male partners' share of housework and perceived fairness of male partners' housework contributions. Results from a series of autoregressive cross-lagged models revealed no direct or indirect longitudinal associations between male partner share of housework and sexual frequency or satisfaction.

Up, not down: The age curve in happiness from early adulthood to midlife in two longitudinal studies.

Happiness is an important indicator of well-being, and little is known about how it changes in the early adult years. We examined trajectories of happiness from early adulthood to midlife in 2 Canadian longitudinal samples: high school seniors followed from ages 18-43 and university seniors followed from ages 23-37. Happiness increased into the 30s in both samples, with a slight downturn by age 43 in the high school sample.

Growth in perceived control across 25 years from the late teens to midlife: the role of personal and parents' education.

This study examined trajectories of perceived control and their association with parents' education and personal educational experience (educational attainment and years of full-time postsecondary education) in 971 Canadian high school seniors tracked 7 times across 25 years. Latent growth models showed that, on average, perceived control increased from age 18 to age 25 and decreased by age 32, with a further slower decrease by age 43. Parents' education contributed to a growing gap in perceived control, however, such that among individuals with at least 1 university-educated parent, perceived control increased across 25 years, reaching its highest level at age 43.

Protective factors against depression during the transition from adolescence to adulthood: findings from a national Canadian cohort.

Objective: This study sought to identify factors protective against the onset or recurrence of depression in early adulthood, and to describe their interactions with stressors during this transitional period.

Methods: 1137 members of Canada's National Population Health Survey were followed from ages 12 to 17 in 1994/95 and contacted every two years until 2008/09. Protective factors measured at age 16/17 included social support, physical activity, mastery, self-esteem, and education level.

Depression and anger across 25 years: changing vulnerabilities in the VSA model.

Guided by the vulnerability-stress adaptation (VSA) model of marriage and a developmental systems perspective, the current study examined the association of mental health trajectories (depressive symptoms and expressed anger) across the transition to adulthood (ages 18 to 25) with perceived life stress in young adulthood (age 32) and adaptive interaction with a romantic partner and relationship risk at midlife (age 43), accounting for concurrent age 43 mental health. Data from a 25-year prospective, longitudinal study of 341 Canadians (178 women and 163 men) show age 18 levels of both mental health variables predicted perceived life stress and intimate relationship outcomes. The slopes for expressed anger and depressive symptoms were associated with perceived life stress, and relationship risk was also predicted by the slope of expressed anger.

Developmental trajectories of work values and job entitlement beliefs in the transition to adulthood.

Employing a life span developmental systems perspective, this study used a 5-wave (1985-1992) Canadian longitudinal data set (N = 404) to examine trajectories of intrinsic and extrinsic work values and job entitlement beliefs from age 18 to 25. Piecewise growth models (Slope 1: age 18-20; Slope 2: age 20-25) showed intriguing patterns of change. Unconditional and conditional models suggested downward trends in all 3 measures from age 18 to 20.

Social, demographic, and health outcomes in the 10 years following adolescent depression.

Purpose: Little attention has been paid to the sociodemographic profiles of depressed youth during the vulnerable transition from adolescence to early adulthood. This study aimed to determine and describe the social, demographic, and health outcomes of adolescent depression during a 10-year period of transition into early adulthood, using a population-based cohort of Canadian teenagers.

Methods: Depression status on 1,027 adolescents aged 16-17 years was ascertained from the National Population Health Survey.

Who sleeps best? Longitudinal patterns and covariates of change in sleep quantity, quality, and timing across four university years.

This study tracked change over time in sleep quantity, disturbance, and timing, and sleep's covariations with living situation, stress, social support, alcohol use, and grade point average (GPA) across four years of university in 186 Canadian students. Women slept longer as they moved through university, and men slept less; rise times were later each year. Students reported sleeping fewer hours, more sleep disturbances, and later rise times during years with higher stress.

Community services for young adults with motor disabilities - a paradox.

Purpose: To understand the contribution of educational, employment, transportation, and assured income service programs to the successful transition to adulthood of young persons with motor disabilities.

Method: Personal interviews of 76 young adults ages 20 to 30 years with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy (n = 54) or spina bifida (n = 22) varying in functional mobility. Content analysis of transcribed interviews was conducted and themes identified.

Affect and sexual behavior in the transition to university.

This research applied a lifespan developmental framework to the study of sexual behavior among late adolescents by examining monthly covariations of penetrative and oral sex with positive and negative affect across the first year of university. Participants were 177 Canadian students who completed baseline questionnaires, followed by six monthly, web-based questionnaires assessing sexual behaviors and affect. Multilevel analyses revealed an average positive relation between oral sex and positive affect.

Daily spillover to and from binge eating in first-year university females.

Coping models of binge eating propose that stress and/or negative affect trigger binge eating, which serves to shift attention to the binge and its consequences. The current study tested these general assumptions using 14-day daily diary data collected from 66 first-year university females. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling results showed that increased stress, negative affect, and weight concerns were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting symptoms of binge eating within days.

Dating, sex, and substance use as correlates of adolescents' subjective experience of age.

This study examined in a random community-based sample of 664 12-19-year-olds, the relation of subjective experience of age (SEA) with chronological age, dating experience, sexual activity, and substance use. The results revealed a positive linear relation between SEA and chronological age: individuals who were chronologically older felt subjectively older than their actual age. Several possible sources of interindividual differences in SEA were identified.

Depression, self-esteem, and anger in emerging adulthood: seven-year trajectories.

This study used a school-based community sample (N=920) to examine trajectories of depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and expressed anger in the critical years of emerging adulthood (ages 18-25). Using data from 5 waves, the authors discovered that multilevel models indicated that, on average, depressive symptoms and expressed anger declined, whereas self-esteem increased. Between-persons predictors of variability in trajectories included gender (gender gaps in depressive symptoms and self-esteem narrowed), parents' education, and conflict with parents (depressive symptoms and expressed anger improved fastest in participants with highly educated parents and in those with higher conflict).