College of Health

There is much to gain from infusing life course scholarship with greater attention to social networks, and vice versa. Even more, there is much to gain from actively fostering collaboration between the two fields and examining the ways in which concepts from one field can be applied in the other. This chapter argues that the influences of social networks and the life course are mutual and reciprocal. This chapter outlines nine ways that social relationships matter for the life course. This discussion provides many fruitful ideas for advancing theory and research that bridges the study of the life course with that of social networks.