By Ashley Crossman. Updated on October 27, 2019. The life course perspective is a sociological way of defining the process of life through the context of a culturally defined sequence of age categories that people are normally expected to pass through as they progress from birth to death. Included in the cultural conceptions of the life course ...
The life course perspective is a broad approach that can be used in a variety of subject matters such as psychology, biology, history, and criminology. As a theory, the denotation establishes …
partners move from life course theory into life course practice. MCHB celebrates the 75-year legacy and inspiration of Title V and the Children’s Bureau and is looking forward to working …
The Life Course Model integrates a focus on critical periods and early life events with an emphasis on the wear and tear a person experiences over time. For example, as Figure 1 …
Life course theory (LCT) is a conceptual framework that helps explain health and disease patterns – particularly health disparities – across populations and over time. Instead of focusing on differences in health patterns one disease or condition at a time, LCT points to broad social, economic and environmental factors as underlying causes of persistent inequalities in health for a wide range of diseases and conditions across population groups. LCT is population focused, and firmly rooted in social determinants and social equity models. Though not often explicitly stated, LCT is also community (or “place”) focused, since social, economic and environmental patterns are closely linked to community and neighborhood settings.
The four key concepts noted in Section I –timeline, timing, environment, and equity – all have implications for strategic planning and can be used to guide the development of MCHB’s sub-goals, key strategies, and guiding principles. To clarify further:
First, the current framing can be interpreted as being fatalistic or excessively deterministic: that is, holding out little or no hope that individuals who have experienced adverse events or exposures early on might attain optimal health and well-being. A second related critique is that the concepts of early programming and critical or sensitive periods lead to “front loading” of interventions around pregnancy and early childhood, and that LCT tells us little about the value of interventions with other age groups, at different life stages.
The pyramid portrays a hierarchy of needed services, starting with Infrastructure Building Services (forming the base of the pyramid, and the foundation for all MCH services), followed by: Population-Based Services (universal services available to the entire MCH population); Enabling Services (which assist women, children and families in accessing needed services within the health systems and beyond); and Direct Health Care Services (gap-filling, direct clinical care for those with limited or no access to needed services). See Figure 1 below.
What the theory tells us: LCT holds that health develops over a lifetime, with health improving or diminishing based in part on exposures to risk and protective factors. LCT emphasizes the importance of cumulative and longitudinal impacts both within an individual’s life span and across generations.
The life course perspective is a theoretical model that has been developing over the last 40 years across several disciplines. It is intended to look at how chronological age, common life transitions, and social change shape people’s lives from birth to death. Sociologists, anthropologists, social historians, demographers, ...
The attention that the life course perspective places on the impact of historical and social change on human behavior is important because of our rapidly changing society. The life course perspective differs from other psychological theories in this way.