Life by the numbers? I just had a birthday - decided that at my "age" they do not count anymore unless they end with a 5 or a 0 : ). With each year that I have surpassed the age at which my father died, I do think more about lifespans. My father died at 56; my mother at 95.
My mother and father both lived through the influenza epidemic of 1918 - 1919, the one that killed 675,000 Americans. How quickly we forget that what we now call "the flu" was a leading cause of death. Back in 1906 - 1907, when my parents were born, the life expectancy of a child born then was about 48 years. By the time I was born life expectancy was about 65 and for children born in 2001 [ the most recent government stats] it is about 77.
As our life expectancy increases, what we can do with and in our lives expands. Back when people such as Alexander the Great were around, life expectancy was about 35 and so you got into your life's work very early - in what we now call childhood - and did your "thing" in your late teens and 20's. Alexander became king at 20 on the death of his father and died when he was 32! So he had 12 years of doing his grownup "job." Of course he had been in training since he was a child and ruled in his father's absence but the major war campaigns were in his 20's.
There was no period of finding oneself - there wasn't any time. Adolescence is a "stage" that came about as our lifespan grew. Now we can spend time in school figuring out what we want to do when we grow up - and some, and I do include myself, are still figuring out what we will do when we grow up.
With our growing spans of life - we can keep learning and changing. Or we can stagnate - the choices are ours.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Ages? Stages? Behaviors?
How is it that our lifespan gets defined?
We used to speak of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Now we have prenatal, early postnatal, postnatal, early and later infancy, early and later childhood, prepuberty, puberty, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, etc., etc.
How old are you? And - which stage/label fits you? Can we be in a few categories simultaneously?
What are ages? Those are the definitions by years or decades. You are a child, a teen, an adult. But then oops it gets odd...Are the 20's,30's and 40's similar? What about 80's and 90's?
What are stages? Usually these are certain times in life when "most" people do "something." For example, we can speak of physical development and say that most humans walk at about one year so we can talk about a walking stage or a talking stage.
But what happens when we go into areas like higher education? marriage? childbirth? careers? In the "old days" of psychology, "most" adolescents were in high school and many late teens early 20's were in college or in their career. Marriage was something that happened and in your 20's as was the birth of your 1st child.
Now we have people of all ages finishing high school and starting college. Careers are not always started in your 20's and retirement is not always in your 50's or 60's. Women are having babies into their 40's and even 50's.
People in their 80's are still out there skiing. In the ski areas nearest me, one gets a free season pass from age 72 on and recently I met an 82 year old when I went skiing. Can one describe that person as "old?" In one sense, the number, yes, but in another sense of agility and activity, no. So what is it that defines us?
Stage? Age? or Behavior?
How old are you? Here's an interesting questionnaire: http://www.realage.com
We used to speak of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Now we have prenatal, early postnatal, postnatal, early and later infancy, early and later childhood, prepuberty, puberty, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, etc., etc.
How old are you? And - which stage/label fits you? Can we be in a few categories simultaneously?
What are ages? Those are the definitions by years or decades. You are a child, a teen, an adult. But then oops it gets odd...Are the 20's,30's and 40's similar? What about 80's and 90's?
What are stages? Usually these are certain times in life when "most" people do "something." For example, we can speak of physical development and say that most humans walk at about one year so we can talk about a walking stage or a talking stage.
But what happens when we go into areas like higher education? marriage? childbirth? careers? In the "old days" of psychology, "most" adolescents were in high school and many late teens early 20's were in college or in their career. Marriage was something that happened and in your 20's as was the birth of your 1st child.
Now we have people of all ages finishing high school and starting college. Careers are not always started in your 20's and retirement is not always in your 50's or 60's. Women are having babies into their 40's and even 50's.
People in their 80's are still out there skiing. In the ski areas nearest me, one gets a free season pass from age 72 on and recently I met an 82 year old when I went skiing. Can one describe that person as "old?" In one sense, the number, yes, but in another sense of agility and activity, no. So what is it that defines us?
Stage? Age? or Behavior?
How old are you? Here's an interesting questionnaire: http://www.realage.com
Monday, January 02, 2006
Welcome 2006 and back to blogging
I'm glad we are into 2006. The last few months of 2005 was too busy for me...getting ready to teach again and having a friend in town - which meant skiing and a short vacation to the Olympic Peninsula. That and technology issues and well...enough with excuses :- )
My resolution is to do my blogs regularly - starting today- so here we go!
How do we study the lifespan?
Research comes in many forms - studying individuals or groups, short term or long term studies, and combinations of the forms.
How do we know what changes occur say from year 1 to year 2 or from 20 to 30 to 40, etc? We can study the same person for years or we can look today at a 1-year-old and also look at a 2-year-old or look at a 40-year-old and then a 50-year-old and measure the differences. Studying the same person over time is called longitudinal research. Studying the two different people is called cross-sectional research. Both are valid types of research.
Much of what we learned about development in the past came from longitudinal studies, mainly at universities, and which were funded for decades. Going back to the last post, can you see how the investigator can have a biased approach? Not to say they did or that the research was flawed, but when you study the same people over time you, as the investigator, are now part of that person's life and being the one studied is part of the persona of the people in the study.
Cross-sectional research is less affected by long term biases but the draw back here is that the researcher is studying two different children with all that entails. Getting two different yet "matching" groups of individuals is done statistically. Factors are matched as best they can be- such as family make-up, education levels of parents, type of neighborhoods lived in, etc.
All research has flaws and all researchers have flaws - we are all human. But the knowledge we have gained over the decades from all kinds of research and researchers has led to an understanding of child development.
Another caveat - gains in technology have led to gains in the study of humans. For example, when I was in college, child development was a relatively small field of research and there were few text books on the subject! When I was in graduate school, researchers were finding ways of studying infants; some were looking at perception and language development and very few were interested in fathers or old age! Now infancy, fathers, prenatal, early postnatal, and language and perception are major fields of study. And aging adults is the newest field of research and writing. Years ago a psychologist I knew said that only as the psychologists themselves aged would they start looking at the older among us!
Just imagine what we will know in the future.
My resolution is to do my blogs regularly - starting today- so here we go!
How do we study the lifespan?
Research comes in many forms - studying individuals or groups, short term or long term studies, and combinations of the forms.
How do we know what changes occur say from year 1 to year 2 or from 20 to 30 to 40, etc? We can study the same person for years or we can look today at a 1-year-old and also look at a 2-year-old or look at a 40-year-old and then a 50-year-old and measure the differences. Studying the same person over time is called longitudinal research. Studying the two different people is called cross-sectional research. Both are valid types of research.
Much of what we learned about development in the past came from longitudinal studies, mainly at universities, and which were funded for decades. Going back to the last post, can you see how the investigator can have a biased approach? Not to say they did or that the research was flawed, but when you study the same people over time you, as the investigator, are now part of that person's life and being the one studied is part of the persona of the people in the study.
Cross-sectional research is less affected by long term biases but the draw back here is that the researcher is studying two different children with all that entails. Getting two different yet "matching" groups of individuals is done statistically. Factors are matched as best they can be- such as family make-up, education levels of parents, type of neighborhoods lived in, etc.
All research has flaws and all researchers have flaws - we are all human. But the knowledge we have gained over the decades from all kinds of research and researchers has led to an understanding of child development.
Another caveat - gains in technology have led to gains in the study of humans. For example, when I was in college, child development was a relatively small field of research and there were few text books on the subject! When I was in graduate school, researchers were finding ways of studying infants; some were looking at perception and language development and very few were interested in fathers or old age! Now infancy, fathers, prenatal, early postnatal, and language and perception are major fields of study. And aging adults is the newest field of research and writing. Years ago a psychologist I knew said that only as the psychologists themselves aged would they start looking at the older among us!
Just imagine what we will know in the future.
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