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Sociological theoretical perspectives
Sociological approach
Sociological theoretical perspectives
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The life course perspective also life course theory is the multidisciplinary approach to the understanding of the mental, physical and social health of individuals. It uses the life span and life stage concepts determining the health trajectory. This approach was developed in the 1960's to analyze the lives of people in their social, structural and culture contexts. The life course approach examines an individual and their life history. It investigates how the early events of their life influenced their future decisions and events such as with getting married or even divorced. Their engagement in crime and disease incidence. The life course is the sequence of socially defined events or roles the individual enacts over a period of time. It focuses on a connection between people and their historical or socioeconomic living.
The theory uses the observations of history, sociology, demographic, developmental psychology, biology, economics, and public health. It uses a multidisciplinary paradigm for the study of people's, structural context and social change. Life course perspective as theorized by Glen Elder has five key principles which are: life-span development, human agency, historical time and
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Family is perceived as a micro social group in a macro social context. It is the collection of those who have a shared history that interact within the ever changing social contexts across the increasing time and space. The aging and development change are continuous processes experienced throughout life. The life course reflects the intersection of social and historical factors with a personal biography and development in the study of family life and social change. The life course approach has been applied to many topics and has become important in areas such as the role of childhood experiences that effect their behavior later in their
If we take a minute to explore Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Human Ecological Theory, we can see that the intricacies of family are deeply imbedded in the center of the Microsystem around which, all other systems stem. The Microsystem is the underpinning of the Chronosystem, the way in which environmental effects develop over time; also the way transitions, such as divorce, affect the individual’s growth and development (nacce.org). The nuclear family, consisting of he father, mother and at least one child (Sigelman & Rider 2009) is not always what we think about when the topic comes to family. In today’s world, with divorce and remarriages, there has been a shift in how we as a society define family. It has become more per...
Each stage of development from childhood, adolescent to adulthood varies with experiences and exposure of life events. This can have an effect on how one perceives life, sickness and death.
Erikson modeled his life cycle schema after the Shakespearean play “As You Like It”. The play identifies the seven ages that men experience starting with infancy and continuing in to old age.In the play the first age is infancy which lasts until a child is old enough to go to school. The third age is when a man falls in love. Next the man becomes strong and mature like a soldier and then becomes just and wise like a judge. The sixth age is when a man reaches old age and incompetency followed by age seven which is death. Erikson believed that Shakespeare had neglected to include the play stage in his seven ages presented in the play “As You Like It”. “In the late 1940s Eriksons received an invitation to present a paper on the developmental stages of life at the midcentury White House conference on children and youth. The paper they were to contribute for the conference was on growth and crisis of the healthy personality.” (Capps, 2004) It was on the way to this conference that the Eriksons realized that if Shakespeare had left out a stage then they too may have forgotten a stage. Erik Erikson realized that his life cycle model went from intimacy, signifying young adulthood in stage six to old age in stage seven. After this realization the Eriksons added “Generativity Versus Stagnation” as the new seventh
Since the 20th century, researchers have sought out solutions to help assist families and the individual components that make up family systems overcome the challenges and schisms that can inhibit individuation and stability. Two theoretical perspectives, the family-systems theory and the family-development theory, were conceived to gain as Balswick & Balswick (2014) noted, gain “a wide-angle view of family life” (p. 22). Though these two theories have merit, one I found to be more advantageous in gaining a better understanding of the family as an actively metastasizing organism, which needs to be approached more adaptively.
“The life course is the progression and path an individual takes from conception to death, and considers that the whole life of the individual presents opportunities for development, change and growth” (Crawford and Walker 2010).
According to Vander Zanden (1997), Erikson says that during each life stage of development, individuals will have to encounter unique life events. These life events enable the individuals to achieve their level of growth through life (Vander Zanden, 1997). Papalia and Olds (1998) say that young adulthood is a can-do period. This is the stage where decision making is important. Exercising their freedom to be independent, and using what they have learnt in their adolescent years. This is the time of exploration, trying things out, and weighing up the pros and cons. This is also the stage where the individual chooses to be away from family, to be independent, make their own decisions, buying their own home, budgeting, finance, accommodation, and day to day living.
This reflection paper is based on the life history interview conducted on me and a 78-year-old woman who is soon going to celebrate her 79th birthday on Sep 21st. I would call her with a fictitious name “Smita” in the entire paper to maintain and protect her privacy. The interview was about our life. It was divided into six major life categories: childhood, adulthood, identity, the present, aging, and life lessons. Having an opportunity to interview a 78-year-old woman and writing this reflective paper about the life history and experiences had made me realize that I have a lot to learn about the stages of human life. Every individual lives are different and it varies tremendously. As an interviewee my goal was to collect the details of life, different stories, and experiences that makes our life unique from the rest of the people.
When we think of crimes we always wonder why people do them in the first place. Usually when a person commits a crime we automatically assume that he or she is a bad person. But we don 't know the circumstances on how that person end up stealing, killing, raping, and etc in the first place. My perspective is that people commit crimes for many reasons, especially seeing it throughout the neighborhood I grew up in and the school I went to in California. But after taking the Crime in America class, it gave me it a better insight of why people commit crimes through the theories that other people research about, and the video examples we seen in class. One of the theories that seem plausible on why people commit crimes is the life course
The general pattern for people is that when they becoming older they are less able to vary life. Nikolas Westerhoff in his article “Set in Our ways: Why Change is So Hard” described the connection between humans’ brains and behavior during the certain periods of life. The key assumption is that in 20s people are more hazardous and tend to adventures, while after 30s this trend is less expressed. Author gives an example when the young generation can be even over risky and inconsiderate. The article includes the story about 22-year-old Cristopher McCandless, who gave his money for charity and hitchhiked around the USA and died in Alaska because of famine. When 40s – 60s are coming people lose their appetite for novelty due to the natural process, which reveal that old habits express themselves at those ages. The elder generation wants to feel stability continuing do customary things and taking care of their children or grandchildren. Also they are under the society’s pressure, when it is quite inappropriate being infantile or just make crazy travels instead of making a career and having a family. Author mentioned false hope syndrome, which means that people often procrastinate certain thinks that never be finished. That is why Westerhoff suggests doing everything “on a right time in a right place” because then it would be probably late.
To be independent and on our own without help. We go to school for normally 16 years to have a career to support ourselves and a family. The average lifespan for humans is around 79 years. It is said that woman normally do outlive men. A fun fact is the longest living person ever recorded was 122 years old!! I chose to write our lifespan development because it is something that interest me. To start out at a single cell and develop into human beings is something that fascinates me.Human's truly are incredible species. All the information I found was so knowledgeable and our textbook does an excellent job describing this chapter. Over the years the life expectancy (in the US) has increased. An interesting fact I found said "The Japanese live the longest and healthiest lives, on average and those with the shortest life expectancies reside in Southern Africa." (http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/10-essential-facts-about-life-expectancy/)As we age and develop, we are constantly learning new things and maturing. Not only do we change physically, but we also change socially. The way we communicate when we areteenagers is very different from the way we will communicate in late adulthood. Our brains areconstantly developing and changing. "Love and work are two key themes that dominate adultdevelopment. Friends continue to be important in adult- hood. Forming a committed, intimate relationship is one important task traditionally associated with early adulthood."(396) As we develop our priorities change. For example, when I was 8 years old all I cared about was cheerleading and playing with my friends. Now that I am almost 20 my main focus is working to pay bills, trying to prepare for marriage and children one day. As my life progresses on I will continue to learn new things and change. The human mind is amazing and so interesting
There are many types of family that exists in today’s society, each important to the upbringing of any children of which may be apart of it.
In our teenage life, we start to try new things out, experiment and desire to learn everything there is in life, and then we reach the adult years, which is also considered the most crucial point in our lives in which we cultivate the dreams we had in our childhood and work on to make them a reality.
...through 8 different psychosocial stages of life. Each step has to be completed in order to have gained knowledge and to be able to be successful in the next stage of development. Researching this topic has taught me that we can’t skip over skills and expect to have success or live happily ever after. I now realize how important learning from my mistakes can be. Childhood becomes the remembered past and adulthood the anticipated future (McAdams, 2001).
Each person’s life consists of normal stages of development; this is known as life span development. This development starts at infancy and continues through death. In each stage of development, each person experiences four types of development; physical, cognitive, social, and personality.
Everyone is born into some form of family, with the family taking the responsibility of nurturing, teaching the norms or accepted behaviors within the family structure and within society. There are many types of families, which can be described as a set of relationships including parents and children and can include anyone related by blood or adoption. Family is the most important, “for it is within the family that the child is first socialized to serve the needs of the society and not only its own needs” (Goode, 1982).