Capturing the centrality of age and life-course stage in the provision of unpaid care

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myra Hamilton ◽  
Bettina Cass
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Conceptual Understanding ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Demographic Differences ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Care Theory ◽  
Unpaid Care ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
The Life Course

The purpose of this article is to construct a new theoretical framework of care-giving that places age, and the life-course stage of carers, at the centre of conceptual understanding and analysis. Although care theory is heavily gendered, it pays far less attention to age differences among the diverse participants in care-giving. This article argues that the age and life-course stage of carers is central to differential pathways into care-giving, experiences of care-giving, and effects of care-giving in the present and future. To support this, the article draws on qualitative data from a study on the circumstances and experiences of Australian children and young people who provide care for family members with disability or chronic illness. Claiming that theories of care are incomplete if age differences, intersecting with gender and other socio-demographic differences, are not treated as central to the conceptualization, the article outlines a framework for an age-sensitive theory of care-giving.

Go to More Parties? Social Occasions as Home to Unexpected Turning Points in Life Trajectories

2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Goffman
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional Energy ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Time Out ◽  
Collective Effervescence ◽  
The Life Course

Reviving classical attention to gathering times as sites of transformation and building on more recent microsociological work, this paper uses qualitative data to show how social occasions open up unexpected bursts of change in the lives of those attending. They do this by pulling people into a special realm apart from normal life, generating collective effervescence and emotional energy, bringing usually disparate people together, forcing public rankings, and requiring complex choreography, all of which combine to make occasions sites of inspiration and connection as well as sites of offense and violation. Rather than a time out from “real” life, social occasions hold an outsized potential to unexpectedly shift the course that real life takes. Implications for microsociology, social inequality, and the life course are considered.

scholarly journals Charting the life course: Age differences and validity of beliefs about lifespan development.

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Riediger ◽  
Manuel C. Voelkle ◽  
Sabine Schaefer ◽  
Ulman Lindenberger
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Lifespan Development ◽  
The Life Course

scholarly journals Taking a life Course Perspective on Social Assistance use in Canada: A different approach

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Cooke ◽  
Amber Gazso
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Income Dynamics ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Parcours De Vie ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract In this paper we argue that a life course perspective on social assistance use in Canada can offer a more nuanced theoretical understanding of both individuals’ experiences and the importance of social structure, than more traditional sociological or economic approaches to welfare use. We also propose that examining social assistance use in this way does not require longitudinal quantitative or qualitative data, as is sometimes suggested, but that cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative data can be interpreted through a life course lens. We demonstrate this by examining the covariates of social assistance receipt using cross-sectional quantitative data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, and by analysing qualitative interviews with recipients about the process of beginning and barriers to ending benefit receipt. These analyses show not only how the cross-sectional data can easily be considered from the perspective of the life course, but also how this perspective provides a more satisfactory understanding of how social assistance polices can be thought of as both providing resources that are important in individual decision-making and as shaping lives. Résumé d’article Dans cet article, nous montrerons que le paradigme du parcours de vie sur le bien être social au Canada peut offrir une compréhension théorique plus nuancée des expériences des individus avec ces programmes qu’une approche traditionnelle sociologique et économique face à l’usage du bien être social, tout en reliant cet usage à de plus larges structures sociales. Nous proposons aussi qu’examiner l’assistance sociale de cette façon ne requiert pas de données longitudinales quantitatives ou qualitatives, tel qu’il l’est parfois suggéré, mais que des données quantitatives et qualitatives qui se croisent peuvent être interprétées à travers la loupe de la durée d’une vie. Nous démontrons ceci en examinant les covariantes de la réception à l’assistance sociale, covariantes agencées en se servant des données quantitatives sectionnelles tirées du Enquête sur la dynamique du travail et du revenu (EDTR) et en analysant les interviews qualitatives des bénéficiaires à propos de leurs démarches initiales et leurs obstacles jusqu’à la réception finale de leurs bénéfices. Ces analyses montrent non seulement que des données sectionnelles qui se croisent peuvent être facilement considérées du point de vue de la perspective du cours d’une vie, mais aussi comment cette perspective fournit une compréhension plus satisfaisante de la façon dont on peut voir la double importance des politiques qui offrent des ressources aux individus et qui changent leur vie.

Talking Like Children

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Berman
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Language Socialization ◽  
Central Mechanism ◽  
Marshall Islands ◽  
Cultural Reproduction ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
The Life Course

Presented as a series of captivating stories from a village in Oceania, Talking Like Children is an intimate analysis of interaction that shows how age comes to be. Children in the Marshall Islands do many things that adults do not: they walk around half naked, display food in public, and explicitly refuse to give. Although many see these behaviors as natural results of children’s immaturity, the author shows that children are socialized to be different from adults—to be rude and immature. She analyzes a variety of interactions all broadly based around exchange: adoption negotiations, efforts to ask for or avoid giving food, debates about supposed child abuse. In these dramas both large and small, age differences emerge through the decisions people make, the emotions they feel, and the asymmetries they produce. Age and the life course often appear less interesting, less important, or more biologically determined than gender, race, or class. But Berman shows that, like gender and race, age differences are culturally produced and socially influential. Age differences give Marshallese children and adults “aged agency,” or the ability to manipulate social life in distinct but complementary ways. These differences are also a central mechanism of language socialization. Talking Like Children reestablishes age as a foundational concern of anthropological and linguistic research and as a variable that transforms our views of socialization, cultural reproduction, agency, giving, and culture.

scholarly journals Self-Esteem Development Across the Lifespan

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 158-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Robins ◽  
Kali H. Trzesniewski
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Rank Order ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Mediating Mechanisms ◽  
Type Of Stability ◽  
The Life Course

After decades of debate, a consensus is emerging about the way self-esteem develops across the lifespan. On average, self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, drops during adolescence (particularly for girls), rises gradually throughout adulthood, and then declines sharply in old age. Despite these general age differences, individuals tend to maintain their ordering relative to one another: Individuals who have relatively high self-esteem at one point in time tend to have relatively high self-esteem years later. This type of stability (i.e., rank-order stability) is somewhat lower during childhood and old age than during adulthood, but the overall level of stability is comparable to that found for other personality characteristics. Directions for further research include (a) replication of the basic trajectory using more sophisticated longitudinal designs, (b) identification of the mediating mechanisms underlying self-esteem change, (c) the development of an integrative theoretical model of the life-course trajectory of self-esteem.

Invention and the Life Course: Age Differences in Patenting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Kaltenberg ◽  
Adam B. Jaffe ◽  
Margie Lachman
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
The Life Course

What Is Age and Where Does It Come From?

2019 ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Elise Berman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Language Socialization ◽  
Continuous Production ◽  
New Model ◽  
Cohort Differences ◽  
Novices And Experts ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Theoretical Developments

This chapter reviews the research on age and the life course. It argues that age differences are cultural and produced through interaction. The chapter defines “age” and “immaturity” and then discusses how ideologies of age and experiences of the life course differ across cultures and contexts. It compares three different types of life course variation: cohort differences, differences between children in different contexts (including gender differences), and age differences. Investigating age differences requires building upon theoretical developments in the study of gender and race to explicitly focus on how age itself is socialized. The chapter argues for a new view of language socialization not as an interaction between novices and experts but as the constant and continuous production of differences, often age differences. This new model provides insight not only into socialization but also into cultural and linguistic practices more broadly.

scholarly journals ‘It’s just limboland’: Parental dementia and young people’s life courses

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 242-259
Author(s):  
Melanie Hall ◽  
Pat Sikes
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Time Perspectives ◽  
Life Planning ◽  
Young Onset Dementia ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
The Impact

Drawing on narrative interviews from a study exploring the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with young onset dementia, this article explores the ways in which the condition impacted their life courses. Dementia is degenerative, terminal and has an unpredictable timeframe that affected young people’s time perspectives, life planning and the ways they conceptualized their lives. This article contributes to the literature around young people’s life courses by illustrating how the concept of liminality can inform understandings of the impact of parental illness on the life course. Using a constructionist perspective we explore the impact of parental dementia on life planning in relation to education/career, mobilities and personal lives. For some, the future was a source of deep anxiety, whilst others were preoccupied with the present and unable to contemplate life beyond their parents’ illness. On the whole, participants felt their lives were in ‘limbo’ until their parents’ death. The data indicate that nuanced approaches towards the life course are required in order to better understand ‘being in limbo’ and to inform support.

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