As people live longer and their working lives expand to many more years, they will move inextricably from the traditions of the three-stage life — full-time education leading to full-time work leading to full-time retirement — to something a great deal more fluid, flexible, and multi-staged. These technological and demographic forces will continue to influence family structure, as more women work and more partnerships are built on “career plus career” rather than the tradition of “career plus carer,” further changing the shape of the relationship between a family and the workplace.