Toward a Stronger Partnership Between Life-Course Sociology and Life-Span Psychology

Abstract

This article promotes a stronger partnership between life-course sociology and life-span psychology. Despite some common commitments and goals, the gulf between the two fields remains wide. This gulf is problematic if human development is to be seriously conceived as the interplay between species, social, and individual influences. This article discusses some of the challenges and potentials of bridging these fields, given the different domains and outcomes, levels of analysis, and explanatory factors on which they focus. It explores how these two fields might create a bigger shared toolbox of models, methods, and data. It also considers some of the ways in which disciplinary and age-based inquiry are reinforced in the social organization of science. As attention to the whole of life grows, it will become increasingly important to justify how particular life periods are conceptually autonomous from adjacent periods.