The purpose of this study was to investigate women's experience in two ways. The demands and rewards of women's family and work life were examined in comparison with men, and differential life-course experiences among women of different orientations and cohorts were explored. The purpose was accomplished through analysis of the three-generational family data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations and Mental Health, led by Vern L. Bengtson and Marjorie Gatz, which were processed and made available by the Henry A. Murray Research Center, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA;As predicted in the hypotheses, women do seem to invest more of their time and energy than men into various relationship maintenance activities. They offer help and care to relatives and friends more than men; they live closer to their parents than men and have contacts with their mothers, grandmothers, and grandchildren more often than men. Women spend more hours doing household chores and caring for children. There is an indication that women are more stressed about the arrangement of household work, and are more vulnerable to marital tension derived from the arrangement of household work. On the other hand, women have a higher quality of relationships with their parents and their children than men. Women experience a marriage differently than men, also. In general, marriage seem to serve men's well-being more than women's. Married men are happier than married women;Women's mental health is found not to be explained by their orientations, their life events and situations such as employment timing of marriage and child-bearing, and number of children, nor by the interaction of orientation and life events. Women's mental health is not directly predicted by on- or off-normative timing of life events, either. Cohort differences are found in attitudes and timing of life-events. Interindividual variation increases with aging in two mental health measures, but in other mental health measures and attitude measures, the variation was smallest within the oldest cohort.