Growing up Alone: The Absence of Young Women's Positive Life Models

This chapter brings together life course and role model research to develop the concept of “life models” during the transition to adulthood. Life models are important because they may illustrate possible choices that help to shape subsequent trajectories. Although many interviewees had people whom they admired, very few had positive life models (people whose life paths they wanted to emulate). In contrast, negative life models, or people whose life paths these women did not wish to follow, were much more common. Exhibiting a sense of agency, the interviewees viewed themselves as actively constructing their own paths rather than following the paths of others.