who first developed life course perspective

What is the origin of the life course approach?

Life Course Framework: Principles. Prior to the development of life course theory, social scientists explained human behavior in two ways. First, a social relations approach was used to examine the effects social structures such as marriage and family had on individuals.

What is life course approach in sociology?

Life-course approach. The life-course approach aims at increasing the effectiveness of interventions throughout a person’s life. It focuses on a healthy start to life and targets the needs of people at critical periods throughout their lifetime . It promotes timely investments with a high rate of return for public health and the economy by ...

What is the life course as developmental theory?

These include the recognition that individual lives are influenced by their ever-changing historical context, that the study of human lives calls for new ways of thinking about their pattern and dynamic, and that concepts of human development should apply to processes across the life span. Life course theory has evolved since the 1960s through ...

Is the life course approach an emerging paradigm?

Life Course Approach to Health - World Health Organization

Who created the life course theory in criminology?

Glen Elder, in particular, began to advance core principles of life course theory, which he describes as defining "a common field of inquiry by providing a framework that guides research on matters of problem identification and conceptual development" (1998, p. 4).

What is 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 perspective in sociology?

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.Oct 27, 2019

What is the developmental life course theory?

In general, developmental/life-course theories focus on offending behavior over time (e.g., trajectories) and on dimensions of the criminal career and make an effort to identify risk and protective factors that relate to life-course patterns of offending.Oct 2, 2015

What would a worker who follows the life course perspective consider?

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.

How do life course theorists view criminality?

Life course theory suggests that the development of a criminal career is a dynamic process. Behavior is influenced by individual characteristics as well as social experiences, and the factors that cause antisocial behaviors change dramatically over a person's life span.

What are the three life course theories?

They include: (1) socio-historical and geographical location; (2) timing of lives; (3) heterogeneity or variability; (4) "linked lives" and social ties to others; (5) human agency and personal control; and (6) how the past shapes the future.

What are the three themes of the life course perspective?

Three important themes of the life course perspective—timing of lives, diversity in life course trajectories, and human agency—are particularly useful for engaging diverse individuals and social groups.

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.

Who are the two sociologists who first developed social disorganization theory?

Social disorganization theory is one of the most enduring place-based theories of crime. Developed by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, this theory shifted criminological scholarship from a focus on the pathology of people to the pathology of places.Feb 28, 2017

How is the life course criminology perspective different from traditional criminological theories?

How is life course perspective different from traditional criminological theories (i.e., how is it significant)? -Life course/development criminology is dynamic because it studies whether an individual remains stable or changes over time.

Who are the advocates of developmental theory?

These include psychological theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Robert Kegan, and many others. They believe development involves distinct and separate stages, with different kinds of behaviour occurring in each stage.

What is life course perspective?

The life course perspective has been applied to several areas of family inquiry in North America (particularly in the United States ), as well as inter-nationally. Although space limitations do not permit full coverage of this vast body of work, several studies are highlighted to illustrate recent applications of the approach. In the United States, researchers have adopted this framework to investigate: men's housework (Coltrane and Ishii-Kuntz 1992); the timing of marriage and military service (Call and Teachman 1996); work history and timing of marriage (Pittman and Blanchard 1996); families, delinquency and crime (Sampson and Laub 1993) as well as many other substantive areas (Price et al. 2000).

Why is the life course perspective important?

During this decade, rapid social change and population aging drew attention to historical influences and to the complexity of processes underlying family change and continuity. Advances in statistical techniques also prompted the continued growth of life course studies, including the creation of new methodologies to analyze longitudinal data.

What are the elements that affect the ability to adapt to life course change?

Moreover, the ability to adapt to life course change can vary with the resources or supports inherent in these elements in the form of economic or cultural capital (e.g., wealth, education ) or social capital (e.g., family social support).

What are the principles of life course?

They include: (1) socio-historical and geographical location; (2) timing of lives; (3) heterogeneity or variability; (4) "linked lives" and social ties to others; (5) human agency and personal control; and (6) how the past shapes the future.

How does the past shape the future?

How the past shapes the future. Finally, another hallmark of this perspective is that early life course decisions, opportunities, and conditions affect later outcomes. The past, therefore, has the potential to shape the present and the future, which can be envisioned as a ripple or domino effect.

How did Elder (1974) find that families in the Great Depression regained a measure of control over their

Elder (1974) found that families in the Great Depression regained a measure of control over their economic hardship through expenditure reductions and multiple family earners. In this way, families and individuals can construct, negotiate, and traverse life course events and experiences. How the past shapes the future.

What is life course theory?

Life course theory, more commonly termed the life course perspective, refers to a multidisciplinary paradigm for the study of people's lives, structural contexts, and social change. This approach encompasses ideas and observations from an array of disciplines, notably history, sociology, demography, developmental psychology, biology, and economics. In particular, it directs attention to the powerful connection between individual lives and the historical and socioeconomic context in which these lives unfold. As a concept, a life course is defined as "a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time" (Giele and Elder 1998, p. 22). These events and roles do not necessarily proceed in a given sequence, but rather constitute the sum total of the person's actual experience. Thus the concept of life course implies age-differentiated social phenomena distinct from uniform life-cycle stages and the life span. Life span refers to duration of life and characteristics that are closely related to age but that vary little across time and place.

What is life course theory?

Life course theory, a sociological framework, was used to analyze the phenomenon of becoming a mother, with longitudinal narrative data from 34 women who gave birth prematurely after a high-risk pregnancy, and whose infant became medically fragile. Women faced challenges of mistimed birth and mothering a technologically-dependent infant.

What is the core life course principle?

Linked lives. The core life course principle is linked lives, the perspective that lives are lived interdependently and reflect sociohistorical influences (Marshall & Mueller, 2003).

What are the five principles 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.

When do feelings of love begin?

For some, feelings of love began in pregnancy but were placed in a state of suspension after birth until the baby’s survival was likely. Mothers recognized a lack of depth or significant attachment to the infant after birth that functioned to spare their feelings if the infant died.

What is life course epidemiology?

Life course epidemiology investigates the long-term effects of physical and social exposures during gestation, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and later adult life on health and disease risk in later life.12 It also encompasses pathways (biological, behavioural and psychosocial) influencing the development of chronic diseases and operating across an individual’s life course or across generations. It highlights a temporal and social perspective, looking back across an individual’s or a cohort’s life experiences, or across generations to understand current patterns of health and disease, while recognizing that both past and present experiences are shaped by the wider social, economic and cultural context.

How has mortality changed over the past century?

Over the past century, changes in patterns of mortality globally have included a reduction in infectious disease mortality and an increase in chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs).1 Though this shift started in high-income countries, there is now a double burden of NCDs and communicable diseases on the low- and middle-income countries. Mortality due to NCDs – mainly cardiovascular diseases and diabetes – is projected to rise along with the economic and social development in these countries.2 The risks for NCDs are also changing due to demographic shifts, changing patterns of diet, physical activity, alcohol and tobacco consumption.3 High blood pressure, high plasma glucose, obesity and overweight are some of the leading risk factors for non-communicable diseases, and thus improving nutrition is essential to improve health globally.4

What is the importance of early childhood?

Infancy (birth to one year) along with early childhood involves children attaining a number of important developmental milestones relating to their physical development , along with social and emotional development. This includes establishing healthy patterns of eating and activity, developing a capacity for self-regulation, language and cognitive development and wider learning skills.

What is critical period model?

The critical period model (Model (a) in Figure 1) is when an exposure acting during a specific (sensitive) period has lasting or lifelong effect on the structure or physical functioning of organs, tissues and body systems, which are not modified in any way by later experience, and which results in disease later. 11 Also referred to as “biological programming” or a “latency model”, this model forms the basis of early versions of the fetal origins of adult disease hypothesis. A critical period involves the concept of biological programming, in which an environmental influence causes irreversible metabolic consequences that alter susceptibility to later adverse outcomes.24 Theoretically the critical period model advocates that an exposure during this period results in permanent and irreversible damage. However, in the context of chronic diseases the effects of exposure on structure from those on function should be differentiated.11 For instance, poor growth in utero leads to a variety of chronic disorders such as cardiovascular diseases, but other exposures in later life may still influence disease risk. The latency model 23 (including the concepts of critical and sensitive periods) involves relationships between an exposure at one point in the life course and the probability of health outcomes years or decades later, irrespective of intermediate events in life. For example, studies of the Dutch Hunger Winter showed that maternal nutritional deficiency in pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia among offspring in their adult life (the effects seemed to be dependent on prenatal insult).

What is the potential for change in intrinsic characteristics as a response to environmental stimuli?

Developmental plasticity also uses cues from the environment to optimize the life course strategy for attaining maximum fitness and preparing for a future environment, and can lead to a variation in human phenotype.31 The epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, changes in histone structure and small non-coding RNA activity provide the basis to the process of developmental plasticity. The emergence of epigenetics is giving insights into the molecular mechanisms that underlie such developmental changes.

What is life course theory?

course perspective, refers to a multidisciplinary. paradigm for the study of people’s lives, structural. contexts, and social change. This approach en-. compasses ideas and observations from an array of. disciplines, notably history, sociology, demogra-.

What are the principles of life course?

They include: (1) socio-historical. and geographical location; (2) timing of lives; (3) heterogeneity or variability; (4) “linked lives”. and social ties to others; (5) human agency and. personal control; and (6) how the past shapes the. future.

Who developed the family of perspectives?

Several beliefs, taken together, form the “family of perspectives” that contribute to this particular view. German psychologist Paul Baltes , a leading expert on lifespan development and aging, developed one of the approaches to studying development called the lifespan perspective.

Why is development a lifelong process?

Remembering that development is a lifelong process helps us gain a wider perspective on the meaning and impact of each event.

What is the Baltes perspective?

Baltes’ lifespan perspective emphasizes that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, contextual, and multidisciplinary. Think of ways your own development fits in with each of these concepts as you read about the terms in more detail. Lifespan development involves the exploration of biological, cognitive, ...

What is the concept of development?

Development is multidimensional, meaning it involves the dynamic interaction of factors like physical, emotional, and psychosocial development. Development is multidirectional and results in gains and losses throughout life.

How long after adolescence did the development of a child occur?

The study of development traditionally focused almost exclusively on the changes occurring from conception to adolescence and the gradual decline in old age; it was believed that the five or six decades after adolescence yielded little to no developmental change at all.

Why is Baltes' idea about development as a lifelong process beneficial to society?

Baltes’ ideas about development as a lifelong process is beneficial to society because it may help in the identification of qualities or problems that are distinctive in a particular age period. If these qualities or problems could be identified, specific programs could be established such as after-school interventions that enhance positive youth development (PYD).

Is development linear or multidirectional?

Development is multidirectional. Baltes states that the development of a particular domain does not occur in a strictly linear fashion but that development of certain traits can be characterized as having the capacity for both an increase and decrease in efficacy over the course of an individual’s life.

What is life course approach?

A life course approach is an underused way to approach NCD prevention and control. Unlike a disease oriented approach, which focuses on interventions for a single condition, a life course approach considers the critical stages, transitions, and settings where large differences can be made in promoting or restoring health. Importantly, it takes into account the social determinants of health, gender, equity, and human rights. It has been emphasised in numerous frameworks and initiatives in the past decade, but more work is needed to give the approach more prominence. Ensuring that the life course perspective is integrated more fully into our work will help us identify appropriate settings for health promotion, design more effective interventions, and ultimately, save lives.

What is the transitional period between childhood and adulthood?

Adolescence, defined as the transitional phase between childhood and adulthood, is a time when young people begin developing habits that will carry over into adulthood and have large implications for their NCD risk. At this age, important settings for health promotion include healthy school environments (described above), home environments, the neighbourhood on the journey to and from school, and afterschool clubs and sports clubs.

Why should public policy be developed?

Public policy should be developed for a coordinated response to the structural and social determinants of health and exposure to unhealthy environments. Although we focus on a national level, the principles and themes are applicable to cities, schools, workplaces, and other local settings.

Historical Development

• Many researchers identify the life course perspective as a "new" paradigm in the behavioral sciences because it was not formally advanced until the 1990s. During this decade, rapid social change and population aging drew attention to historical influences and to the complexity of processes underlying family change and continuity. Advances in statis...

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Key Principles and Concepts

Selected Research Applications

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