how can understanding the life course perspective help us understand older adult

The life-course perspective underlines that psychological development is going on through the whole life-course. Old age is best understood when individual past is seen linked to the present, as development in a changing context. The life-course perpective is central both for services and support given to elderly people.

Full Answer

What is a life course perspective on Aging?

But a life course perspective on aging is much more than understanding the shadow of the past or studying a phenomenon “over the life course,” a phrase that can be found alongside just about any topic today.

When was the life course perspective developed?

When the concept was first developed in the 1960s, the life course perspective hinged upon the rationalization of the human experience into structural, cultural and social contexts, pinpointing the societal cause for such cultural norms as marrying young or likelihood to commit a crime.

What can life course approaches tell us about early childhood development?

In conclusion, life course approaches can lead to etiologic insights into the developmental processes that generate disparities preconception, prenatally, during infancy and early childhood, through adolescence, middle adulthood, older adulthood, and across generations.

What is a life perspective?

Life course perspectives demonstrate that current health is shaped by earlier exposures (even decades before) to physical, environmental, and psychosocial factors.

Why is the life course perspective important?

2. The life course perspective recognizes the influence of historical changes on human behavior. 3. The life course perspective recognizes the importance of timing of lives not just in terms of chronological age, but also in terms of biological age, psychological age, social age, and spiri- tual age.

What impact does the life course perspective have on the study of old age?

The growing focus on life course determinants of aging also has implications for studies of long-term changes in physical activity and their role in determining both gains and losses of health and functioning with aging.

What is the life course perspective and how does it relate to health development?

A life course perspective acknowledges that health status reflects cumulative life conditions. Thus, interventions should be tailored to specific developmental stages and take into account the impact of cumulative social and environmental exposures, both positive and negative.

What is the importance of a life course perspective and approach to the health equity lens?

The life-course approach is a cornerstone of policy frameworks focused on improving health and health equity in Europe and around the world. It is a key pillar of Health 2020 and recognized as being central to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

What are the strengths of the life course perspective?

5. The life course perspective sees humans as capable of making choices and constructing their own life journeys, within systems of opportunities and constraints. 6. The life course perspective emphasizes diversity in life journeys and the many sources of that diversity.

What is an example of the life course perspective?

Examples include: an individual who gets married at the age of 20 is more likely to have a relatively early transition of having a baby, raising a baby and sending a child away when a child is fully grown up in comparison to his/her age group.

What is the life course theory of aging?

The life course approach emphasizes that the health of one age group should not be considered in isolation from that of others, and raises broad social and environmental, as well as medical, considerations.

What does life course mean in health and social care?

A person's physical and mental health and wellbeing are influenced throughout life by the wider determinants of health. These are a diverse range of social, economic and environmental factors, alongside behavioural risk factors which often cluster in the population, reflecting real lives.

What is meant by the life course perspective quizlet?

Life course perspective. An approach to human behavior that recognizes the influence `of age but also acknowledges the influences of historical time and culture. Which looks at how chronological age, relationships, common shape people's lives from birth to death. Cohort.

What is meant by the life course perspective?

The life course perspective or life course theory (LCT) is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the mental, physical and social health of individuals, which incorporates both life span and life stage concepts that determine the health trajectory.

What is the life course approach in public health?

The Life Course Theory suggests that each life stage influences the next, and together the social, economic and physical environments in which we live have a profound influence on our health and the health of our community.

What are the 5 key concepts of life course theory?

Life course theory has five distinct principles: (a) time and place; (b) life-span development; (c) timing; (d) agency; and (e) linked lives. We used these principles to examine and explain high-risk pregnancy, its premature conclusion, and subsequent mothering of medically fragile preterm infants.

What is the lifecourse approach to ageing?

From the moment we are born, we all begin ageing. This is the start of a complex and varied lifecourse. Each of us live through different events, we make choices, we face the consequences of policies and systems, and intersecting forms of discrimination that influence our lives.

Policies and programmes

We all experience ageing in a different way. We benefit from growing experience and knowledge, and form meaningful relationships with family and friends.

What is the difference between aging and life course?

These include that (1) age is a salient dimension of individual identity and social organization; (2) a reconfigured life course brings reconfigured aging; (3) old age is a highly precarious phase of life; (4) difference and inequality are not the same, but both can accumulate over time; (5) aging is gendered ; (6) aging is interpersonal, and “independence” is an illusion; (7) “choice” and “responsibility” can be dirty words; (8) much of aging is in the mind—it is imagined and anticipated; and (9) history leaves its footprints on aging, and the future of aging is already here. These lessons culminate in a final insight: that to understand personal aging, gerontologists must look beyond the personal, for much of the relevant action is to be found in social experience.

What is age and the allocation of social roles and activities?

Age and the allocation of social roles and activities: age is a basis for organizing education, work, retirement, and leisure roles and activities, with institutions and markets catering to different age groups.

Why is gerontology important?

That long past reflects the fact that aging is a lifelong process.

Why is positive aging so damning?

But these messages about positive aging, which so exclusively emphasize choice, in contrast, can be damning because they communicate that defying aging, through one’s own efforts, is the primary way to do aging. There are some things about aging that cannot be escaped or postponed.

What are the social forces of gerontology?

Social forces, from social relationships to institutions and policies, demography, and historical change, shape individual and population aging. The strong emphasis on personal factors in gerontology can lead researchers and practitioners to overlook the fact that these “personal” factors are often interpersonal in nature and have social determinants and consequences.

What were the major changes in the last century?

The last century brought revolutionary reductions in mortality, morbidity, and fertility. These demographic changes created aging societies and transformed the aging experiences of individuals and families. They gave rise to the very concept of the life course and continue to permit its reorganization.

What is the third ages?

These “ages” were produced by demographic conditions noted earlier. The third age can last several decades and is viewed as a time of opportunity and activity.

Abstract

The life-course perspective is gaining increasing acceptance in gerontology. It focuces on the multidimensional meaning of time; individual time (aging), cohort and historical time. Aging is interwoven in context, in a changing society, giving aging and old age different meanings and different conditions.

References (9)

To become dependent on professional support to accomplish the daily activities of life can be considered a turning point, involving a range of challenging changes in life. The purpose of the study was to describe the experiences of older home-dwelling individuals in transition from self-supported to supported living from a lifeworld perspective.

Why is understanding the life course important?

... Understanding the life course is important when describing and explaining historical, social and cultural factors which shape and construct an individual's life. The concept of life course is a useful tool in explaining the short-and long-range causes and consequences of a life history (Settersten 2006). ...

How does a life course perspective help in research?

A life-course perspective is particularly promising in connecting, organizing, and supplementing current knowledge and can potentially stimulate and direct future research and intervention efforts by using a time-sensitive, opportunistic, and developmental approach. The first section summarizes this approach into five key life-course principles including human agency, linked lives, time and place, life-span development, and timing. The second section takes a closer look at three time-based components: trajectories, transitions, and turning points. The final section highlights some of the implications of a life-course perspective for research methods and interventions, especially among children and older adults.

What is the purpose of the book "Finns abroad"?

The edited book aims at broadening our understanding of Finnish emigration and the multitude of different types of transnational mobility that Finns engage in, which is a distinctive feature of our times. The days when entire villages in the peripheries had to contemplate international migration to a single destination as a survival strategy are long gone. Current migration from Finland is much more diverse, as people make individual choices with their own motivations for undertaking international mobility. FInns abroad - New forms of mobility and migration takes the reader on a trip that spans over four continents and explores different types of mobility, such as marriage and family migration, company secondments and highly-skilled migration. The book includes articles from Elli Heikkilä, Krister Björklund, Saara Koikkalainen, Salla Saarela, Johanna Leinonen, Carol Marie Kiriakos, Nicol Foulkes, Anu Warinowski, Leena Vuorinen, Tiina Lammervo ja Sanna-Mari Vierimaa.

What is the life course?

A body of work referred to as the "life course" framework (also known as "life course theory," the "life course paradigm," and the "life course perspective") has been increasingly used to motivate and justify the examination of the relationships among variables in social and behavioral science, particularly in the study of population health and aging. Yet, there is very little agreement on what some of these concepts mean, and there is hardly any agreement on what the "life course" is. This article focuses on the different ways in which the concept of "life course" is used in the contemporary study of aging and human development, particularly with regard to health and well-being. Clarification is given for how "life course" is distinguished from "life span" and "life cycle," among other "life" words. This work reviews the conceptual literature on the life course, beginning with its formative years in the 1960s and 1970s, through to the present time. Detailed research of several literatures across disciplines revealed five different uses of the term "life course": (a) life course as time or age, (b) life course as life stages, (c) life course as events, transitions, and trajectories, (d) life course as life-span human development, and (e) life course as early life influences (and their cumulation) on later adult outcomes. To the extent the concept of life course has a multiplicity of meanings that are at variance with one another, this is problematic, as communication is thereby hindered. On the other hand, to the extent the concept of life course involves a rich tapestry of different emphases, this is a good thing, and the diversity of meanings should be retained. This paper proposes a conceptual integration based in part on Riley's age stratification model that resolves the various meanings of life course into one general framework. Coupled with a demographic conceptualization of the life course, this framework embeds the concept of "life course" within a broader perspective of life-span development. This framework is proposed as an integrated perspective for studying the causes and consequences of "life course events and transitions" and understanding the manner by which "life events" and the role transitions they signify influence the life-span development of outcomes of interest across stages of the life cycle.

How does HIV affect older people?

Older adults living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are at risk of experiencing difficulties in their intimate lives due to the combined effects of HIV and ageing. To date, little research has focused on the lived experience of sexuality. This article seeks to fill in the gap by documenting the challenges faced by this population with respect to their intimate relationships and sexual lives. Based upon the results of a qualitative study conducted in Montreal (2010–2012) using semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of 38 people aged 50–73 and living with HIV, this study revealed several difficulties, including those related to their social location, whereby HIV and ageing intersect with other social determinants (including gender, sexual orientation and drug use). Difficulties that were identified include lower sexual desire linked to ageing, erectile changes, difficulty in using condoms, stigma related to HIV and/or ageism, changes in appearance caused by HIV and/or ageing, along with the impact of their lifecourse experiences. Our results shed light on the specific nature of the difficulties experienced by older adults living with HIV with regard to their intimate lives, as well as on the importance of using an analysis that combines the theoretical approaches of intersectionality and lifecourse to enhance our capacity for understanding complex and unique experiences.

What is the relationship between EU policy and lifelong learning?

This paper explores the relation between EU lifelong learning policies and strategies on the one hand, and, on the other, the attributes and practices of adults in relation to learning in later life. Following a brief summary of the genealogy of the concept of lifelong learning, a critical examination is provided of EU policies on and participation rates in lifelong learning. The discussions will focus in particular on that intersection between later life and lifelong learning by highlighting the failure of much current EU legislation and perspectives on lifelong learning to take serious account of the changing nature of lifecourse patterns and, in particular, the role and involvement of the ‘post-work’ population.

What is the care trajectory of dementia?

The research community is showing increasing interest in the analysis of the care trajectory of people with chronic health problems, especially dementias such as Alzheimer's disease. However, despite this interest, there is little research on the initial phases of the care trajectory. The fact that the first symptoms of dementia are generally noticed by those surrounding the elderly person suggests that the recognition of the disease is intimately linked to interactions not only amongst family members but also amongst friends, neighbours and health professionals. This study focuses on the period beginning with the first manifestations of cognitive difficulties and ending with the diagnosis of Alzheimer-type dementia. Interviews with 60 caregivers in Montreal, Canada were used to reconstruct how older people with Alzheimer-type dementia enter into the care trajectory. Our methods consisted of the analysis of social networks, social dynamics and action sequences. Our findings are presented in the form of a typology comprised of 5 pathways of entries into the care trajectory that are structured around the following four principles of the Life Course Perspective: family history, linked lives, human agency and organisational effects. We believe that analyses of the initial phases of the care trajectory, such as this one, are essential for the application of effective early detection and intervention policies. They are also central to informing future studies that seek to understand the care experience in its entirety.

What is life course perspective?

Lesson Summary. Life course perspective is a theory used in the social sciences that looks at how a person grows and changes over time. Researchers using this theory may study a cohort, or a group of people born during a particular timeframe who've experienced similar historical events.

What is a transition in life?

A transition occurs when there is movement from one role or status to another over time. This transition to having less money occurred because of the life event of losing a job. Getting married, getting divorced, a loved one passing away, and having a baby, along with many other changes, are all considered life events.

How do life events affect a person's trajectory?

Life events influence a person's trajectory, an overall life path that involves multiple transitions. For a person growing up during the Depression, it was common for there to have been a certain trajectory prior to the economic downturn, and then a different trajectory afterwards.

What is a turning point in life?

This kind of transition is known as a turning point, a period of time that alters the life course trajectory. A turning point can include negative experiences, such as college savings being drained, as well as positive experiences, such as a renewed appreciation for the support of those helping to deal with the crisis.

Why is it so hard to say anything about yourself?

It would probably be hard to say very much about yourself because eventually you would want to bring up something from your past experience that has shaped you as a person. The life course perspective, also known as life course theory, is used in the social sciences to help understand human development.