As I am back to teaching lifespan development online- I was posting there and not here - ahhhhh.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that we are living longer and that the over 65 population will double in the next 25 years. We will see lower rates of disability in this population as compared to now.
Other findings were that more over 65ers are still working - because they want to - not necessarily because they have to. Granted many work because they need the salary and the benefits but many work because they like what they are doing.
I read somewhere that more people over 65 are taking up new careers - turning hobbies into businesses or going to school to learn a new profession. Why not? You might have another solid 20 or more years to do your "new thing."
When in my late 40's I went back to school I was not the only older person there - many of us were into our 2nd, 3rd or 4th careers.
With the possibility of living a much longer life than our predecessors, we can have a few careers in one lifetime.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
I am worried
This is not my politikal posting - those can be found at lynnrants or illegitimis nil carborundum aka don't let the bastards wear you down - but I am worried about how people who are just being born or who are young are going to be able to afford to live a long healthy life.
Yes they have a longer life expectancy than those who are older but with the US debt growing as it is and with this administration cutting funds for education and research [among other things] I have serious concerns about anyone being able to afford to eat and have a house over their head - and I hate to think about those who might need medications or more than minimal health care....or surgery... Everyone of us now owes over $150,000 as our part of the US debt!!!!
For those of us who have already finished our education, own property and have jobs, it's still a whopping amount to owe - imagine a newborn - he/she owes as much and the debt will become due in that child's lifetime - even the USA can not keep borrowing forever.
Poverty, debt, poor housing, and lack of education are all factors affecting our quality of life which in turn affects our span of life. Congress is looking at a budget - so my worry increases!
Yes they have a longer life expectancy than those who are older but with the US debt growing as it is and with this administration cutting funds for education and research [among other things] I have serious concerns about anyone being able to afford to eat and have a house over their head - and I hate to think about those who might need medications or more than minimal health care....or surgery... Everyone of us now owes over $150,000 as our part of the US debt!!!!
For those of us who have already finished our education, own property and have jobs, it's still a whopping amount to owe - imagine a newborn - he/she owes as much and the debt will become due in that child's lifetime - even the USA can not keep borrowing forever.
Poverty, debt, poor housing, and lack of education are all factors affecting our quality of life which in turn affects our span of life. Congress is looking at a budget - so my worry increases!
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Numbers
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.
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 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.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Before the beginning : )
Even before we start investigating the lifespan, two caveats of sorts about psychology and humans are needed.
1. The uniqueness of psychology
Psychology is a social science. Social sciences are the only sciences where the investigator is of the same species as the investigated.
If you think about it, rocks do not study rocks. Atoms do not study atoms. Dinosaurs do not study dinosaurs, etc.
People do study people and this leads to potential problems in the "doing" of psychology.
We all come to the observation and study of people with our own “biases” based on our culture, background, age, sex, race, etc. This is wrong or bad - but it is an important factor to consider when reading about, looking at, and studying people.
We tend look at "other" people through our own eyes – we cannot help doing so - but we have to be aware of this factor.
As an aside, we tend to do the same thing when we look at other living species…How many of us have said “my dog is sad,” “my cat is happy,” or “my bird looks interested.” And – we tend to do this with inanimate objects as well…You don’t have to answer publicly - but how many have said things like: “That light turned red just to get me.” Or “It rained today because I had planned an outdoor event.” And how many of us attribute nasty characteristics to our cars when they fail to do as we wish? You might think of similar ideas you have had.
If it is this easy to attribute feelings and intentions to non-humans - live or inanimate - can you see how much easier it is to attribute characteristics to humans?
2. The uniqueness of humans
When reading about research findings we are often tempted to say “but my family is/was not like that.” Or “that happened to me and I grew up okay.” You are correct, your family is/was not like that and you did/do make different decisions, but that does not mean the research is not correct.
Research results are the culmination of people studying many people. Research results reflect the “average,” not the specific. You should know that in statistics there is a factor called the standard deviation and it reflects the variance around the standard or norm. For example, the average IQ is 100 but there is a standard deviation of about 15 [depending on the test used] which means that the average IQ is anywhere between 85 and 115.
Most of what is studied in humans falls into a “normal” distribution – with a standard deviation. Therefore you can be somewhat different from the characteristic noted and still be “normal.” Or it is entirely possible that you and/or your family are very different. That means you fall outside the standard deviation. That is not a “bad” thing – and it may be a very good thing – like an IQ of 150 is outside the norm but is considered a “good” number. Nothing about research findings indicates bad v. good....all research does is point out an average range and variations....differences have no goodness/badness values!
So when you read about research, remember it’s all about the numbers….not the individual people.
1. The uniqueness of psychology
Psychology is a social science. Social sciences are the only sciences where the investigator is of the same species as the investigated.
If you think about it, rocks do not study rocks. Atoms do not study atoms. Dinosaurs do not study dinosaurs, etc.
People do study people and this leads to potential problems in the "doing" of psychology.
We all come to the observation and study of people with our own “biases” based on our culture, background, age, sex, race, etc. This is wrong or bad - but it is an important factor to consider when reading about, looking at, and studying people.
We tend look at "other" people through our own eyes – we cannot help doing so - but we have to be aware of this factor.
As an aside, we tend to do the same thing when we look at other living species…How many of us have said “my dog is sad,” “my cat is happy,” or “my bird looks interested.” And – we tend to do this with inanimate objects as well…You don’t have to answer publicly - but how many have said things like: “That light turned red just to get me.” Or “It rained today because I had planned an outdoor event.” And how many of us attribute nasty characteristics to our cars when they fail to do as we wish? You might think of similar ideas you have had.
If it is this easy to attribute feelings and intentions to non-humans - live or inanimate - can you see how much easier it is to attribute characteristics to humans?
2. The uniqueness of humans
When reading about research findings we are often tempted to say “but my family is/was not like that.” Or “that happened to me and I grew up okay.” You are correct, your family is/was not like that and you did/do make different decisions, but that does not mean the research is not correct.
Research results are the culmination of people studying many people. Research results reflect the “average,” not the specific. You should know that in statistics there is a factor called the standard deviation and it reflects the variance around the standard or norm. For example, the average IQ is 100 but there is a standard deviation of about 15 [depending on the test used] which means that the average IQ is anywhere between 85 and 115.
Most of what is studied in humans falls into a “normal” distribution – with a standard deviation. Therefore you can be somewhat different from the characteristic noted and still be “normal.” Or it is entirely possible that you and/or your family are very different. That means you fall outside the standard deviation. That is not a “bad” thing – and it may be a very good thing – like an IQ of 150 is outside the norm but is considered a “good” number. Nothing about research findings indicates bad v. good....all research does is point out an average range and variations....differences have no goodness/badness values!
So when you read about research, remember it’s all about the numbers….not the individual people.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Welcome to Spanning Life
Our lifespans are increasing and so is our knowledge about what goes on between conception and death. When I was in Graduate School, courses called Developmental Psychology were mostly about children - birth to adolescence. There were few books on other parts of the life span. One Psychologist I knew used to say that as psychologists aged; we'd be studying more about older people. That has been true. Psychology is a youngish science itself - and now that those of us who were in the field of Developmental Psychology are "old" we are more and more interested in the aging process.
Way back when, I did infancy research and many were surprised that anyone wold study infants. Now one can find classes and books not only on infant development per se; but on it's many many aspects such as: infant perception, infant speech, infant socialization etc. My humerus response to this increase in knowledge is that I am glad I am not in graduate school anymore.
But it is important to know some of it - though not all - and this blog will be more or less the course I would teach if I were not having to use a textbook. Think of it as a LifeSpan Development course for the non-psych major...
Way back when, I did infancy research and many were surprised that anyone wold study infants. Now one can find classes and books not only on infant development per se; but on it's many many aspects such as: infant perception, infant speech, infant socialization etc. My humerus response to this increase in knowledge is that I am glad I am not in graduate school anymore.
But it is important to know some of it - though not all - and this blog will be more or less the course I would teach if I were not having to use a textbook. Think of it as a LifeSpan Development course for the non-psych major...
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