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A longer life means that current cohorts can spend more years as members of a family in the statuses of parent, child, or spouse and in the combination of these statuses that defines the conjugal family. How much has this potential been realized? This question is addressed for the United States through a simulation of demographic conditions in 1800, 1900, 1960, and 1980. Despite declining fertility and higher divorce rates, women in the 1960 and 1980 cohorts spent more years in marriage and as parents than did earlier generations. They also spent more years as children of aged parents. But much of the potential offered by longer life spans has not been achieved. Not only did the number of years in marriage and parental statuses decline between 1960 and 1980, but current cohorts spend a smaller proportion of their adult lives in them. On the basis of these results, we propose some scenarios of the ways that …