Adulthood in progress: a life course investigation of work-family trajectories and mental health in young adults

The life stage of young adulthood is marked by important transitions in work and family domains that can have life-long consequences. The thesis of Vendula Machů presents research on the relationship between work, family, and mental health among Dutch young adults born in the early 1990s. Firstly, it examined how young adults combine education, work and family by constructing work-family trajectories; secondly, the association between mental health from adolescence until young adulthood and the work-family trajectories was investigated.
Using data from the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS), the thesis reveals six distinct work-family trajectories, highlighting a shift away from traditional trajectories towards trajectories characterised by prolonged education and delayed workforce entry. The thesis further demonstrates that mental health problems in adolescence are associated with work-family trajectories in young adulthood, with different implications for women and men. Moreover, the work-family trajectories during young adulthood are associated with subsequent mental health problems. In particular, women experiencing longer periods of inactivity increasingly reported poorer mental health during young adulthood compared with other women.
By adopting a life course perspective, this thesis demonstrated that prioritising early detection and treatment of mental health problems is essential, given the far-reaching consequences for an individual's work-family trajectory and later mental health. The findings provide a foundation for understanding the complex relationship between work, family and mental health, and highlight the need for future research to extend the analysis into higher ages, incorporate additional work and family characteristics and investigate mechanisms explaining the relationship between work, family and mental health.