A longitudinal study conducted in six southern states dealt with four population categories (poor youth, rural youth, black youth, and females) frequently neglected in status aspiration, career goal, and life plans research. The term "life plans" included educational and occupational aspirations as well as expectations of age at marriage, number of children desired, and place of residence desired. Analyses were organized into background, parenting, middle childhood, and high school factors. The sample (planned to yield as many blacks as whites and to restrict the study to subjects from areas marked by poverty and high unemployment) consisted of 311 primarily rural females who were questioned in 1969 as fifth or sixth graders and again in 1975 (if they had not married or dropped out of school) and the mothers of these girls. The following factors were found to be associated with "age at marriage" expectations: race; father's education; prestige of mother's occupation; perception of loving, punishing or demanding mother; occupational counseling of daughter by mother; self-concept; occupational and educational aspirations and expectations; occupational saliency; and residential preferences. Factors associated with larger family size expectations were: rural residence, black race, lower socioeconomic status, father unemployed, and lower prestige of desired and expected occupation. (AN)