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I don't buy the idea that there was a life script. At least in my own family, my impression is people used to move around and change careers a lot more. They got married earlier, but not necessarily right out of high school.
My maternal grandparents got married in the 50s. My grandmother had a few different jobs and lived in a few different places before getting married in her mid 20s. My grandfather joined the Navy after university. After the war, he tried a few different businesses which didn't work out. He married the secretary of someone he did business with and ultimately had to move from his small town to a big city in order to work as a surveyor.
My paternal grandfather became a reporter after graduating from law school and then moved with his brother from their small city to a bigger city. The brother had first worked as a farmhand on the other side of the country and then later went to graduate school. My grandfather moved to another city where he met his wife while covering an event she was attending, and then they moved to another city, bought a newspaper which he and his wife ran for a while, then started running a new insurance company and then moved yet again back to the big city.
The only family member I have that worked in anything like a factory was my great grandfather who was trained as a bookkeeper but worked in a meat packing factory during the depression. But this was a horrible job that was wrecking his body, so he became a farmer.
When I hear about their life stories, I see people trying out several different careers paths, trying out several different places to live, trying to figure out who to marry, and for many women, deciding whether to sacrifice their careers by getting married.
In my family too the life script is questionable. My dad's mother's family fled Ukraine ahead of the Nazi invasion and my grandmother ended up marrying a much older man because there were no more young men in the ussr. Her dad was murdered by the communists. Her husband died of tuberculosis and she raised her two kids on her own. She was a respected civil engineer and my dad married very young and was able to uproot and get the family into the West into a much more prosperous life. Sometimes it pays to take drastic action rather than keep plugging away where you are.
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