Introduction to the Special Issue "Families, health, and well-being"

Open Access

Abstract

A century of scientific research on the family-health nexus notwithstanding, the last dec-ade has witnessed a renewed interest in elucidating the complex interplay of family, well-being and health. Several recent overview articles on the topic have appeared over the last decade, reflecting an attempt to sum up the main results from 'first-generation' research (Arránz Becker et al. 2017; Carr/Springer 2010; Carr et al. 2014; Hank/Steinbach 2018; Rapp/Klein 2015; Dolan et al. 2008; Hansen 2012) and to point to persistent gaps in the literature and directions for future research. We take this as an indication that we are witnessing the emergence of a 'second-generation' era of research that more closely follows the well-known tenets of life course theory (Mayer 2009), according to which individuals actively take age-graded, path-dependent life course decisions based on their available material and intangible resources within specific sociohistorical contexts. Consequently, recent studies are beginning to take a longitudinal perspective in a more rigorous manner (Arránz Becker et al. 2017) and are addressing issues of causality and social context ef-fects more carefully than before (Hank/Steinbach 2018).