Staying the Life Course: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic Years

Abstract

Four themes within Life course theory will be explored. The interplay of human lives and historical times, the timing of lives, linked or interdependent lives, and human agency will be explored along with perspectives on gender, feminism, and intersectionality in order to examine current teaching challenges and impact on faculty and students by inequality in the United States. In addition, ways that some inequalities have been exposed and addressed with in the family science field and higher education merits attention. Acknowledging these issues in conjunction with issues related to access to technology and the need for caring for the whole person's life and family context is addressed. Family scholars will need to build upon these gains to continue repairing the racial and social inequalities in our institutions and organizations as we continue transverse this new trajectory.