Over the course of the last decade or so exciting changes have occurred in those areas of social science that focus on human development. A growing number of studies of infants and children, of adolescents, and of adults and the elderly have yielded results challenging long-held views about the nature of human development: that early experience virtually immutably shapes the entire life course; that development is essentially a within-the-person phenomenon, largely unaffected in quality or quantity by the context of life; and that, by and large, all people develop in fairly standard, normative ways.

The recent studies indicate that people are more resilient to early, often quite negative experiences than was previously thought, that the events of early life do not necessarily constrain developments later on. They also suggest that features of the person's historical setting may sometimes shape personality and social and intellectual functioning much more than maturational- or ageassociated changes. General events such as wars, economic privations, and political upheavals, as well as personal events such as marriage, divorce, illness, death, and career change, often profoundly affect both the quantity of life changes and the quality of the life course. Recent studies also indicate that there are multiple paths through life. As people age they become increasingly different from each other and, again, these different life paths are linked to general historical or personal life events. Finally, the active role of the person, in promoting both changes in self and context, has been indentified.