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Introduction
Life course perspective assists us to think about late adulthood in the context of the entire life course. It recognizes that the experiences of the current stage of life are shaped by life events experienced in earlier stages of our lives. This paper discusses; life course perspective contributions to our understanding of personality development, mental health and/or cognitive changes in late adulthood; and three research studies designed in a manner that reflected the life course perspectives.
Life course consists of elements that make up the overall structure and timing of events in one’s life from birth to death. Life courses must be examined and taken into account to understand the aged individual. This is the basis for longitudinal studies. Life structure is composed of: roles, such as, occupational, social, and family; relationships, for instance, intimate, personal and professional; and inner structure, that is, goals, values, motives, and memories. The development of all these aspects can be considered a life course. To understand this development or progression, change and continuity are the elements that must be examined. Elder (2008) focused on the richness and uniqueness of an elder’s life course. Assisting elders understand the story of their lives preserves identity and feelings of self worth.
Contributions of life course perspectives to understanding personality development, mental health and/or cognitive changes in late adulthood
Life course perspective contributes a lot in the understanding of personality development, mental health and cognitive changes in late adulthood. First, when one adopts life course perspective, understanding the role of individual differences in personality play in mastering different socio-developmental tasks across life span is possible. Life course perspective provides a system for describing individual differences in personality dispositions and temperamental traits (Heath, 1999).
According to life course perspective, prior experiences, including occupancy, and patterning of roles in early adulthood, can affect subsequent wellness. In other words, being aware of something about the past experiences of an individual would assist to account for differences in psychological wellness in later life. A more dynamic, longitudinal and contextual view of the relationship between health and wellness is necessary. Turner, (2008) explains that it may not be role occupancy alone but rather the timing, sequencing, duration, or number of spells in particular roles that are consequential for both social integration and emotional wellness. If studies included measures of all these aspects of roles, their timing in the life course, or their persistence affects the physical and psychological wellness of older people. In addition, it’s also necessary to look beyond employment to other roles that are important to the older people’s lives, such as, religious, non paid work, and organizational involvements, and family roles, including care-giving (Turner, 2008).
Secondly, the life course approach assists in analyzing historical contexts about how specific situations shape the relevance of individual attributes, such as, mental health for life course outcomes. Roles may present different impacts at different levels of the life course and in different contexts, particularly regarding transitions in late adulthood. Much is not known about the import of family roles beyond the normative years of retirement. It’s indicative that both women and men experience a decline in family and non-family roles later in life as children leave home, marriage ends, and careers come to a halt. Since earlier experiences shape health and wellness later in life, there is likely to be certain “cumulativeness” to the effects of social integration, with those socially connected in their adulthood the most likely to remain socially connected in their later years. In sum, life course perspective can help immensely in untangling the relationship between possessing multiple roles and positive physical and mental results (Heath, 1999).
Thirdly, life course perspective deals with issues of continuity and change across the life course. Development change is assumed to happen at any point in the life span; contrary to cognitive perspective which seem to show that the attainment of adulthood is the end point of a developmental process (Heath, 1999).
Research Studies Designed to Reflect Life Course Perspectives
Life course research has been driven by the production rivalry between traditional humanistic interests in the quality and course of human lives, on one hand, and disciplinary and technical developments in social sciences that have improved the precision of observation and analysis, on the other. Elder Glen, a renowned sociologist was one of the early researchers of a life course perspective. He is the force behind the development of this perspective today. Elder started to analyze data from three pioneering longitudinal studies of children in the early 1960s. As he analyzed enormous data, he was moved by the impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s on individual and family pathways (Elder, 1998).
There is some evidence that mental health problems during childhood, adolescence and early adulthood are associated with poor social and economic achievements in later adulthood. Early onset of mental health problems predicts lower educational achievement; and lower occupational status and income (Turner, 2008). Adult social bonds are also affected negatively; early onset of psychiatric disorder predicts decreased likelihood of marriage, especially for persons with psychotic disorders; earlier age of marriage for persons with affective and substance abuse disorders, earlier parenthood, and higher rates of divorce (Elder, 1998).
The above findings were from longitudinal studies that followed samples from adolescence through early to mid adulthood. However, these studies cannot inform us whether later onset mental illness has similar effects on life course achievements. Logically, earlier onset would be more likely to decrease later achievements because both socioeconomic achievements, especially educational attainment, and family formation are typically established during young adulthood. Freud Sigmund is credited for stating that the major tasks of adulthood are to love and work (Turner, 2008). Clearly affliction of mental health problems puts successful placement of those tasks on danger and can be a turning point in the life course. Early affliction of mental health disorders is also a powerful determinant of recurrent mental health throughout adulthood. Woodward (2001) reported that anxiety disorder during adolescence is the strongest determinant of anxiety disorder in early adulthood. Similarly, Kim-Cohen et al., (2003) used data from a 15 year longitudinal study to report that 75% of the adults who experienced psychiatric disorders had also experienced mental illness as adolescence (Pulkkinen, 1999).
Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social development extended functional approach from personality traits to the analysis of individual’s life courses in terms of social trajectories (Elder, 1998). One of the key goals of the study had been to investigate to what extent psychological functioning plays a role in the development of social functioning in later adulthood. The trajectories investigated were: psychological functioning, including personality traits, characteristics of socio-emotional behavior, and wellness; work, including education and work career; family, including the family of origin, one’s own family, and intergenerational relations; health, including health behavior; and social integration, including socialization and crime. In sum, the study specifies the order of life cycle that is, from childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, and emphasizes an individual’s potential growth. Implicit in the study also, is the dynamic change in personality throughout the life course (Turner, 2008).
Conclusion
In sum, life span development perspective reminds us to think of late adulthood in the context of the entire life span, recognizing people’s experiences of this phase of life will be shaped by the life events they experienced in earlier stages of their lives.
Reference
Elder, G. (1998). Life Course and Human Development. New York: Wiley.
Health, H., Schofield, I. (1999). Healthy Ageing. Sydney: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Pulkkinen, L., Caspi, A. (2002). Paths to Successful Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Turner, H., Schieman, S. (2008). Stress Processes across the Life Course. Sydney: Elsevier.
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