How does the life span perspective differ from the traditional focus of developmental study?

3.1 Life span perspective

The life span perspective conceptualizes human behavior as influenced by developmental processes across biological, historical, sociocultural, and psychological factors from conception to death (Lerner, 2002). It extended the theoretical focus of historically traditional developmental psychology with a focus on intra-individual processes for incorporating sociocultural influences. This allows researchers to evaluate the impact of social experiences on psychosocial processes and behavioral outcomes for children of color. Some of the most prolific work that exemplifies this perspective focuses on the role of racial socialization and intergenerational communication on children's racial attitudes and preferences. Socialization opportunities exist in contexts where children have experiences and receive feedback about the explicit and implicit meanings regarding behavior and expectations. For illustrative purposes, highlighted are studies that have addressed parental socialization practices on children's racial identity.

Parental teaching about racial history and strategies for addressing discrimination influences children's racial attitudes and preferences (Hill, 2006). Social scientists have become increasingly interested in the nature of communications from parents to children regarding ethnicity and race and the role these communications play in shaping or modifying racial identity attitudes. Race-related messages (racial socialization) contribute significantly to children's identity development and well-being. Stevenson (1994) posited that racial socialization was necessary to ameliorate the impact of racial hostilities and for African American children to achieve and develop positive self-images. Studies have frequently examined these processes through two broad dimensions that represent messages about cultural socialization and preparation for bias.

Research suggests that Black parents embrace both American and African-based values and endeavor to instill both value systems in their children. Given the historical factors explored under a life span perspective, adults' values and history of sociocultural experiences with discrimination affect parental socialization strategies (e.g., see Hughes & Johnson, 2001). Black parents value honesty, academic success, and family responsibility, and they teach these values to their children. They are also likely to embrace culturally distinct values, which include kin networks, respect for the elderly, and mutual cooperation and sharing (Hill, 2001; Murry et al., 2005). Parents emphasize humanistic values over more ethnic-specific parenting practices and values (Marshall, 1995). African American parents also wish to raise children with values and expectations common for all. They come to understand that although they may raise their children to treat others with respect—given the myriad contexts navigated—they and their children will not always encounter respect from others. Nonetheless, racial and ethnic minority parents report more frequent cultural socialization than preparation for bias for their school-age children (Hughes, 2003). Given the intersectional impact of minority status and social class bias confronted, one wonders if the orientation for more general cultural socialization alone is enough for combating the actual synergistic and adverse impact of bias. Contextual experiences of less than ideal “individual-context fit” may result in positive or negative adaptive processes.

Salient is that a life span perspective provides a framework for exploring multidimensional processes that impact individual developmental outcomes. The focus emphasizes the fluidity of development over time and affords opportunities for considering the impact of contextual influences on the development of children of color.

Contexts for the Study of Religion, Spirituality, and Aging

The life span perspective embraced by most people who study aging processes and older adults emphasizes the ecology of development. This means that gerontologists pay close attention to contextual issues that affect the people they study, the way they formulate their research questions, the methods they employ to gather data, and the conclusions they reach from analyzing the results of the research. The ages of research participants, the shaping events of cohorts’ development, and the historical period in which the research is conducted influence the information added to the knowledge stream in gerontology. This is no less true for the study of religion and spirituality than for other topics addressed in this encyclopedia. Therefore, it is important to examine some of the contextual issues that have affected the study of religion and spirituality since the early 1990s. These contexts affect both researchers and the persons who participate in their research.

Some gerontologists, particularly those who conduct qualitative research from a feminist, postmodern perspective (a good example is the work of Janet Ramsey and Rosemary Blieszner), believe it is important to be aware of how the personal perspectives of researchers affect the research enterprise. As author of this article, as well as the previous one, I come to the study of religion and spirituality from the discipline of psychology, particularly the psychology of religion. Psychologists have studied religion for over a century, although their work has not received wide recognition in the field. Recently, however, this has begun to change, and many of the contextual forces driving increased interest in religion and spirituality among gerontologists are also affecting psychologists. Research on religion and spirituality has become more scientifically rigorous and thus more acceptable in mainstream scholarly journals. The emerging area of ‘positive psychology,’ which has received widespread attention in the discipline, has created a supportive climate for research on religion and spirituality by emphasizing human strengths, self-transcendence, forgiveness, awe, wonder, gratitude, and hope.

Another influence on the topics reviewed here comes from the fact that my work has been conducted in an environment in which religion, spirituality, and aging are studied primarily from Christian and Jewish perspectives. Although there are some excellent publications on Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim older persons and the ways their religious beliefs affect various outcomes such as satisfaction with life, the majority of current research publications focuses on participants from either Christian or Jewish denominations, or participants who identify with no religious groups. With the rapid increase in ethnic and religious diversity in the United States, as well as the growth of research on aging in other parts of the world, this situation will undoubtedly soon change, and gerontologists who study religion and spirituality will need to include other world religions in their studies.

Several streams of religious thought and action have converged in the early period of the twenty-first century and have shaped the general intellectual climate, sometimes referred to as the Zeitgeist. These include worldwide attention to terrorist groups that claim their actions spring from devotion to religion. Since September 11, 2001, the word ‘terrorist’ has often been connected with two other words: ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Muslim.’ This has resulted in stereotypes that foster prejudice about all persons who might be called fundamentalists or who embrace the Abrahamic faith tradition of Islam. Another influence on the public's thinking about religion, particularly in the United States, comes from tensions between religion and science, and between religion and politics. This has prompted considerable discussion in academic circles of a wide variety of issues related to how religious faith affects individuals and social groups. However, gaps still exist in scholars’ knowledge of religious diversity – gaps sometimes reinforced by social attitudes. For example, the noisy debate about the relation between religion and politics in the United States has solidified stereotypes of evangelicalism and fundamentalism by connecting them with the political category of the ‘religious right.’ Like all stereotypes, these fail to recognize the diversity and complexity of evangelical and fundamentalist forms of Christianity.

Some of the increased attention to religious topics has resulted from observations of the rapid growth of certain religious groups. Evangelical Christian congregations (often not denominationally affiliated), along with Roman Catholic parishes serving racial and ethnic minority populations, are expanding rapidly, while traditional, ‘mainline,’ White Protestant congregations are shrinking. Faith communities that are growing often emphasize programs designed to attract families and meet the spiritual needs of children and young adults. In contrast, many religious older people have roots in congregations that are not experiencing this kind of growth. The emphasis on promoting congregational growth by serving younger people can lead to the conclusion that faith communities with high median ages (e.g., those serving mainline Protestants or Jews) are ‘dying’ and thus a poor ‘investment’ of religious groups’ resources. In other words, ageism can be just as prevalent in religious organizations as in secular settings.

With some exceptions, Christian and Jewish seminaries that educate the next generation of congregational leaders have tended to focus on ways to nurture young families rather than on ministry with aging persons. This situation may be slowly changing, however. With greater recognition of aging demographics, some recent publications have received attention because of their thoughtful treatment of theological and pastoral care issues related to older persons. For example, Stanley Hauerwas – a theologian once described as ‘America's leading theologian’ by a popular news magazine – has collaborated with several colleagues to edit a book that addresses the theological and ethical challenges to aging Christians in the twenty-first century. Some examples are the tension between secular and religious views of sources of late-life well-being, moral obligations of aging persons, conflicts between capitalist and religious assumptions about dying and death, intergenerational continuity in religious communities, memorial and funeral practices, Christian meanings of suffering, and responses to calls for physician-assisted suicide. A book on Jewish pastoral care edited by Rabbi Dayle Friedman, a leader in seminary training for rabbis working with elders, contains many chapters relevant to work with older persons, including those with dementia. Authors of these chapters wrestle with the nature of healing relationships, pastoral responses to suffering, Jewish understandings of prayer and presence, and Jewish pastoral care for people who are very ill, dying, or grieving losses.

Prompted in part by greater awareness of the number of people with dementing diseases and the need to provide holistic care that values the personhood of all who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, practitioners and researchers are paying attention to their spiritual needs and potential for spiritual growth. Evidence of this can be seen in the second volume of Aging, Spirituality, and Religion: A Handbook, which has four chapters entirely devoted to dementia; the first volume had none. The journal Dementia devoted an entire issue in 2003 to the subject of spirituality and dementia. Topics covered included effects of personal spirituality on the quality of life of persons in early-stage dementia, experiences of Christian, Jewish, and non-religious spousal caregivers, and approaches to spiritual care of persons with dementia. In addition, Elizabeth MacKinlay, Director of the Centre for Ageing and Pastoral Studies in Australia, has edited several books that address dementia.

MacKinlay's work highlights numerous creative ways of applying the scholarship and research of theologians, ethicists, and social scientists to the design of supportive interactions with older adults. Long interested in late-life depression and the possibility that hope can arise from despair, MacKinlay argues that some persons can be helped by being encouraged to explore their need for ultimate meaning in life. Pastoral caregivers and other practitioners attuned to spiritual needs can assist people in finding ways to experience transcendence of disability and loss. Out of this kind of nurturing relationship, older persons may discover a renewed sense of intimacy with God and other persons. In addition, MacKinlay's research has documented how spiritual reminiscence in small groups can help even those with dementia to discover a deeper sense of life meaning.

Another example of the convergence of research and practice comes from work on caregiving. This has been a topic of great interest to gerontologists for many years and has been the object of considerable research. A number of studies have identified religion as an important variable that buffers caregiver stress, particularly among African Americans who perceive greater rewards from caregiving, in all likelihood because of the comfort they experience in religious practices, including prayer. This research supports the important work of faith communities in providing various forms of help to caregivers such as respite care, support groups, and education about caregiving and the needs of frail elders.

Conducting research on issues related to religion and spirituality has always been challenging because of the complex, multidimensional nature of the subject. The current intellectual climate has added to the challenge, while paradoxically also making it possible for more of this work to be done with scientifically sound methods. For example, having adequate funding and institutional support for their work has meant that researchers can conduct large, national probability studies of diverse samples of older persons. In the United States, numerous private foundations as well as federal agencies like the National Institute on Aging have supported this work, and scholarly journals now publish articles on religion that never would have appeared 20 years ago. On the other hand, some researchers worry that some funding sources may promote religious or political agendas that are incompatible with the pursuit of science. Nevertheless, there have been many important developments in the study of religion, spirituality, and aging in the last decade.

1 On the Complexities of Dependency and Autonomy in Adult Life

From a life-span perspective, childhood and adolescence are periods when striving toward autonomy and reducing dependency are among the most important developmental tasks (Havighurst 1972). By young adulthood, or at the very latest by middle adulthood, one is normally expected to have accomplished this successfully. Conversely, old age may be characterized, at least to some extent, as a life period that poses the risk of becoming dependent or losing one's autonomy. However, the general assumption that autonomy gradually replaces dependency and then dependency gradually replaces autonomy over the life course is clearly simplistic.

Cultural relativity becomes particularly obvious in the autonomy–dependency dynamics across the life span. For example, while the developmental goal of maintaining autonomy in a wide variety of life domains over the life span is one of the highest values in most Western cultures, one of the most ‘normal’ elements of many developing countries' cultures is reliance on children in the later phases of life. Second, although autonomy and dependency play their roles as individual attributes, both should be regarded predominantly as contextual constructs depending strongly on situational options and constraints. For example, the dependent self-care behavior of an 85-year-old man or woman may not reflect physical or mental frailty at all, but may primarily result from the overprotective behavior of family members and professionals (Baltes 1996). Third, autonomy and dependency should both be regarded as multidimensional, that is, gain in autonomy in one life domain does not automatically lead to reduced dependency in other life domains and vice versa. For example, being able to meet the everyday challenges of life in an independent manner does not necessarily prevent a younger individual from relying strongly on parents or significant others when making crucial life decisions (such as selecting a partner). Fourth, and finally, autonomy and dependency have strong value connotations which shape action. In Western cultures, independent behaviors are generally regarded as positive and highly adaptive, worth supporting by all means, whereas dependency has negative value connotations and should be avoided at all costs. Such global value attributions can be questioned in terms of life complexity and richness. For example, emotional dependency upon another person lies at the heart of mature intimate relationships. Conversely, striving for autonomy may become detrimental when confronted with severe chronic illness, which necessitates help, support, and the delegation of control to the external environment. These differentiations have to be kept in mind as we examine autonomy and dependency in middle and old age more closely.

Introduction

From a life-span perspective, aging comprises the late component of a genetically determined program of development, maturation, and senescence, interacting with a complex array of environmental factors. Commonly viewed as a process of deterioration, growing old is associated with sharply increased risk for many diseases and disabilities that compromise independent living, placing a heavy burden on families, caregivers, and society. Nonetheless, a majority of people successfully accommodate certain physical signs of aging, and in fortunate cases, old age can represent a rewarding period of new intellectual engagement, novel pursuits, and achievement. Such positive outcomes become increasingly unlikely in the face of failing cognitive function, and partly for this reason, disorders that lead to diminished mental capacity are among the most feared consequences of aging. The leading cause of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, ultimately results in a dense amnesia, gradually robbing patients of the lifetime of memories that define their personal history and identity. Even in the absence of disease, many people experience memory impairment that, although relatively mild, can cause considerable anxiety and compromise the quality of life. As the populations of industrialized countries rapidly age (Figure 1), we face a growing challenge of identifying ways to promote healthy cognitive aging and to maximize optimal functioning.

Research has illuminated many of the key features of age-related cognitive decline in humans; enabled by advances in in vivo brain imaging, it has begun to reveal how the neural systems organization of memory is altered. Studies of cognitive aging in humans are complicated by a variety of methodological factors, however, and they are limited by the range of applicable experimental approaches. A vexing issue is that individuals in preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders affecting cognition are difficult to identify with confidence. As a consequence, it is often unclear to what degree observed impairment is attributable to disease rather than normal nonpathological aging. Relating these deficits to underlying biological causes is also problematic, and although noninvasive imaging techniques continue to yield remarkable discoveries, defining the neurobiological mechanisms of cognitive aging requires experimental approaches not suitable for investigation in humans. Research in animal models has played a critical role in efforts to address these issues.

Developmental Changes During Adolescence

From a life-span perspective, the adolescent and young adult years are times in life for exploring one's identity and charting a path for the future. This exploration entails seeking purpose, deciding on beliefs and commitments, and linking to others (in organizations, religious traditions, or social causes) who share such commitments. Developing a world view and an ideology enables youth to organize and manage the vast array of choices the world presents, consider where they fit, and plan a direction for their future.

However, there are major differences in the ways that an early or a late adolescent would conceive of many political issues. These differences are due to the growth in societal cognition that occurs during the adolescent years and to older adolescents' greater exposure to politically relevant topics and divergent points of view. Late adolescents are more capable than early adolescents of understanding abstract concepts such as democracy and of appreciating the roles and interrelationships of various institutions and arms of government within their own nation and internationally. With respect to cognitive capacities, older adolescents are better able to see an issue from different perspectives and to integrate different points of view as they form opinions.

Late adolescents can appreciate the implications of their own (as well as states' or corporations') actions on abstract ‘others’ and thus can imagine and take a position on, for example, the labor and environmental practices of multinational corporations. They also have a greater awareness of how individual actions can have an impact on the public. Thus, compared to early adolescents, they are more capable of understanding the lifetime impact of passive smoking on a nonsmoking partner or of hydrocarbons on the ozone layer. They are also better equipped to understand the rationale for laws that may constrain individual behavior in the interests of protecting the public welfare.

This does not mean that late adolescents are less committed to the rights of individuals. In fact, the conception and defense of individual rights changes between early and late adolescence. Whereas early adolescents endorse individual rights to protection and the fulfillment of needs, with age, young people increasingly endorse the individual's right to self-determination, an independent voice, and privacy. Between early and late adolescence, youth are increasingly likely to defend an individual's right to make his/her own decisions about health and risk. Compared to early adolescents and to their own parents, late adolescents are more committed to civil liberties and are more tolerant of points of view that differ from their own. At the same time, this ardent commitment is tempered in late adolescence with a defense of the government's right to constrain individual behaviors in the interests of public health.

Late adolescents and young adults appreciate principled reasoning and can separate another person's political views from their friendship with that individual. They should, therefore, be able to passionately debate political issues without personalizing the differences. As is true for adolescents and adults of all ages, however, this separation takes practice and is most easily done when modeled by civic leaders.

Summary

We have applied a life-span perspective to understanding the nature of the major psychological disorders in later life, focusing on differentiation by when in the life course symptoms are first expressed and on summarizing research evidence on risk and protective factors as these evolve over the life course. Most existing data on aging and psychopathology do not, however, take a life course perspective but instead describe prevalence data and associated symptoms without the backdrop of the individual’s past and present life experiences. Even studies that take into account psychiatric history do not often examine this history in the context of the rest of the individual’s personality, self-concept, or social context.

To gain a fuller appreciation of the strengths and the vulnerabilities of older adults being evaluated for psychological disorders, psychologists working with these populations, both as researchers and as clinicians, should instead place the individual against a chronological backdrop that regards the expression of symptoms as a reflection of the multiple intersecting factors impinging on the individual at any one point in time that may have changed from the past and may change in the future. Rarely do we have the luxury, in clinical settings, of longitudinal data against which to evaluate the older adult. Thus, adequate assessment should include a thorough history-taking, the use of informants, and the use of multiple data sources from a variety of disciplines. Research on late-life psychopathology could be greatly strengthened by assessment of early life risk and protective factors, recognizing that prospective studies are not necessarily sufficient to capture the lifelong advantages or disadvantages individuals bring to old age. These advantages and disadvantages, which at the individual level are integral to the individual’s identity, at the group level may provide us with tools that can optimize both functional and psychological well-being.

The epidemiological data surveyed in this chapter suggest that proportionally fewer older adults suffer from psychopathology than younger adults. This lower prevalence is no doubt at least partially explained by differential mortality, but also suggests that older adults may bring coping strategies to the task of coping with mental illness that younger people have not yet developed. Understanding, and capitalizing on, such strategies will allow us to think about treatment of disorders in late life not only in terms of remission of symptoms, but also in terms of maximizing quality of life. The majority of older adults maintain high levels of subjective well-being, even in the face of serious health problems and physical limitations. Those who suffer symptoms of mental illness should also be evaluated with the goal of restoring or optimizing well-being and independence.

Theoretical Perspectives on Emotion in Older Adults

Research that derives from an explicit life span perspective of development and focuses on emotions is still relatively rare. One important exception to this general conclusion is the work on socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) by Carstensen and colleagues, which postulates that in late life, social interaction is increasingly more likely to be motivated by attempts to regulate emotion and increasingly less likely to be motivated by information-seeking goals. This in turn affects the type of social partners chosen by older people as well as the types of social interaction in which they engage. A wide array of evidence is available to support this proposition, including the fact that as social contacts decline with age, older persons are more likely to prefer familiar over unfamiliar social partners and are more likely to think about social partners in affective terms.

Another approach to considering the role of emotions in the context of development throughout the life course is articulated by Schulz and Heckhausen in their life span theory of control. They posit a motivation for primary control (i.e., having impact on the external world) as a major driving force in both survival and development. In this model, emotions serve as the fuel of a regulatory system whose major goal is to maximize the primary control potential of the organism. Both positive and negative affect generated through interactions with the environment have the potential of energizing the organism toward further primary control striving. Secondary control processes (i.e., having impact on the internal cognitive world of the individual) serve the function of protecting and enhancing primary control and are closely linked to emotions. An emotional response can instigate a secondary control process, which in turn promotes the motivational resources needed for primary control striving. Thus, the emotions system serves as a signal and as a motivational resource in shaping human behavior. This view is fundamentally different from SST in that it claims that emotions cannot be ends in themselves, although they may serve as proximal goals in specific situations. Another way of putting this is that maximizing primary control, rather than feeling good, is a major goal of human development. This view of the experience of emotions emphasizes their role as facilitators or mediators of primary control and is consistent with Nico Frijda's evolutionary perspective reflected in his statement that “the human mind (is not) made for happiness but instantiating the blind biological laws of survival” (1998: 354).

PBS Criterion II: Life Span Perspective

The second critical feature of PBS involves a life span perspective. This feature of PBS is differentiated from applied behavior analysis in that it redefines the maintenance of behaviors and it proposes examining changes in behavior and lifestyle for lengthy periods of time that include decades of change rather than months of success. Within applied behavior analysis, maintenance is measured by behavior change that persists when a treatment procedure is removed or discontinued. Within PBS, the measurement of maintenance is replaced with the examination of how treatment might be further developed or modified to ensure continued success, but treatment is never completely removed. The treatments developed within PBS are considered to be pliable in that they might never be removed but rather modified to meet the changing lifestyles of those involved with the treatment.

Peers

In contrast to kinship or romantic partners, the definition of peers as a relationship category is somewhat unclear. This may be due to the fact that peer relationships contain different characteristics and functions across the life span. For example, peer relationships can include peripheral ties to neighbors, classmates, or colleagues, and also very close relationships with friends; each different type of peer relationship fulfills distinct functions of instrumental or emotional support (Kahn & Antonucci, 1982; Trinke & Bartholomew, 1997). In a similar vein, peers may influence the individual at two levels: the group level and the relationship level (Reitz, Zimmermann, Hutteman, Specht, & Neyer, 2014).

Group-level effects describe the influence of one’s whole network of peers on that individual. According to group socialization theory (Harris, 1995), peer effects on personality development can be explained in terms of assimilation and differentiation processes. Assimilation pertains to the adoption of group norms that guide behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, resulting in increased similarity of group members over time. In contrast, differentiation pertains to differences in group status and social comparisons, resulting in increased dissimilarity of group members over time. Both types of group-level effects have mainly been assumed to occur from childhood to young adulthood. With regard to assimilation processes, Kerr, Lambert, Stattin, and Klackenberg-Larsson (1994) found that shy boys but not shy girls became more outgoing from age 6 to 16 years; the authors attributed this change to the specific behavioral norms of boys’ and girls’ respective peer groups. Social inclusion in one’s peer network was also shown to affect the development of self-esteem during adolescence (Hutteman, Nestler, Wagner, Egloff, & Back, 2015). However, clear empirical evidence is lacking with regard to the differentiation processes that explain why personality characteristics differ between individuals from the same peer group. Overall, the data on group-level effects are scarce and largely limited to childhood and adolescence.

Relationship-level effects may explain individual differences in personality development within peer groups. Specific dyadic relationships such as with one’s best friend or roommate have been assumed to be more important from young adulthood on. The social relations model (Kenny & la Voie, 1985) and the personality and social relationships framework (PERSOC; Back et al., 2011) address the influence of relationship-level effects on personality development. Both approaches assume that peer dyad members shape each other’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through repeated interaction patterns. For example, steeper increases in openness and agreeableness, and decreases in conscientiousness were shown for young adults living with roommates as compared to young adults living with their parents (Jonkmann, Thoemmes, Lüdtke, & Trautwein, 2014). In addition, support provided by one’s best friend predicted increases in extraversion from age 17 to 23, whereas higher levels of conflict predicted decreases in extraversion and self-esteem (Sturaro, Denissen, van Aken, & Asendorpf, 2008). With regard to the differentiation between close and peripheral ties, Mund and Neyer (2014) found that less insecurity and higher closeness and conflict with friends predicted decreased neuroticism, whereas more closeness and importance for more peripheral relationships predicted decreased extraversion and conscientiousness from young to middle adulthood. As these examples illustrate, most research on peer influence on personality development has not looked beyond young adulthood, ignoring the role of friends in middle and old age (Wrzus, Zimmermann, Mund, & Neyer, in press). Although it has been established that peer networks decrease in size and importance as family relations become more important in old age (Lang, 2000; Van Tilburg, 1998; Wrzus et al., 2013), the effects of peers on personality development in this phase of life remain unclear.

Life Course

One of the major theoretical breakthroughs in gerontology has been the emergence of the life span perspective. Initially, gerontology coalesced with a focus on old age. Old age and all its diversity cannot be isolated from the rest of adulthood. Consequently, the life course became a major unit in gerontological research. Cross-cultural research challenges the way we have modeled the life course.

A long-standing problem in social anthropology suggested ways in which age can be formalized into an explicit principle of social organization. A number of small-scale societies make relative age a criterion by which the males are organized into age-stratified groups. Cohorts of boys are initiated into an age class. These classes are sometimes called age sets or generation sets and are bounded groups that are opened for recruitment and then closed once they are complete. A more junior set is then opened. All men are members of a set, and sets are ranked in seniority – boys, warriors, householders, elders, and so forth. The specifics of how the age classes are organized are quite variable, but in the formality of age organization such concepts as age grading, age stratification, and age norms were documented in simpler social contexts and sharply defined.

Life courses are seen as role courses ordered by age norms and expectations. Cohorts enter adulthood upon completing a finely age-graded system of formal education. Jobs and marriage signal full adult status. Within families, generations become more distinctive due to lower fertility and childbearing occurring most commonly in the 20s or very early 30s. Within jobs, we find seniority and for some career ladders based on seniority, experience, and greater responsibility. A new stage is entered with retirement and an exit from the labor force. Although individual role courses are variable, life courses are seen as sequenced and staged. The life course is divisible into intervals distinguished by age-sensitive status transitions.

Age class systems and a staged life course appear to be parallels in differing cultural contexts. Beyond defining graded categories, the similarity vanishes. Age classes are political institutions organizing males in a public arena. For the most part, they are most salient in the junior classes; they see diminishing significance for the more senior males. Age classes do not organize all of life and usually only indirectly affect women. The staged life course is a near-universal expectation from youth to old age. This view of the life course is also restricted to industrialized societies, especially to the middle classes of those societies. People in small-scaled societies do not see life as sequenced through life stages. Age-sensitive roles are not clearly demarcated. Formal education is rare and not universal, thus there are no finely age-graded classes. Wage labor is intermittent, and there is no real job market. No one retires from subsistence activities. Fertility is higher, and families are much less differentiated by age, with siblings who may be separated by 20 or more years. Under these circumstances, people have life courses that note youth and old age, but they are more functionally and individually defined. Even in industrialized societies, people who are marginalized in poverty aspire to, but find difficult to attain, a sequenced life course.