For all of us who have contributed to this volume, and by definition have been conducting psychological research for many decades, it is difficult to pinpoint the most important scientific contribution. After all, we have been toiling our fields for three to four decades, and at the time that we were looking at a particular topic, it seemed to be critical, with scientific passion and thinking devoted to said topic. At the same time, some research has been viewed as seminal and has stood the test of time, which I suppose might be reasonable criteria with which to evaluate one's contribution to our field. Writing such an account seems quite immodest; perhaps others ought to be writing about any one scientist's legacy.

Much of my work has woven together the themes of transitions, timing, and texture, not surprising for a developmental psychologist. My contributions are not in defining these three themes, which presumably are present in all life-course developmental research – or at least ought to be. I am most proud of specific contributions to each of these three T's.

However, I was trained in conducting laboratory research, primarily descriptive of various social and cognitive phenomena (development of self-recognition, attention processing, learning of social cues, and maternal interactions with children, focusing on infants and toddlers). I was firmly situated in the traditional research paradigms of the time. Today, I am perceived as a developmental psychologist who does longitudinal long-term studies that are either nationally representative or at least representative of a large segment of the population (i.e., births in the late 1990s and early 2000s to women in cities with populations of 200,000 or larger) or a city (children in the city of Chicago in the mid-1980s). Today, I am seen not as someone who delves deep into developmental processes, but as a scholar who studies many individuals in more broad terms (since I have done both, I see the value of both approaches).

Two bodies of research seem most important. All involve colleagues from other disciplines. The two transitions are both reproductive in nature (although they involve biology, social, cognitive, and emotional processes): puberty and childbearing.