Abstract

This chapter examines the impact of new concepts of time on the social clocks that individuals and families followed in the context of changing historical time. The type of "time" addressed here is not chronological in the strict sense. Its essence is timing—meaning coincidence, sequencing, coordination, and synchronization of various time clocks, those being individual, collective, and social structural. The chapter defines the concept of "timing" from a life-course and historical perspective. It compares the patterns and perceptions of timing of three different cohorts in the United States. The chapter compares these patterns with those in Japan. An understanding of social change hinges to a large extent on the interaction between individual time and social-structural time. In this interaction, the family acts as an important mediator between individuals and the larger social processes. Transitions are processes of individual change within socially constructed timetables, which members of different cohorts undergo. Turning points are perceptual road marks along the life course.