Chapter 1: Life Course

Question 1

Life course perspective

Answer 1

Looks at how chronological age, relationships, common life transitions, and social change shape people’s lives from birth to death.

Question 2

Event history

Answer 2

The sequence of events, experiences, and transitions in a person’s life from birth to death.

Question 3

Cohort

Answer 3

Group of persons who were born at the same historical time and who experience particular social changes within a given culture in the same sequence at the same age.

Question 4

Population pyramid

Answer 4

Chart that depicts the proportion of the population in each age group.

Question 5

Sex ratio

Answer 5

Number of makes per day 100 females

Question 6

Transitions

Answer 6

Changes in roles and statuses that represent a distant departure from prior roles and status.

Question 7

Trajectories

Answer 7

Longer view of long-term patterns of stability and change in a person’s life, involving multiple transitions.

Question 8

Life event

Answer 8

A significant occurrence involving a relatively abrupt change that may produce serious and long lasting effects.

Question 9

Turning point

Answer 9

A point in the life course that represents a substantial change or discontinuity in direction.

Question 10

Interplay of human lives and historical time

Answer 10

Individual and family development must be understood through historical context.

Question 11

Timing of lives

Answer 11

Particular roles and behaviors are associated with particular age groups, based on biological age, psychological age, social age, and spiritual age.

Question 12

Linked or interdependent lives

Answer 12

Human lives are interdependent and the family is the primary arena for experiencing and interpreting wider historical, cultural, and social phenomena.

Question 13

Human agency in making choices

Answer 13

The individual life course is constructed by the choices and actions individuals take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances.

Question 14

Diversity in life trajectories

Answer 14

There is much diversity in life course pathways, due to cohort variations, social class, culture, gender, and individual agency.

Question 15

Developmental risk and protection

Answer 15

Experiences with one life transition have an impact on subsequent transitions and events, and may either protect the life course trajectory or out it at risk.

Question 16

Cohort effects

Answer 16

Distinctive formula rice experiment are shared at the same point in the life course and have a lasting impact on a birth cohort.

Question 17

Dimensions of age:

Biological age

Answer 17

Indicates persons level of biological development and physical health as measured by the functions of various organ systems.

Question 18

Dimensions of age:

Psychological age

Answer 18

Behaviorally psychological age refers to the capacities that people have and skills they use to adapt to changing biological and environmental demands. Skills in memory, learning, intelligence, motivation, emotions are involved.

Perceptually psychological age is based on how old people perceive themselves to be.

Question 19

Dimensions of age:

Social age

Answer 19

Refers to age-graded roles and behaviors expected by society. The “age norm” is used to indicate the behaviors that are expected of people of a specific age in a given society at a particular time.

Question 20

Dimensions of age:

Spiritual age

Answer 20

Indicates the current position of a person in the ongoing search for meaning and morally fulfilling relationships.

Question 21

Age structuring

Answer 21

Standardizing of ages at which social rile transitions occur, by developing policies and laws that regulate timing of these transitions (aka drinking age).

Question 22

Social support

Answer 22

Help rendered by others that benefit and independent or collective.

Question 23

Resilience

Answer 23

Ability of some people to date well in the face of risk factors.