Order ready-to-submit essays. No Plagiarism Guarantee!
Note: All our papers are written from scratch by human writers to ensure authenticity and originality.
Life-Span Development: From Birth to Death
Check your essay before you submit. See exactly what your professor sees.
See your AI and plagiarism results before your instructor does.Get the exact same report your professor uses. Trusted by 50,000+ students worldwide.
One’s personal, physical and emotional development is cumulative. The nature of experiences and development during each state of the life-span will have an impact on how subsequent stages are experienced for better or for worse. The following is a concise overview of the changes and normative patterns relating to the life-span. Thus, the discussion will provide a brief examination of each phase, including the prenatal, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood and late adulthood stages. This will contribute to a general understanding of the way that experiences, exposures and environments will impact one throughout one’s life.
Introduction
The process of human development is assessed according to multiple phases, each of which carries its own distinct set of expectations in terms of emotional growth, psychological development, physical maturation and social awareness. With each phase will also come a distinct set of life cycle considerations and a set of both socially and self-imposed pressures to participate in certain rites and elements of the life cycle. The intercession of these realities produces what are referred to in psychology and sociology as the stages of development. These will tend to be distinguished from one another in a normally developing individual by an array of physical, mental and sexual changes that will significantly shape the course of one’s life. The concept of emotional development is described in Erik H. Erikson’s 1963 text, Childhood and Society. Here, the sociologist asserts that the ability of one’s parents during the formative stages of life to earn the infant’s trust will impact directly the success of his development. To the point, in elucidating the stages of emotional development which contribute to the mental and psychological growth of a human being, Erikson pays a great focus to the matter of trust and nurturing.
Discussion
Every one goes through many stages in life beginning at the time of conception, throughout life, and finally in death. Human development is important to psychologists because it can provide insight about a person and the stage he or she may be experiencing in life based on age-related changes in behavior, emotions, personality, and thought processes (Boyd & Bee, 2009). The interest of changes throughout a person’s life, from childhood through adulthood, has developed into a psychological area of study called the lifespan perspective. This modern perspective believes that interdisciplinary research is important in the understanding of lifespan development as well as understanding that each individual, of all ages, can change and develop through many different contexts (Boyd & Bee, 2009).
The following stages, according to Annenberg Media Learner (2010), start at birth. Although Boyd & Bee (2010) state that prenatal is the very first stage of development. While going through the website Learner’s (2010) periods, put in parentheses will be the label that Boyd & Bee (2009) give to each stage. The first period is birth to age two (infancy), second is ages two through six (early childhood), third is ages seven to nine (middle childhood), fourth is 10 to 12 (middle childhood), fifth is 13- 15 (adolescence), and sixth is 16 to 19 (early adulthood). These first six stages are all under 20 years of age. A large amount of development is going on during these years.
The seventh period is ages 20 to 40 (emerging adulthood), eighth period is 40 to 65 (middle adulthood), and the last period is 65 and older (late adulthood). Plenty of changes and development are going on in the adult years but not as rapid as in the younger years. Theories within the lifespan perspective arena like Freud’s or Erikson’s psychosocial stages are similar in age ranges but differ slightly. Each category under the lifespan perspective will somewhat vary within each theory and the different domains of physical, cognitive, and social aspects. A key concern in the lifespan perspective is the nature versus nurture debate. In earlier days, many developmentalists only believed in one or the other. It hasn’t been until lately that this perspective has changed and many are considering the factors of both in human development (Boyd & Bee, 2009)
The focus is on concern with standard epidemiology methods that tend to discard the role that genetics play in risk factors for disease as well as genetic studies that ignore environmental risk factors for disease. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has done ongoing studies since the 1970s with adopted children. Although their environments with the adoptive parents could either facilitate or suppress the onset of alcohol abuse.
A second area of concern is the context of development. According to Boyd & Bee (2009), it is important to look at the context of change of a child and adult according to th…………………………………..
