Changes in women's behaviour with regard to fertility and labour market participation are possibly two of the most important processes that have reshaped the overall societal framework in the developed countries in the second half of the 20th century and in the first decade of the 21st. On the one hand, together with increasing life expectancy, low birth rates have reshaped the demography both of society and of families and kin. On the other hand, women’s, and particularly mothers’, labour market participation has not only changed women's lifecourse patterns and resources; it has also changed the organisation of everyday life for families, men and children. The timing of these two processes, which are linked in complex and not univocal ways, has been different in the various countries. Furthermore, it has involved different social groups within as well as across countries, redesigning patterns of similarities and dissimilarities.

Cristina Solera's work focuses specifically on one of these two processes: changes in women's labour market participation. More specifically, it focuses on changes in the way in which women since the post-war years have or not combined over the lifecourse participation in paid work and constructing their families. For men in industrialised societies, these two life trajectories and ‘careers’ (in Elder's – 1994 – meaning of life career), in fact, have become increasingly mutually reinforcing. For women, by contrast, these trajectories have become mutually weakening, if not exclusive. So much so, that in public discourse, their possible compatibility is now framed in the terminology of ‘reconciling’ (paid) work and the family, thus alluding to some mythical golden age when working and having a family were easy to combine. Only in the late 20th century did the contraposition between raising a family and being in paid work begin to weaken. For an increasing proportion of women, the two life trajectories became intertwined, although not to the same extent and nor through the same mechanisms across countries and social groups. Furthermore, even at present, any analysis of the impact on the likelihood of a woman with a child aged under six of being in employment compared with a childless woman shows that, among men and women in the 25-44 age bracket, the impact is uniformly positive for men in the European Union, and almost uniformly negative for women (the exceptions being Slovenia), although ranging from –34% in the Czech Republic to –1% in Portugal.