Guest Editor Comments. Introduction to the Special Issue

This Special Issue focuses on the dynamics and context of key family transitions (or families in transition), such as the transitions to married life, parenthood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. It also highlights major contextual events affecting family life: political changes and family development, cultural changes and family structure, financial hardship, welfare state changes; intra- and inter-generational processes that explain family transitions; finally, strategies and approaches supporting family transitions and families in transition at the political, social, and relational level. The volume collects a number of empirical studies falling into in two broad categories: studies analysing family transitions and studies on families in transition.