But in this research focus, which might be said to concern as “private” life, we find multiple interferences. Experiences from childhood - particularly scholastic experiences and trajectories - have great influence on future family life and occupational trajectories, which in turn interact with each other.
Also, youth is the time when sexual and gender identities are constructed. In general, “private life” is not as private as it may seem, given that it unfolds in a social, cultural, economic and political environment made up of opportunities and constraints. The problematic of reconciling occupational life with life as a couple and parenting is a good illustration of this, and in it the question of gender relations is central. Later in life, retirement and further aging are also events and periods likely to give rise to fairly comprehensive rearrangements.
Life trajectories also carry with them the trajectories of the preceding generations. This results in a variety of inequalities, notably between women and men, and in changes involving social mobility that can be more or less difficult. Public policies that target families, meanwhile—one aim of which is to moderate inequalities of the sort just mentioned—can play a crucial role in individual lives.
