Over the past half century, a contextual view of human lives has emerged in the social and behavioural sciences. This perspective represents a major shift in orientation from age-specific domains, such as adolescence and young adulthood, to the full life course of human careers and development. Questions relate the developing organism to lived experience in a changing world. Distinctive of this change is the evolution of life-course theory and methods, the integration of biological models, and the rapid growth of longitudinal studies and their data archives. Few books better reflect these advances than Schoon's Risk and Resilience: Adaptations in Changing Times – an illuminating study of the life course, from birth to middle age, in two British birth cohorts. The two cohorts are distinguished by people who were born at different times.

In important respects, the framework of this project dates back to the longitudinal studies of Americans born in the 1920s. These studies generated fresh thinking about the life course by following study members into the Great Depression, World War II and the postwar era. The developmental effects of each life trajectory depended on whether they were marked by hardship, military service or higher education. Over the years a set of principles have come to define the life course framework which informs Schoon's study, life-long development, human agency, the timing of events, linked lives and historical context. The life course consists of age-graded trajectories and their life transitions, involving work and family, along with other domains.