Anticipatory analysis and its alternatives in life-course research

Abstract

In the second part of these reflections, we use the connection between marriage and first childbearing to demonstrate further issues involved in anticipatory analysis. We show that an anticipatory approach cannot be used to represent intentionality: People may marry with the intention of having a child, but the analyst should be wary of using anticipatory analysis to pick that up.anticipatory analysis, conditioning on the future, intentionality, marriage and first childbearing