A Life-Span, Life-Space Approach to Career Development.pdf

journal of vocational behavior 16, 282-298 (1980) a life-span, life-space approach to career development donald e. super a career is defined as the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during the course of a lifetime. these roles include those of child, pupil or student, leisurite, citizen, worker, spouse, homemaker, parent, and pensioner, positions with associated expectations that are occupied at some time by most people, and other less common roles such as those of criminal, reformer, and lover. a life-career rainbow is presented as a means of helping conceptualize mul- tidimensional careers, the temporal involvement in, and the emotional commit- ment to, each role. self-actualization in various roles, role conflicts, and the determinants of role selection and of role performance are discussed. the use of the rainbow in career education and in counseling is briefly considered. a paper with a title such as this might be expected to be one of two sorts of articles: seeking either to formulate a theory of career development from which hypotheses might be derived and tested, or merely attempting to describe what careers are and how they develop. those who have proposed theories have, almost always, dealt with occupational choice rather than with career development: bordin, nachmann, and segal (1963), holland (1973), and roe (1957) are outstanding examples. the first and last have not been supported by the research they stimulated, and hollands hypotheses have been tested largely by the use of preferences to predict preferences and choices of courses rather than sequences of occupational positions. writers who have focussed on career develop- ment, i.e., upon the emergence of sequences of choices throughout the whole or a part of the life span, have of necessity been limited by the scope of their task and by the variety of variables needing to be consid- ered to simple descriptions: blau, gustad, jessor, parnes, and wilcock (1956), ginzberg, ginsburg, axelrad, and herma (1951), and super, the contributions of a. d. crowley, jennifer kidd, bill law, a. g. watts, and other participants in the nicec career development research seminar, are gratefully acknowl- edged. requests for reprints should be sent to donald e. super, research and development unit, national institute for careers education and counselling. bateman street, cambridge cb2 ilz, england. 282 oool-8791/80/030282-17$02.00/o copyright 1980 by academic press. inc. all rights of reproduction in any form reserved life-span. life-space approach 283 crites, hummel, moser, overstreet, and warnath (1957) are examples of writers who have sought to describe the multivariate process before attempting prematurely to perfect theory according to the canons of theory building. this article is an attempt to provide a brief description of career development in the hope that good descriptions will in due course lead to theories which are more comprehensive than the segmental theories which now dominate the field. careers have been viewed variously as a sequence of positions oc- cupied by a person during the course of a lifetime (super, 1957), as a decision tree portraying. the decision points encountered by a person going through school and into the world of work (flanagan super, 1957). a life-career rainbow has been proposed (super, 1976) in an attempt to describe more adequately the many aspects of a career throughout the life span. the life-career rainbow first proposed had two major defects: it lacked explicit recognition of the numerous determinants of decisions, and it seemed rigid in the uniformity of its arc even when varying bandwidth and color depth were specified in the text. this paper seeks to refine the concepts of life span and life space used in the rainbow, to treat decision points more adequately, and to incorporate also the various personal and social determinants of the use of life space in the occupying of career positions and in the playing of roles during the course of the life career. life space people play a variety of roles as they mature, some of these roles beginning early in life, e.g., that of child, and others beginning late in life, e.g., that of pensioner. at some life stages a person plays only one role (e.g., that of child when still a neonate), and at others a number of roles, such as those of spouse, parent, homemaker, and worker when at the prime of life. nine roles nine major roles and four principal theaters may be used to describe most of the life space of most people during the course of a lifetime. these are as follows, approximately in typical chronological order of taking on the role: (1) child (including son and daughter), (2) student, (3) “l(fā)eisur- ite” (no standard term is available to describe the position and role of one engaged in the pursuit of leisure-time activities, including idling), (4) citizen, (5) worker (including unemployed worker and nonworker as ways of playing the role), (6) spouse, (7) homemaker, (8) parent, and (9) pensioner. 284 donald e. super other roles can be identified, e.g., sibling, worshipper, lover. reformer, criminal, etc. not everyone plays all roles, for some never marry and some die without having reached retirement. the sequence of the initia- tion and abandoning of roles may differ, as when a student marries before leaving school or college and before becoming a worker. but the order in which these roles are listed corresponds to the order in which the posi- tions are typically first occupied. the constellation of interacting, varying, roles constitutes the career. none of the roles is necessarily sex-linked: not only can a child be of either sex, but (in modern western societies) also citizens, workers, and pensioners; men as well as women are usually homemakers, sharing all tasks equally in some contemporary households or dividing them in some more traditional homes as when the wife cooks and the husband dries the dishes, or when the wife takes care of the laundry while the husband mows the lawn and repairs electrical appliances. when positions are defined more precisely the roles may be sex-linked, as in the biologically determined parental role of mother and in the socially determined (and therefore socially alterable) worker roles of engineer, police officer, secre- tary, and nurse. four theaters in the order in which they are typically entered, the principal theaters in which these roles are played are: (1) the home, (2) the community, (3) the school (including college and university), and (4) the workplace. there are other theaters, e.g., the church, the union, the club, the retirement community or home, etc., but not everyone enters all theat- ers, for some people never enter paid employment (in such cases, the home may also be the theatre of indirectly remunerated work). some never retire or, if they do, remain in the same community and in the same home as before retirement, as pensioners, playing the pensioners role and meeting some of the attendant expectations. theaters, positions, and roles each role is typically played in one theater, but may also be played less often, sometimes less congruently, in one or more other theaters. the role of parent, for example, is played primarily in the home, which is also the theater in which children, spouses, and a worker (when the home employs a cook or a cleaning woman) may play their primary roles, but this same role of parent may also be played in the school, the church, and the courtroom as occasion arises. similarly the role of worker may be played in the theater of the home, as well as in that of the workplace, when the worker takes work home at night or over the weekend. this impinging of one role on another by spilling over into a secondary theater, as when the worker role is played at home where the spouse and homemaker roles are life-span, life-space approach 285 primary, may cause a certain amount of role conflict in the person playing them, and a certain amount of confusion in the minds or feelings of others in the same theater; it may also enrich the life of those in that theater, as when a parent shares some of the interesting events of the workplace with spouse and children while at meals, at the same time organizing his or her own thoughts about them. it is important that, as just noted, it is the occupying of positions in theaters that casts one in roles, for a role is a set of expectations that others have of a person occupying a position. a parent is expected to assume certain responsibilities for a child, even though he or she may not have chosen to become a parent, and similarly a worker is expected to perform certain duties by virtue of having been employed to fill a certain position at a place of work with a given job description and with a descriptive job title such as that of bricklayer or cashier. the term “role” needs to be understood and defined in terms of both expectations and performance. expectdons can be categorized as (1) the expectations of observers and as (2) the conceptions of the player. per- formance also has two definitions: (1) enactment of the role as shown by satisfaction and satisfactoriness, and (2) shaping of the role, as both it and the expectations of others are redefined by the actor better to suit the developing conception of the role. it is in role shaping, as well as in the choice of positions and roles, that the individual acts as the synthesizer of personal and situational role determinants. some roles change their more specific behavioral definitions with in- creasing age. that of child, for example, is defined quite differently at ages 1, 9, and 17, and even more differently when the son or daughter is the 50-year-old child of an go-year-old parent. at this last stage some role expectations are reversed, for the child is expected to help take care of the parent, although the parent is still expected to provide for the child by leaving a fair bequest. similarly, the specific position which defines the role may change. thus the worker role changes when the individual changes jobs, and especially when the individual changes occupations, as may be done more than once in the course of a lifetime (so-called “serial” careers, more accurately called multioccupationd careers). manual workers without special qual- ifications typically change positions and occupations a number of times during their working lives, for it is in the nature of such work that workers are easily released when work is slack and easily hired when needed. seasonal work in resort areas, for example, may mean changing jobs and location to work in the same occupation (e.g., porter), or changing job and occupation but not location in order to avoid moving (e.g., porter to factory worker). a worker may even occupy two worker positions, work- ing during the day as a schoolteacher and during the evening as a barten- der; in career terms, these positions are held simultaneously (on the same 286 donalde.super day and during the same week), even though at different times during the day (with important differences in role expectations at any given hour but not from week to week). it is because of these sequences and simultaneities that it is incorrect to use the terms occupation and cwp as synonyms. a career is a sequence of positions held during the course of a lifetime, some of them simulta- neously (super et al., 19.57); an occupational career is the sequence or combination of occupational positions held during the course of a lifetime. the root word cnwms means a cart or chariot, whence came the word irr comritr or road, whence in turn cclrrihre and (nwcji. the nonoccupational positions occupied before the adult career begins influence both the adult positions which may be occupied and the way in which their role expectations are met. thus the amount and type of schooling is one determinant of occupation entered, and the first occupa- tional position, both its type and job performance, is one determinant of later occupational positions open to the individual. later, the last full- time job held for any significant length of time, which may or may not be qualifiable as a “regular adult occupation,” is one major determinant of life-style in retirement, for it influences retirement income, activities, and friendships. the quality of the occupational role performance has similar effects. the more adequately, in self-perception and in that of others, the adolescent plays preoccupational roles, especially those of student and of part-time worker, the more likely are success and satisfaction in occupa- tional roles. that this is true is shown in the career pattern study (super, kowalksi, jordaan card, goodstadt, gross, super, 1940), for the most satisfied men were those who pursued, in their leisure time, activities essentially similar to those in which they engaged in their work, thus finding diverse outlets for their abilities and interests. and fmally it might be hypothesized that the greater the number of simultane- ous roles played by the individual at any one life stage, the richer and more satisfying would be the life-style and the greater the likelihood of playing later roles successfully and with satisfaction. the number of hours in a day, the number of days in a month and in a year, the nature and variety of the individuals abilities and interests, and the emotional stability of both principal and partners, obviously set limits to the degree to which the simultaneous and sequential proliferation of roles produces role conflict or results in self-actualization and satisfac- tion. hypotheses such as the three just suggested are therefore no doubt simplistic, and they may not be mutually exclusive. they need to be refined in order to be likely to find empirical support. a more valid hypothesis might be that, the more a persons abilities and interests find ready and temporally compatible outlets in the full range of the activities engaged in, the more successful and satisfied that person will be. the fact that, willy nilly, people play several roles simultaneously (during the same day, month, and life stage), in several theaters, means that occupation, family, community, and leisure roles have impact on each other. success in one facilitates success in others, and difficulties in one role are likely to lead to difficulties in another, although success bought at too high a price may cause failure in another. the theraputic effects of success are well illustrated in the case of john stasko (super, 288 donald e. super 1957), whose marriage to a better-educated woman aggravated his feelings of inferiority, and whose successful coping with his occupational prob- lems (facilitated by therapeutically oriented vocational counselling) led to better personal and familial adjustment and to better health. life space, life-styles, life cycles, and career patterns the simultaneous combination of life roles constitutes the life-style; their sequential combination structures the life space and constitutes the life cycle. the total structure is the career pattern. roles wax and wane in importance and in the quality of performance, theaters are entered and deserted. how this is done is a result of the interaction of personal and of situational variables. work roles structure life and give it meaning (friedman otoole et al., 1973; roe, 1956; super, 1957). they help to establish a regulating daily, weekly, and annual schedule, they provide associates and social life, they tend to supply social solidarity and support, and they often (and often fail to) contain content which is interesting in its own right. the same characteristics are found in certain other theaters such as the home and in the role expecta- tions associated with occupying positions in them. thus homemaking women are generally expected to organize a schedule of shopping, meals, house cleaning, and laundry activities. to a lesser extent this may be said of community roles and of role expectations in other theaters which people enter. thus trade union leaders are often expected to play a part in community politics, and business leaders are expected to be leaders of community fund-raising drives. the life cycle and career patterns: the waxing and waning of roles it has already been noted that roles increase and decrease in importance with the life stage in which a person finds himself, according to the developmental tasks which are encountered with increasing age. jmpor- tance can be operationally defined in terms of time and in terms of emotion. temporal importance is a function of the amount of time that playing a role requires or makes desirable, both formally and informally. in the case of a pupil and student the informal demands are slight in the early years of schooling, considerably greater during the final years. the role of worker does not normally become temporally demanding until after leaving school, although a youth who engages in part-time work may find that his daily and weekly schedules are full as a result of playing two roles, the primary role of pupil or student and the secondary, essentially instrumen- tal, role of worker. the first full-time job may not make demands on free time until the young worker develops the occupational motivation that sometimes comes with increased age, family responsibilities, and recogni- life-span, life-space approach 289 tion of the fact that taking work home or taking part-time courses can be rewarding materially and, in some fields, psychologically. figure 1 is a revision of the original career rainbow (super, 1976). it portrays nine major life-career roles graphically, in the case of a person who finished college at the age of 22 and went at once to work. the fluctuating temporal importance of each role is shown by schematic changes in the width of the shading of the corresponding arc or band. thus the