LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT

Lifespan Development

Lifespan Development

Introduction

Lifespan development is a process starts from the birth of a human being and continues until death. The development begins with the creation of a fetus from a single cell. When a child is born, his immediate environment begins to influence his development. The main developmental periods are childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood and late adulthood. Each era's transition involves necessary change in the personality of the individual's life, and sometime take up to six years to complete the change.

Discussion

What is Development?

The word development can be defined as a process of change. Development incorporates a process of transition from one state to the other stage. The transition that takes place, especially in the lives of human beings, has managed to attract the interest of various researchers. There are various studies and theories which talk about the developmental process, and how a person from his early childhood, develops into a mature person. The area of concern also involves the different stages which a person goes through. Therefore, the question arises that how does a person move from one state to another? Furthermore, there are other aspects of this change as well, which seeks to identify the possible impacts or the lasting effects of this change. In case the impact is not significant, then there must be some degree of impact on the person's further life.

The developmental process of a person's life can also be called as growth. The growth process involves progression from various stages of life. In addition, the progression phase is known to move toward a particular point. This particular or fixed point toward which, a person gradually moves is commonly known as maturity. The development of a person into the state of maturity has managed to capture attention of various theorists, each presenting a different point of view, with agreements to some extent. There may be an agreement to some degree related to the physical growth of a person and where it stops, and an approach toward personality development. Furthermore, there may be agreements related to the definition of maturity for one person or culture to another.

The state of maturity is widely known to be reflected through the actions of a person. Moreover, it may also be reflected through the behavior of a person, and what he may think as suitable behavior in an environment may not be appropriate in another setting. There are some researchers and theorists who have put a lot of effort in finding ways to explain this through the concept of adulthood, individuality, inner unity, self-actualization etc. Nonetheless, each idea or thought presented by the writers have developed through a specific historical incident or moment and cultural aspect. Therefore, the issues in presuming them as universal come are different.

This paper will discuss the development theories proposed by Erikson and Bronfenbrenner which are explained below:

Erikson Theory

In his theory of psychosocial stages of personality development, Erikson considered the integration of the personality as the ultimate stage of ...