Changes across education, employment, and family life over the past 20 years challenges the capacity of previously established social role combinations to continue representing the experiences of young men and women born since the late 1980s. Latent class analysis was used to derive patterns of role combinations at ages 25–26 in those growing up in England, using data from 3191 men and 3921 women in the 1970 British Cohort Study (1996) and 3426 men and 4281 women in the Next Steps study born in 1989–90 (2015–16). Role combinations in 1996 were well defined by five patterns across genders: educated, work-oriented, traditional family, fragile family, and slow starters. Patterns in 2015–16 diverged across genders (e.g., disappearance of home ownership in the traditional family group among men and higher education as a group identifier among women) and included across genders fewer work-oriented, more slow starters, and a new group of “left behind” who are excluded from work and relationships. Young men and women born around 1990 experienced diverging role combinations characterized by increased delays and inequalities, with fewer being able to attain the milestones traditionally associated with the transition to adulthood by the mid-20s.

过去 20 年教育、就业和家庭生活的变化对先前确立的社会角色组合继续代表自 1980 年代后期出生的年轻男女的经历提出了挑战。潜在类别分析用于推导在英格兰长大的 25-26 岁的角色组合模式，使用 1970 年英国队列研究 (1996) 中的 3191 名男性和 3921 名女性的数据以及后续步骤中的 3426 名男性和 4281 名女性的数据研究出生于 1989-90 年（2015-16 年）。1996 年的角色组合由跨性别的五种模式很好地定义：受过教育、以工作为导向、传统家庭、脆弱家庭和起步缓慢。2015-16 年的模式因性别而异（例如，男性的传统家庭群体中房屋所有权的消失，以及作为女性群体标识符的高等教育），并包括跨性别的更少以工作为导向的人，更慢的起步者，以及被排除在工作和人际关系之外的新“落后”群体. 1990 年左右出生的年轻男性和女性经历了不同的角色组合，其特点是延迟和不平等增加，能够达到传统上与 20 多岁中期过渡到成年相关的里程碑的人更少。