The Lifecourse Insight: Overview

Everyone lives a lifecourse, which from birth to death is experienced in stages. The most fundamental of these are the four life phases dating back to antiquity—each lasting (in twentieth-century America) about 20 to 22 years and each associated with a unique social role.
These are Childhood, age 0 to 20; Young Adulthood, age 21 to 41; Midlife, age 42 to 62; and Elderhood, age 63 to 83.

Major events in history shape people differently depending on the life phase they occupy. As people are shaped, they sort themselves into different generations. To belong to the same generation, a group of people must feel a unique location in history, share distinct beliefs and behavior, and perceive a common group membership. They must also be able to inhabit the same life phase at the same time—which is why a generation comprises roughly 20 to 22 consecutive birth cohorts. (A birth cohort is everyone born in the same year.)

Each life phase is constantly being vacated by an older generation and entered by a younger one as the birth cohorts age. This cohort shift is constantly changing the basic attitudes and behavior we associate with each life phase.

Cohort shifts are always occurring in all four life phases. Once every living generation fully occupies a life phase and begins to move into the next, the society enters a new mood era or turning. A turning necessarily lasts about the length of a life phase or generation. And because there are four life phases (the seasons of life), there is also a cycle of four turnings (the seasons of time): High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis.

Each of the four turnings produces a distinct societal mood because a different generational archetype—Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist—is being born, coming of age, entering midlife, or entering elderhood. Generations with the same archetype experience roughly the same kinds of events at the same life phase; a generational archetype can be defined by the turnings that shape it when young and by the turnings it presides over as mature parents and leaders. (Heroes, for example, always come of age during Crises, Prophets during Awakenings.) Archetypes and turnings give rise to each other and, both of necessity, tend to recur in the same order.