Life Course Flashcards
Life cycle
Implies predictable and universal set of stages through which one will pass, which is not the case.
Life course
Broader and more dynamic than life cycle. Individual development within social context.
Child birth
Ending of pregnancy where one or more babies leaves the uterus by passing through vagina or c-section
Medicalization
Process where a situation formerly considered natural is subsumed into the biomedical sphere
Adolescence
Transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood
Adulthood
Characterized a the entry into adulthood now takes longer and happens in more individualized ways
Family and individual well being
Family circumstances play a key role in individual biological development
Social dependency in older age
Pension, long term care, Alzheimer’s, burden, retirement
The third age
Lifestyle choices for post-retirement, post-retirement but before illness and incapacity, a “golden autumn” of consumption and lifestyle opportunities
Privatization if death
Death has become much less of a shared community experience and more one personal and private grief
Process contributing to privatization of death
Decline public exposure to death/dying, decline in the culture of public mourning, medicalization of death and dying.
Learning about death in films
Often in North America first exposure to death is from a Disney film
Grief
Inward feelings and thoughts about loss of a loved one, internal process, universal
Mourning
Behaviours related to grief, external expression of grief, differs across cultures
How to mourn
Time, talk, take care of yourself, hobbies, support groups
Conventions of grief
Explanations of death, eulogies, funerals, continued existence after death (heaven, ghosts)
Religious perspectives
Monotheistic religions, ancestor worship, truth-telling to patients
