6210 Week 10 Assignment Draft

Assignment: Life Span Interview

Ray’s case has provided you with direct observation of a client’s history and life experiences. In the absence of this direct observation, social workers turn to assessment and interview techniques to gather essential facts about a client’s life span. Interviewing is an important social work skill—and one that requires more than simply reading a set of prescribed questions. A social worker must also demonstrate professional communication, both verbally and nonverbally, ask appropriate follow-up questions, and take notes at the same time.

For this Assignment, you practice interviewing an older adult about life events, experiences, and feelings that have shaped them. You then transform your interview notes into a narrative—that is, a life story—of the individual you interviewed. You interweave within this narrative an analysis of the life story by integrating person and the environment concepts and theories drawn from HBSE I and II.

To Prepare:

If you have not already done so, interview an older adult (age 65 or older) about their life story, using the Life Span Interview document in the Learning Resources. Take notes as you conduct the interview.
Review your notes and begin to interpret the older adult’s life story through the lens of human behavior and the social environment.

By 02/04/2022

Submit a 4 to 5-page paper in which you provide a narrative analysis of the Life Span Interview you completed. The paper should:

Provide a chronological history of the individual’s major life experiences.
Identify specific biological, psychological, and sociological influences that shaped the individual’s experience.
Analyze the individual’s experiences by applying theory and concepts learned throughout both HBSE courses.
Be sure to include the ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shaped their experience (e.g., race and ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc.).
Provide your reflection of the experience, both in interviewing the individual and analyzing their narrative.
Explain what you learned and how you will apply this learning to future social work practice.

Required Readings

Hutchison, E. D. (2019). An update on the relevance of the life course perspective for social work. Families in Society, 100(4), 351–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/1044389419873240

Smith-Osborne, A. (2007). Life span and resiliency theory: A critical review. Advances in Social Work, 8(1), 152–168. https://doi.org/10.18060/138

Zacher, H., & Froidevaux, A. (2021). Life stage, lifespan, and life course perspectives on vocational behavior and development: A theoretical framework, review, and research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103476

Document: Life Span Interview (PDF)

Required Media

Meet Ray: Age 69 to 87

Time Estimate: 2 minutes

Transcript – Meet Ray: Age 69 to 87 [PDF]

Walden University, LLC. (2021). Theories of human development [Interactive media]. https://class.waldenu.edu

Follow Rubric

Submit a 3- to 5-page paper in which you provide a narrative analysis of the Life Span Interview you completed. The paper should: Provide a chronological history of the individual’s major life experiences. • Identify specific biological, psychological, and sociological influences that shaped the individual’s experience.

27 (22.5%) – 30 (25%)

Response meets expectations and deepens the explanation of influences by illustrating how the biological, psychological, and sociological domains overlay and impact one another across the life span.

Analyze the individual’s experiences by applying theory and concepts learned throughout both HBSE courses.

27 (22.5%) – 30 (25%)

Response meets expectations and exceeds by synthesizing multiple theories and concepts with specific life stages and events to illuminate the individual’s experience. Four or more scholarly resources are used to support the response.

Competency 2 • Be sure to include the ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shaped their experience (e.g., race and ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc.).

5.4 (4.5%) – 6 (5%)

Response addresses three or more specific ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shaped their experience.

Provide your reflection of the experience, both in interviewing the individual and analyzing their narrative.

16.2 (13.5%) – 18 (15%)

Response meets expectations and deepens reflection through insightful connection to the Learning Resources and application to practice.

Explain what you learned and how you will apply this learning to future social work practice.

16.2 (13.5%) – 18 (15%)

Response meets expectations and exceeds by expanding upon the explanation through details and examples from the Learning Resources, peer-reviewed research, or other relevant sources. Two or more scholarly resources are used to support the response.

Writing

16.2 (13.5%) – 18 (15%)

Paper appropriately paraphrases sources, using one or less quotes. Presents polished APA Style. Citations, reference list, and paper formatting are generally error free (two or fewer).

Tone and presentation of ideas are free from bias and objective, unless otherwise directed in the prompt.

Assignment: Life Span Interview

To Prepare:

· If you have not already done so, interview an older adult (age 65 or older) about their life story, using the Life Span Interview document in the Learning Resources. Take notes as you conduct the interview.

· Review your notes and begin to interpret the older adult’s life story through the lens of human behavior and the social environment.

By 02/04/2022

Submit a 4 to 5-page paper in which you provide a narrative analysis of the Life Span Interview you completed. The paper should:

· Provide a chronological history of the individual’s major life experiences.

· Identify specific biological, psychological, and sociological influences that shaped the individual’s experience.

· Analyze the individual’s experiences by applying theory and concepts learned throughout both HBSE courses.

· Be sure to include the ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shaped their experience (e.g., race and ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc.).

· Provide your reflection of the experience, both in interviewing the individual and analyzing their narrative.

· Explain what you learned and how you will apply this learning to future social work practice.

Required Readings

Hutchison, E. D. (2019). An update on the relevance of the life course perspective for social work. Families in Society, 100(4), 351–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/1044389419873240

Smith-Osborne, A. (2007). Life span and resiliency theory: A critical review. Advances in Social Work, 8(1), 152–168. https://doi.org/10.18060/138

Document: Life Span Interview (PDF)

Required Media

Meet Ray: Age 69 to 87

Time Estimate: 2 minutes

Transcript – Meet Ray: Age 69 to 87 [PDF]

Walden University, LLC. (2021). Theories of human development [Interactive media]. https://class.waldenu.edu

Follow Rubric

Submit a 3- to 5-page paper in which you provide a narrative analysis of the Life Span Interview you completed. The paper should: Provide a chronological history of the individual’s major life experiences. • Identify specific biological, psychological, and sociological influences that shaped the individual’s experience.

27 (22.5%) – 30 (25%)

Response meets expectations and deepens the explanation of influences by illustrating how the biological, psychological, and sociological domains overlay and impact one another across the life span.

Analyze the individual’s experiences by applying theory and concepts learned throughout both HBSE courses.

27 (22.5%) – 30 (25%)

Competency 2 • Be sure to include the ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shaped their experience (e.g., race and ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc.).

5.4 (4.5%) – 6 (5%)

Response addresses three or more specific ways in which power, privilege, and oppression shaped their experience.

Provide your reflection of the experience, both in interviewing the individual and analyzing their narrative.

16.2 (13.5%) – 18 (15%)

Response meets expectations and deepens reflection through insightful connection to the Learning Resources and application to practice.

Explain what you learned and how you will apply this learning to future social work practice.

16.2 (13.5%) – 18 (15%)

Writing

16.2 (13.5%) – 18 (15%)

Paper meets length requirements, meets expectations, is generally error free (two or fewer), and further exceeds by showcasing an exemplary scholarly voice to develop its message or communicate ideas.
Paper appropriately paraphrases sources, using one or less quotes. Presents polished APA Style. Citations, reference list, and paper formatting are generally error free (two or fewer).
Tone and presentation of ideas are free from bias and objective, unless otherwise directed in the prompt.

MeetRay: Age 69 to 87

Meet Ray: Age 69 to 87
Program Transcript

NARRATOR: Ray begins to watch more spiritual programming and reconnects with the

Catholic faith. He joins the local church and encourages Yolanda to attend services as

well. Ray volunteers at the church’s thrift shop and at youth events, establishing

friendships with several older men in the church. Engaging in these activities helps

Ray’s psychological functioning and his acceptance of later life.

In his 70s, Ray starts using a wheelchair for mobility. He also begins to forget things

and even leaves the oven on overnight. Yolanda takes Ray to the Aging Center, which

has sliding fee services for neurology. The neurologist determines that Ray has early-

onset dementia that will get progressively worse.

The diagnosis is a major blow to Ray, who understands what this will mean for the rest

of his life. Ray becomes depressed again. More grandchildren are born, and when Ray

is well, he invents silly games to play with them. During gatherings, Ray sits outside and

watches the children, finding fulfillment and peace in the family he has created.

As Ray enters his 80s, full dementia sets in. Ray also experiences sundown syndrome,

in which he becomes agitated and paranoid every day in the late afternoon. He is cared

for by Yolanda, Peter, and Amy, along with his grandchildren, who have complex

emotions as they watch his deterioration. Ray has a peaceful passing at age 87,

surrounded by his wife and children. At his bedside, Yolanda reminisces, saying, “He

was the love of my life.”

Week 10 Life Span Interview

Below are some questions to start the conversation with your interviewee. Do not

hesitate to add more questions as needed.

You are encouraged to reach out to a senior center, adult living facility, or nursing home

to locate an interviewee, or you may use an older friend or family member. When

interviewing an individual, please consider how to show respect to an individual of this

age within their cultural values.

Demographics

How do you prefer to be addressed?

What is your age?

Where were you born and raised?

How do you identify your ethnicity?

How do you identify your gender?

Childhood and Adolescence

How many siblings do you have?

How would you describe your childhood?

Who were your friends when you were growing up? Did you maintain those

friendships throughout life? Any reason why or why not?

What was your favorite thing to do for fun (movies, beach, etc.) growing up? In

your young/middle adult years?

Where did you go to school? What was school like for you as a child? What were

your best and worst subjects?

At what age did you leave home?

Young and Middle Adulthood

Did you marry? If so, at what age? If you have children, how many?

Were you employed? If so, where?

Where did you live?

Were you involved in the military in your young or middle adulthood? If so, how

did it mold you as a person?

Later Adulthood

Have you retired? If so, from where? How would you rate your retirement

experience? (Did you return to work?)

Have you experienced any financial limitations in later adulthood?

Do you have any health issues? If so, what are they? Do these health issues

place limits on your functioning?

Has religion/spirituality been a part of your life? If so, how has your religious or

spiritual development changed in later adulthood?

What has been your experience with aging (physically, psychologically, socially,

environmentally)?

Do you have any challenges accessing healthcare?

How would you describe your social life, friendships, and social activities?

How do you see yourself today? (e.g., as an elder, senior, older adult?)

Have you had any experiences with services not being available to you as an

elder/senior/older adult?

Have you experienced age-related discrimination? Other types of discrimination?

Looking Back

What has been the happiest moment

of your life?

Who is the person who has influenced your life the most?

Have you lost a loved one? If so, how has that loss affected your life?

What world events have had the most impact on you?

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned over the course

of your life?

As you look back over your life, do you see any “turning points”; that is, a key

event or experience that changed the course of your life or set you on a different

track?

What are you most proud of?

How would you like to be remembered?

Life Span and Resiliency Theory: A Critical Review

Alexa Smith-Osborne

Abstract: Theories of life span development describe human growth and change
over the life cycle (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2006). Major types of develop-
mental theories include biological, psychodynamic, behavioral, and social learn-
ing, cognitive, moral, and spiritual, and those influenced by systems, empower-
ment, and conflict theory. Life span development theories commonly focus on onto-
genesis and sequential mastery of skills, tasks, and abilities. Social work scholars
have pointed out that a limitation of life span and other developmental theory is
lack of attention to resilience (Greene, 2007; Robbins et al., 1998).

The concept of resilience was developed to “describe relative resistance to psy-
chosocial risk experiences” (Rutter, 1999b, p. 119). Longitudinal studies focused on
typical and atypical child development informed theory formulation in develop-
mental psychopathology (Garmezy & Rutter, 1983; Luthar, Cichetti, & Becker, 2000)
and in an evolving resilience model (Richardson, 2002; Werner & Smith, 1992).
Research on resilience has found a positive relationship between a number of indi-
vidual traits and contextual variables and resistance to a variety of risk factors
among children and adolescents. More recently, resilience research has examined
the operation of these same factors in the young adult, middle-age, and elder life
stages.

This article examines the historical and conceptual progression of the two devel-
opmental theories—life span and resiliency—and discusses their application to
social work practice and education in human behavior in the social environment.

Keywords: Life span, resiliency theory, life cycle, critique

T
heories of life span development describe human growth and change over
the life cycle (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2006). Major types of develop-
mental theories include biological, psychodynamic, behavioral and social

learning, cognitive, moral and spiritual, and those influenced by systems,
empowerment, and conflict theory. Life span development theories commonly
focus on ontogenesis and the sequential mastery of skills, tasks, and abilities.

152

Alexa Smith-Osborne, Ph.D. is assistant professor at The University of Texas at Arlington School of Social
Work, Arlington, TX 76019.

The major theories address the entire life cycle, from prenatal or birth to death,
but they often focus in-depth on particular age periods, referred to as life stages.
Some theorists within this field have focused more exclusively on a single life
stage (Vaillant, 1993) or on a macro-level view of developmental traits that char-
acterize an age cohort with defined ranges of birth dates or historical/cultural
periods of primary influence on development (Strauss & Howe, 1991). For pur-
poses of this paper, only a segment of life span theory can be addressed.
Therefore, this paper focuses on personality and psychosocial theories, which
form the historical foundation for much of the other life span theories.

Resiliency theory is an emerging theoretical perspective that has been devel-
oped within developmental psychopathology and ecosystems perspectives and is
influenced by stress and coping theories. Although this theory has not been
explicitly developed as an outgrowth of life span theory, it is developmental in
focus, and theory-driven research typically examines a specific chronological life
stage as a starting point. This theoretical framework addresses health develop-
ment of at-risk populations, and overcoming stress and adversity to achieve func-
tional outcomes either during a life stage, a specific trajectory (e.g., educational
or deviancy), or throughout the life span. The initial focus of theory development
has been on childhood and adolescence and associations of traits and events at
these life stages with outcomes later in life. Some recent research in this field has
applied resiliency constructs to adults at risk (Daining, 2005; Smith, 2003; Smith-
Osborne, 2006).

Historical Context

The notion that life can be understood as a series of significant and sequential
stages can be traced to the earliest human civilizations and has appeared consis-
tently in literary, religious, and philosophical writings throughout history
(Erikson, 1968; Robbins et al., 1998). The scientific approach to human develop-
ment throughout the life cycle was stimulated by the emergence of evolutionary
theory at the turn of the century (Darwin, 1872), which led to the development of
biologically focused maturational and psychosexual perspectives, such as those
of G. Stanley Hall in 1904, Sigmund Freud in 1905, and Arnold Gesell in 1925.
These seminal theories challenged the Victorian (and earlier) conception of chil-
dren as little adults, and childhood as a time of relative stability, while the chil-
dren were simply waiting to grow physically (Colby, 1970; Karl, 1964).

These theories also established the conceptualization of human development as
occurring in a series of essentially stable stages, with periods of instability during
transitions between stages and the mastery of stage-specific skills or conflicts as
the foundation for progress to the next stage (Hoffman, Paris, Hall, & Schell, 1988).

Freudian theory came to dominate much of human development theory and
clinical practice in the early 20th century, with several of Freud’s students, notably
Jung and Erikson, expanding on his concepts on the basis of their own clinical
and cross-cultural experiences. These amplifications of Freudian theory occurred
against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, the Holocaust, and World War II. The
originator of what is now called the life span approach to human psychological
development, Erik Erikson, had been a student of Freud’s and trained as a psy-

153Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

choanalyst in Germany. Erickson fled Nazi Germany in 1939 to immigrate to
America, where he expanded Freud’s stages to apply to the entire life span,
emphasizing psychosocial, rather than biological drive theory.

Resiliency theory, in contrast, originated on the basis of prospective longitudinal
research on cohorts of children at risk (Garmezy, 1993; Rutter, Quinton, & Hill,
1990; Werner & Smith, 1982, 1992), rather than on the basis of individual clini-
cians’ observations and case studies. Such studies were informed by prevention
science (Greene, 2007) and the application of the epidemiological concepts of
immunity and resistance to disease to human development and psychopatholo-
gy (Thoits, 1983). In particular, Werner and Smith’s longitudinal study of 698
infants, many of Hawaiian and Asian descent, provided a major empirical basis
for the inception of resiliency constructs and hypotheses for further testing, as
did Rutter’s work with early onset mental disorders and with institutionalized
Romanian children (e.g., Rutter, 1983; Rutter et al., 1990). Resiliency theory’s salu-
togenic orientation has been heavily influenced by the Hawaiian study’s focus on
those in childhood adversity who overcome the odds by the time they reach
adulthood. The initial formulation of theoretical concepts and constructs based
on this research proceeded within the developmental psychopathology frame-
work in psychiatry (e.g., Rutter, 1987) and developmental psychology (e.g.,
Garmezy, Masten, & Tellegen, 1984) and within family stress and adjustment the-
ory (e.g., McCubbin & Dahl, 1976; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983) in social work.
Much of the seminal research in this field was begun in the late 1950s (e.g., Werner
& Smith began their study in 1955) and initial findings were reported in the 1980s.
Thus, this early theoretical development was situated historically in the post-
Vietnam War and the post-colonial era of globalization, and it often focused on
identifying factors in overcoming trauma and adverse events, such as war-
induced family separations. Later, as social work educators and researchers gave
more attention to salutogenic, strengths-based (Saleebey, 1997) theoretical mod-
els for practice, resiliency constructs were further developed within the ecologi-
cal perspective (e.g., Fraser & Galinsky, 1997; Gilgun, 1996) in social work theory,
rather than in life span theory. Social workers have continued to draw on resilien-
cy theory constructs and empirical findings in research (e.g., Herrenkohl, Hill,
Chung, Guo, Abbott, & Hawkins, 2003) and in human behavior and practice texts
(e.g., Haight & Taylor, 2007; Johnson, 2004; Thomlison, 2007), either within the
ecological perspective (e.g., Haight & Taylor) or, more commonly, outside a spec-
ified theoretical frame of reference. Furthermore, some social workers have
explicitly identified and used resiliency theory as a theoretical framework, inde-
pendent of other perspectives, for education (Greene, 2007) and research (Smith-
Osborne, 2005a, 2006; Ungar, 2004).

THEORETICAL CONCEPTS AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Life Span Theory

Life span theory utilizes the central concept of ontogenesis, the chronological
unfolding of human development (Gunnar & Thelen, 1989; Thelen & Smith,
1994), which includes both change in size and change in the complexity and dif-
ferentiation of function (e.g., the change in motor reflexes at various stages in

154 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

life). Some theorists include deterioration or diminishment in size and function,
particularly if the focus is on aging and the adult life cycle, as well as accretion or
augmentation ( Jung, 1965; Newman & Newman, 1975; Santrock, 1989).

Erikson (1950) proposed the concept of “epigenesis” to convey that human
development unfolds from part to whole, with elements of the chronologically
appropriate ability or personality feature gradually emerging in a prescribed
sequence until the functional whole was achieved. The term has since been used
within the developmental psychopathology theoretical perspective to also apply
to the chronological unfolding over the life span of the disease process, such as
schizophrenia (e.g., Cannon, Rosso, Bearden, Sanchez, & Hadley, 1999). He saw
this emergence as occurring within an interactional and adaptive framework,
within which the individual develops through interaction and adaptation to the
immediate social environment as well as to the larger society, culture, and histor-
ical context. Thus, Erikson postulated that mutual responsiveness on the part of
both the individual and society was necessary for optimal development.

Another key life span concept associated with the work of Freud and Erikson is
the life stage. The life stage is seen as an age-related period of life characterized by
predictable features, tensions, and changes and leads into a subsequent stage.
Erikson formulated the notion of the psychosocial crisis, a period of tension and
disorganization centered on a stage-specific theme, the resolution of which was
the goal of the transition phase from one stage to the next. Freud and Erikson
conceptualized stages as prescriptive, in that their sequence was unvarying and
defined optimal mature development, was associated with specific tensions/con-
flicts, and was prerequisite, in that each stage must be worked through and the
associated conflicts resolved before successful transition to the next stage could
be accomplished. Freud’s and Erikson’s life stage models are presented in
Hoffman et al. (1988, pp. 30 and 32).

Erikson (1950) moved beyond Freud’s life stage constructs in proposing that ego
development in childhood is a process of identification, which he defined as
internalization of another person’s values and standards in an attempt to become
like that person or parts of that person. It was in adolescence that Erikson
observed (1968) the identity was formed through a process of:

repudiation and mutual assimilation of childhood identifications and
their absorption in a new configuration, which in turn, is dependent
on the process by which a society (often through subsocieties) identi-
fies the young individual, recognizing him as somebody who had to
become the way he is and who, being the way he is, is taken for grant-
ed. (p. 159)

In Erikson’s theory, then, the concept of the mature ego identity as a complex
sense of self, comprising societally-defined life roles as well as aspects of person-
ality, is crucial. The “identity crisis” in adolescence is normative and revolves
around issues of personal sameness and historical continuity, which serve as a
link between the individual and the larger society. Prolonged adolescence, in
Erikson’s schema, provides a psychosocial moratorium in which the sexually
mature individual engages in free role experimentation, sanctioned by society, in

155Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

order to find a defined niche in society, while postponing adult sexual roles.
Erickson saw this as a second period of delay in the life cycle, with the first being
Freud’s psychosexual moratorium of the latency life stage, which permits the
young to learn the basics of society’s work situations before embarking on mature
sexual roles, such as spouse and parent. Erikson used the term identity diffusion,
and later the term identity confusion (1968), to describe the state of mild confu-
sion commonly experienced by adolescents in the process of identity formation.
James Marcia (1980) developed this concept further to apply to adolescents who
are not in an identity crisis, because they are not committing themselves to occu-
pational or ideological goals and are not concerned about the situation.

Based on the mature and socially acceptable ego identity, the young adult, in
Erikson’s schema, could then take up the mature sexual role in seeking a spouse
or intimate partner. In the middle adult stage, the individual was seen as transi-
tioning to the ego strength made up of procreativity, productivity, and creativity,
such as in forming a family and mentoring future generations on a personal, soci-
etal or even global level. The last stage of life was that of ego integrity, which
involves the older adult’s acceptance of his/her own live as meaningful and
coherent, and the perspective that one has handled life’s tasks in the best way
possible under given circumstances.

Contemporary theorists have proposed expanded models, particularly in the
adolescent and adult stages. Two such models, proposed by Vaillant (1993, p. 145)
and Newman and Newman (1988, p. 45).

Erikson (1982, 1986, 1988) built on his earlier work in the last life stage, as he and
his wife reflected on their own adult development in later life, conceptualizing
aging in terms of revisitation of earlier stages of development within his Stage 8 of
Integrity vs. Despair.

Erikson and other psychodynamic theorists, such as Vaillant (1993), acknowl-
edge developmental influences such as culture, race, and gender, but tend to view
intrapsychic and biological factors, including IQ, as being more important to
development.

Other theorists conceptualize human development as being more fluid
throughout the life span, rather than the product of invariant and chronological-
ly sequential stages, and as being more heavily influenced by social roles
(Goffman, 1959; Neugarten, 1985), demographic variables, such as gender, race,
or socioeconomic status, culture and historical “moment,” and even the recipro-
cal, interactive effects of the immediate physical/social environment (Gunnar &
Thelen, 1989).

Resiliency Theory

The concept of resilience was developed to “describe relative resistance to psy-
chosocial risk experiences” (Rutter, 1999b, p. 119). It has been further defined as
“a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of sig-
nificant adversity” (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000) and “the process of coping
with adversity, change, or opportunity in a manner that results in the identifica-
tion, fortification, and enrichment of resilient qualities or protective factors”

156 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

(Richardson, 2002, p. 308). Research on stress reactions and recovery from stress,
with implications for education, has also informed this theory (Benotsch et al.,
2000; D’Imperio, Dubow, & Ippolito, 2000; Dubow, Schmidt, McBride, Edwards, &
Merk, 1993; Dubow, Tisak, Causey, Hryshko, & Reid, 1991; Fontana, Schwartz, &
Rosenheck, 1997; Garmezy & Rutter, 1983; Golding, 1989; Keenan & Newton,
1984; Lazarus, 1993; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Thus, resilience is conceptualized
as relative resistance to psychosocial stressors or adversity. Although varying
models of resiliency have been tested, researchers and theorists agree that the
construct is salient in the context of stress and adversity and is not operative in
the absence of environmental stressors ( Jew, Green, & Kroger, 1999; Rutter, 1999).

The central constructs of the theory include risk factors/mechanisms, vulnera-
bility factors, and protective factors/mechanisms. Risk factors and mechanisms
have been conceptualized in alternate ways in the literature: either as 1) the
events or conditions of adversity (for example, poverty) themselves for which
there is empirical evidence of association with psychopathology, illness, or dys-
functional developmental outcomes or as 2) factors that operate to reduce resist-
ance to stressors/adversity. Vulnerability factors are traits, genetic predisposi-
tions, or environmental and biological deficits (such as cognitive impairments)
for which there is empirical evidence of heightened response, sensitivity, or reac-
tion to stressors or risk factors. The constructs of vulnerability factors and risk fac-
tors are sometimes used interchangeably in the literature. Protective factors and
mechanisms are traits, contextual characteristics, and interventions that operate
to enhance or promote resistance, or which may moderate the effect of risk fac-
tors, and for which there is empirical evidence of association with health and
functional developmental outcomes. Rutter (1987) suggests that protective
mechanisms may operate in one of four ways to allow overcoming odds in the
face of adversity: by reducing risk impact, by reducing negative chain reactions to
risk factors, by promoting resiliency traits (i.e., the opposite of vulnerability fac-
tors, such as self-efficacy and optimism), and by setting up new opportunities for
success. Reducing risk impact can occur not only by way of buffering events and
social networks, but also by inoculation due to successful coping with earlier,
milder stressful events. Protective and risk mechanisms have been found to vary
according to the type of adversity, type of resilient outcome, and life stage under
analysis; risk factors in one context may be protective in another (Rutter, 1999;
Smith-Osborne, 2006; Ungar, 2004).

Research on resilience among children, adolescents, and young adults has
found a positive relationship between spirituality, social support, social capital,
income, and personal/family traits (e.g., hardiness, coherence, social compe-
tence and self-efficacy, normal attachment, healthy attributions, active stress
appraisal, and coping), and resistance to a variety of risk factors, including psy-
chiatric disorders and school failure/drop-out (Daining, 2005; Garmezy, 1991;
Luthar et al., 2000; Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Richardson, 2002; Rutter, 1999a;
Smith & Carson, 1997; Werner, 1992). Research on military families dealing with
war-induced separation and trauma has found associations between resilience
and similar protective mechanisms (Benotsch et al., 2000; Lavee et al., 1985;
McCubbin & Dahl, 1976; McCubbin, Dahl, Lester, Benson, & Robertson, 1976;

157Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

McCubbin, Hunter, & Dahl, 1975; McCubbin et al., 1980; McCubbin & McCubbin,
1996; Patterson, 2002; Sutker et al., 1995; Thoits, 1983).

Units of Analysis

Life span theory is most commonly applied to the individual and family as the
units of analysis (McCubbin et al., 1980). However, Erikson (1962, 1968, 1969) pro-
posed that this theory could apply to humanity as an entity, thus not being limit-
ed to one’s interactions with individuals, groups, or specific environments/insti-
tutions.

Subsequent theorists, such as Coles (1990, 1991, 1997) and Strauss and Howe
(1991), have focused on the more macro-level implications of Erikson’s concepts,
for example, in investigating human development within generations and reli-
gious reference groups.

Like life span theory, resiliency theory has been most commonly applied to
individuals and family units that are consistent with these theories’ shared devel-
opmental focus. More recent investigations of specific risk and protective factors,
however, have shown a trend toward the examination of macro-level or contextu-
al variables (Herrenkohl et al., 2003; Schafft, 2006; Smith-Osborne, 2005, 2006;
Ungar, 2004), such as neighborhoods (e.g., disorganized, residentially unstable)
and institutional policies.

Aspects of Human Development

Rapid advances in the knowledge base about the biological underpinnings of
human development tend to lend support to conceptualizations of the life stages
that are more fluid throughout the life span, rather than invariant or even neces-
sarily sequential (Robbins et al., 1998; Thelen & Smith, 1994). Incorporation of
this new knowledge is seen most clearly in researchers who focus on adult devel-
opment and aging. George Vaillant (1993), for example, pointed out that:

If adult development is to be conceived as a psychobiological process
then it must conform to biology, and neither to social mores nor to
chronological age. This means that, as with shaving and menstruation,
not everybody will reach a given stage at the same chronological age (p.
166).

Similarly, Sharon McQuaide, in her research on “Women at Midlife” (1998),
examined biological and cohort variables to add to life span theory. She found
that “The generation of women now entering midlife differs from previous gener-
ations” (p. 21), and that women who were “’blocked from being in the world’
(through disability, poor health, involuntary unemployment, limited spending
power)” (p. 29) were less likely to achieve well-being and other indicators of gen-
erativity, Erikson’s designation for the midlife stage issue. Life span theory, then,
has the flexibility to address various aspects of human development throughout
its stages.

Resiliency theory has, from its inception, been remarkable for encompassing
the broad biopsychosocial aspects of human development, as well as for cross-
referencing empirical findings on normative or healthy human development with
findings on pathological development (Cichetti & Cannon, 1999). Early develop-

158 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

ment of the theory gave more attention to individual characteristics and to fac-
tors present in childhood, which were associated with adult outcomes, thus priv-
ileging enduring traits from earlier life stages. Although recent cross-sectional
studies have begun to offer more possibilities for developing an understanding of
resiliency in middle and later adulthood, this theory’s current utility is, in its
application to the broad aspects of human development, from infancy through
early adulthood.

Philosophical Underpinnings

The life span theory philosophical underpinnings, most of which have been
noted previously in this paper, include: a health and adaptation orientation,
rather than a medical illness-oriented orientation; a special interest in the earlier
stages of life; an ontogenetic perspective with emphasis on predictable and dis-
continuous life stages; a transition period between stages, which may be charac-
terized by increased tension and disorganization (Erikson’s “psychosocial crises”);
an intrapsychic focus and an interactive focus; and lifelong development. As
noted previously, the life span theorists who built on Erikson’s work have gone far
in addressing the limitations of many of these philosophical underpinnings, as
well as the biases built into the original theory. Resiliency theory is characterized
as similarly salutogenic, but with a philosophical orientation toward the linear,
cumulative connections between earlier life stages and adulthood for those at
risk. Resiliency research to date has been largely conducted by Western scientists
and has had a linear, positivistic paradigm. Thus, it has been criticized as hege-
monic and, thereby, limited in its scope in accounting for diverse resiliency expe-
riences. Philosophically, resiliency theory is more heavily focused than life span
theory on interactions between the environment and person in terms of environ-
mental adversity and personal protective traits. As with life span theory, more
recent work in resiliency theory has tipped the balance philosophically more in
the direction of contextual protective variables, often operationalized as social
groups and community and institutional characteristics.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The evident strengths of life span theory include its expansion of understanding
of personality development through the life span, its utility across a variety of
human service settings and functions, and its “generativity,” to borrow Erikson’s
term and reapply it to theory-building. Life span theory gave rise to a rich pletho-
ra of human development models, not only to increase understanding of specific
life stages or the entire life cycle, but also to address intermediate and macro-level
entities, such as families, family-run businesses, social movements led by “great”
personalities, faith communities and religious reference groups, and entire gen-
erational cohorts. In so doing, this theory has been applied to disciplines beyond
the human service domain. For example, the sociological concept of the bour-
geois bohemian (Brooks, 2001), the theological concept of Gen X religiosity
(Beaudoin, 2000), and the economic concept of style as a form of self-expression
(Postrel, 2003), all owe their origins ultimately to life span theory.

Several of the most cogent points of criticism of life span theory weaknesses
have been noted above: the Euro-American, middle class, male bias; the rigidity

159Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

of the life stage concept; and the notable lack of empirical support. Another, less
frequently discussed weakness is the theory’s failure to address or adequately
explain the sources of the stage shifts (Haroutunian, 1983; Oyama, 1985) and the
application of those stage shifts across domains (Thelen, 1987). Concomitantly,
the theory has been targeted by critics for failure to account for the emergence of
new forms in each stage (e.g., why do immobilized Hopi babies start walking at
the same age as mobile WASP babies) in the context of the nature versus nurture
dichotomy.

Resiliency theory shows promise as an emerging theory, which extends life span
theory in offering predictive and explanatory constructs relevant to healthy
development in the face of adversity. Its constructs and models have been used
flexibly by social workers in concert with other theoretical perspectives, such as
the ecosystems perspective (Fraser, 1997; Gilgun, 1997), systems theory (Ungar,
2004), the differential resiliency model (Palmer, 1997), and the social develop-
ment model (Herrenkohl et al., 2003). Furthermore, this theory has demonstrat-
ed that it offers both a viable platform for developmental research and a concep-
tual framework capable of elegant and parsimonious evolution based on that
research. Resiliency theory has the advantage of being empirically based from its
inception and of thereby incorporating ongoing findings and constructs from
biology and neuroscience, such as neuroplasticity (Rutter, 1999b). It has begun to
demonstrate utility in application across human service settings and practice
models and across life stages and trajectories (Greene, 2007).

One important limitation of resiliency theory is its restriction to application
only to populations in adversity or populations experiencing trauma or high
stress levels. Theoretical constructs may be misapplied in research or practice to
normative life cycle issues or moderately stressful events. The constructs them-
selves have been criticized as tautological and are inconsistently defined across
studies, thus limiting validity and reliability of the research. Considerable effort
has been made by leading resiliency theorists, particularly in the last decade, to
clarifying and standardize these definitions. This theory has also been criticized
for its positivist research paradigm to date, with consequential bias towards lin-
ear explanatory models based on predictable, hierarchical relationships between
protective and risk factors (Ungar, 2004). This tendency may limit its utility in
application to diverse cultures and populations. On the other hand, the original
empirical basis for the development of the theory consisted heavily of studies of
cross-cultural and ethnic minority populations, which may be evidence to count-
er this criticism.

Empirical Support

Life span theory has been criticized as lacking an empirical base of support, much
like psychodynamic theory in general has been criticized. It is true that many the-
orists in this perspective use clinical case and cross-cultural observation (Erikson,
1968; Coles, 1990; Greenspan, 1992) and, in some instances, examination of the
lives of great men and women, as their primary methodology for generating the
theory. For example, Erikson studied the lives of Luther and Gandhi (1962, 1969),
while Vaillant looked at Florence Nightingale’s life in his analysis of women’s adult
development (Vaillant, 1993). Coles is robust in his defense of these clinically ori-

160 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

ented methodologies in generating rich, contextually-based theoretical con-
structs, and is critical of the biases and limitations he finds inherent in empirical,
quantitative methodologies (1990, pp. 22-39).

However, Vaillant’s longitudinal study of adult men (1977), his follow-up study
of male adults from a different socioeconomic group (1993), and recent quantita-
tive studies of adult development (McQuaide, 1998; Norman, McCluskey-
Fawcett, & Ashcraft, 2002) have provided empirical support both for the life span
concepts derived from ego defense theory and for life stage concepts.

In general, the life span theory has maximal utility when used to describe and
explain the human development of individuals and, at a probabilistic rather than
prescriptive level (Robbins et al., 1998). Erikson indicated his general concur-
rence with this summation in his discussion of the misapplication of his concept
of the psychosocial crisis (1968, pp. 15-43).

As previously described in this paper, resiliency theory has been conceived on
an empirical basis, with two examples being Werner and Smith’s study of infants
in Hawaii and the English and Romanian Adoptees Study Team’s investigation of
institutionalized children who were later adopted (Rutter, Quinton, & Hill, 1990;
Rutter & ERA, 1998). Resiliency theory-based empirical findings have been useful
in refining important practice modalities used in social work. For example, such
findings suggested a shift in the focus on family therapy to include assessment of
the differential impact of family communication patterns on different family
members, depending on individual vulnerability factors and peer group influ-
ences (Rutter, 1999b; Greene, 2007). Richardson (2002) has suggested that there
have been three waves of resiliency research: the first wave focused on identifying
resilient qualities in person and environment, the second wave focused on spec-
ifying resilient processes effective in overcoming the odds, and the third and cur-
rent wave in identifying innate transformational processes. Empirical testing of
resiliency constructs and models is ongoing in several disciplines, including
social work (e.g., Finkelstein et al., 2005; Hrabowski, Freeman, Maton, & Greif,
1998, 2002; Kennedy, 2005; Wright, Fopma-Loy, & Fischer, 2005).

IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK

Consistency with Social Work Values

Despite its lack of empirical evidence, life span theory has enjoyed widespread
acceptance, not only among social workers, but among the wide range of human
service disciplines, particularly those with a psychodynamic theoretical perspec-
tive regardless of discipline. Thus, part of its appeal has come from its expansion
of Freudian theory and its correction of some of the limitations and biases of that
theory. Its optimistic, strengths-oriented perspective, and its applicability to
some domains other than the individual (McCubbin et al., 1980) have shown con-
sistency with social work values. The utility of its concepts and theoretical con-
structs has been amply demonstrated by the variety and magnitude of applica-
tions that have been made to practice issues (e.g., Streever & Wodarski, 1984;
Snow, 2003; Smith-Osborne, 2005b), to theory building (e.g., Elder, 1998; George,
1993; Ingersoll-Dayton, Krause, & Morgan, 2002; Vaillant, 1993), and to popular

161Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

understanding of the nature of human life (e.g., Sheehy, 1976). The psychody-
namic life span theorists deemphasized the biological determinism of strict
Freudian theory, and their theoretical concepts focus on successful negotiation of
the life stage transitions as a normative, not as pathological process. These factors
are seen as consistent with social work values, such as client self-determination
and strengths-based practice.

Contemporary social workers are cautioned to be mindful that the originators
of this theory base operated almost exclusively within a Euro-American middle
class framework, which limits the utility of the theory for application to diverse
cultures and classes. The male bias inherent in the original theory base has been
partially addressed through research and additional theory formulation on the
development of women through the life span (Gilligan, 1978, 1982, 1991; Friedan,
1963, 1977; and 1993; McQuaide, 1998).

The social work emphasis on person-in-environment is a good fit with life span
theory’s perspective of human development as proceeding interactively. The lim-
itations of the theory in taking macro-level influences into account, and the
expansion work in this area by Strauss and Howe and others, is noted above.

Resiliency theory shares with life span theory the excellent fit with social work
values detailed above, while avoiding the cultural, class and gender biases that
have been noted in life span theory. Its focus on vulnerability and populations at
risk makes it particularly useful to the social work mission. This theory has been
criticized as being less consistent with social work values than it could be, due to
the hegemonic tendencies inherent in its positivistic philosophical underpin-
nings; however, new qualitative and mixed methods research, undertaken within
a constructivist paradigm, may develop this theory so as to correct these tenden-
cies.

Next Steps for Theory Progression

The current status of life span theory within social work remains that of wide-
spread, even uncritical acceptance in its application, in a variety of human serv-
ice settings, from child welfare agencies to parent education classes. Social work-
ers who practice or conduct research with specific age groups are informed by
this theory in understanding the unique aspects of that age group or birth cohort
(e.g., McQuaide, 1998; Norman et al., 2002). In social work education, it is taught
in theory and human behavior classes at all levels of social work preparation. The
concept of developmental stages has been applied to student development
through the field instruction process in social work, as well as in counseling and
psychology (Deal, 2000, 2002). The utility of this theoretical perspective and its
value-fit with the social work profession are likely to ensure its continued place
within the discipline. In order to enhance its viability as a foundation for best
practices, life span theory must take the next steps in theory progression by
strengthening empirical support for both its micro and macro levels across life
stages, including the incorporation of recent advances in human neuroscience
evidence. Further development of models for middle and older adult life stages,
differentiated by gender and ethnicity, is also needed. Continued attention must
be paid to the dissemination of updated life span theory development by social
work educators, text writers, and researchers.

162 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

The current status of resiliency theory in social work is that of an emerging the-
ory; its main constructs are used more often than the entire, articulated theoreti-
cal framework, both in social work research and education, while frequency of
practitioners’ use of this theory and its evidence base is unclear. Since it repre-
sents an extension of more well-established life span theory and shares many of
that theory’s strengths and acceptability for the profession, it is likely that resilien-
cy theory will become more widely used in social work education the near future,
as indicated by its use in at least two recently published texts in the Human
Behavior in the Social Environment curriculum (Greene, 2007; Haight & Taylor,
2007). The next steps for progression of this theory should include cross-section-
al studies to elucidate applicability of the known protective mechanisms to young
adult, middle adult, and older adult life stages, and to generational cohorts.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are needed to examine the operation of
protective and risk mechanisms for particular resilient outcomes, such as educa-
tional attainment, health disparities and perceived level of wellness, quality of
life, and vocational achievement, to build on results of the most common, previ-
ously studied outcome of psychopathology versus mental wellness. Qualitative
and mixed methods research designs must be applied to extend theory develop-
ment to diverse cultures and perceived operationalizations of resiliency within
the lived experience of persons across the life span and across conditions of
adversity. Further discussion is needed in the literature to refine the operational-
ization of this theory’s constructs and models and to promote common usage of
the same in research. Articulation of practice applications of the theory, followed
by empirical testing of related interventions, is necessary to integrate this theory
into our understanding of human behavior in the social environment and to add
to the evidence base for practice with populations in adversity.

Resiliency theory offers a rich opportunity for social work to refine evidence-
based developmental theory for the vulnerable populations it is our unique priv-
ilege to serve.

References

Beaudoin, T. (1998). Virtual faith: The irreverent spiritual quest of Generation X. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass.

Brooks, D. (2001). Bobos in paradise. New York: Touchstone.

Cannon, T.D., Rosso, I.M., Bearden, C.E., Sanchez, L.E., & Hadley, T. (1999). A prospective cohort study of
neurodevelopmental processes in the genesis and epigenesist of schizophrenia. Development and
Psychopathology, 11(1), 467-485.

Cichetti, D., & Cannon, T.D. (1999). Neurodevelopmental processes in the ontogenesis and epigenesis of
psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 375-393.

Colby, V. (1970). The singular anomaly. New York: New York University Press.

Coles, R. (1990). The spiritual life of children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Coles, R. (1991). The moral life of children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Coles, R. (1997). The moral intelligence of children. New York: Random House.

163Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

Daining, C. (2005). Resilience of youth in transition from out-of-home care to adulthood. Unpublished
dissertation, University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of emotions in man and animal. New York: Philosophical Library.

Deal, K.H. (2000). The usefulness of developmental stage models for clinical social work students: An
exploratory study. The Clinical Supervisor, 19(1), 1-19.

Deal, K.H. (2002). Modifying field instructors’ supervisory approach using stage models of student devel-
opment. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 22(3/4), 121-137.

DeForge, B., Belcher, J., O’Rourke, M., & Lindsey, M. (2005). Personal resources and homelessness in early
life: Predictors for depression in consumers of homeless multi-serviced centers. Manuscript submit-
ted for publication.

D’Imperio, R.L., Dubow, E.F., & Ippolito, M.F. (2000). Resilient and stress-affected adolescents in an urban
setting. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 29, 129-142.

Dubow, E.F., Schmidt, D., McBride, J., Edwards, S., & Merk, F.L. (1993). Teaching children to cope with
stressful experiences: Initial implementation and evaluation of a primary prevention program. Journal
of Clinical Child Psychology, 22, 428-440.

Dubow, E.F., Tisak, J., Causey, D., Hryshko, A., & Reid, G. (1991). A two-year longitudinal study of stress-
ful life events, social support, and social problem-solving skills: Contributions to children’s behavioral
and academic adjustment. Child Development, 62, 583-599.

Elder, G.H. (1998). The life course and human development. In W. Damon & R.M. Lerner (Eds.),
Handbook of Child Psychology (5th ed., pp. 939-983). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Erikson, E. (1962). Young man Luther: A study in psychoanalysis and history. New York: Norton.

Erikson, E.H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed., Rev.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Erikson, E.H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Erikson, E.H. (1980). Identity and the life cycle. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Erikson, E.H. (1969). Gandhi’s truth: On the origins of militant nonviolence. New York: Norton.

Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. 7 ed., pp. 125-145). London: Hogarth.

Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. New York: Dell.

Friedan, B. (1977). It changed my life. New York: Dell.

Friedan, B. (1993). The fountain of age. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Garmezy, N. (1991). Resiliency and vulnerability to adverse developmental outcomes associated with
poverty. American Behavioral Scientist, 34, 416-430.

Garmezy, N., & Rutter, M. (Eds.). (1983). Stress, coping, and development in children. New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Company.

George, L.K. (1993). Sociological perspectives on life transitions. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 353-373.

Gesell, A.L. (1925). The mental growth of the preschool child. New York: Macmillan.

Gilligan, C. (1978). Woman’s place in man’s life cycle. Harvard Educational Review, 49, 481-517.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

Gilligan, C., Rogers, A.G., & Tolman, D.L. (Eds.). (1991). Women, girls and psychotherapy: Reframing resist-
ance. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc.

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Greene, R.R. (2007). Social work practice: A risk and resilience perspective. Belmont, CA: Thomson
Brooks/Cole.

Greenspan, S.I. (1992). Infancy and early childhood: The practice of clinical assessment and intervention
with emotional and developmental challenges. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, Inc.

164 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

Gunnar, M.R., & Thelen, E. (Eds.). (1989). Systems and development: The Minnesota symposia on child
psychology, vol. 22. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Haight, E.H., & Taylor, M. (Eds.). (2007). The life and letters of James Monroe Taylor: The biography of an
educator. (Sixth edition). New York: The Columbia Encyclopedia, E.P. Dutton and Co.

Hall, G.H. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex
crime, religion, and education. New York: Appleton & Co.

Haroutunian, S. (1983). Equilibrium in the balance: A study of psychological explanation. New York:
Springer-Verlag.

Herrenkohl, T.I., Hill, K.G., Chung, I., Guo, J., Abbott, R.D., & Hawkins J.D. (2003). Protective factors
against serious violent behavior in adolescence: A prospective study of aggressive children. Social Work
Research, 27, 179-191.

Hoffman, L., Paris, S., Hall, E., & Schell, R. (1988). Developmental psychology today (5th ed.). New York:
McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Holleran, L.K., Kim, Y., & Dixon, K. (2004). Innovative approaches to risk assessment within alcohol pre-
vention programming. In A.R. Roberts & K.R. Yeager (Eds.), Evidence-based practice manual: Research
and outcome measures in health and human services (pp. 677-684). New York: Oxford University Press.

Hrabowski, I., Freeman A., Maton, K.I., Greene, M.L., & Greif, G.L. (2002). Overcoming the odds: Raising
academically successful African-American young women. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hrabowski, I., Freeman A., Maton, K.I., & Greif, G. L. (1998). Beating the odds: Raising academically suc-
cessful African American males. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ingersoll-Dayton, B., Krause, N., & Morgan, D. (2002). Religious trajectories and transitions over the life
course. International Journal on Aging and Human Development, 55(1), 51-70.

Jackson, Y., & Warren, J.S. (2000). Appraisal, social support, and life events: Predicting outcome behavior
in school-age children. Child Development, 71, 1441-1457.

Jew, C.L., Green, K.E., & Kroger, J. (1999). Development and validation of a measure of resiliency.
Measurement & Evaluation in Counseling & Development, 32, 1-15.

Jung, C.G. (1965). Memories, dreams, and reflections. New York: Vintage Books.

Karl, F.R. (1964). A reader’s guide to the nineteenth century novel. New York: H. Woolff.

Knox, D., Langehough, S.O., Walters, C., & Rowley, M. (1999). Religiosity and spirituality among college
students. College Student Journal, 33, 430-432.

Lam, D. (1999). Parenting stress and anger: The Hong Kong experience. Child and Family Social Work, 4,
337-346.

Lavee, Y., McCubbin, H.I., & Patterson, J. (1985). The double ABCX model of family stress and adaptation:
An empirical test by analysis of structural equations with latent variables. Journal of Marriage and the
Family, 47, 811-825.

Lazarus, R.S. (1993). From psychological stress to the emotions: A history of changing outlooks. Annual
Review of Psychology, 44, 1-21.

Lazarus, R.S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer.

LeCuyer-Maus, E.A. (2003). Stress and coping in high-risk mothers: Difficult life circumstances, psychi-
atric-mental health symptoms, education, and experiences in their families of origin. Public Health
Nursing, 20, 132-145.

Longo, D.A., & Peterson, S.M. (2002). The role of spirituality in psychosocial rehabilitation. Psychosocial
Rehabilitation Journal, 25, 333-340.

Luthar, S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guide-
lines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543-562.

Macias, M.M., Clifford, S.C., Saylor, C.F., & Kreh, S.M. (2001). Predictors of parenting stress in families of
children with spina bifida. Children’s Health Care, 30, 57-65.

Marcia, J.E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. In J. Adelson (Ed.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (pp.
159-187). New York: Wiley-Interscience.

165Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

Masten, A.S., & Coatsworth, J.D. (1998). The development of competence in favorable and unfavorable
environments: Lessons from research on successful children. American Psychologist, 53, 205-220.

McCubbin, H.I., & Dahl, B.B. (1976). Prolonged family separation in the military: A longitudinal study. In
H.I. McCubbin, B.B. Dahl & E.J. Hunter (Eds.), Families in the military system. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

McCubbin, H.I., Dahl, B.B., Lester, G.R., Benson, D., & Robertson, M.L. (1976). Coping repertoires of fam-
ilies adapting to prolonged war-induced separations. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38, 461-471.

McCubbin, H.I., Hunter, E.J., & Dahl, B.B. (1975). Residuals of war: Families of prisoners of war and ser-
vicemen missing in action. Journal of Social Issues, 31, 95-109.

McCubbin, H.I., Joy, C.B., Cauble, A.E., Comeau, J.K., Patterson, J.M., & Needle, R.H. (1980). Family stress
and coping: A decade review. Journal of Marriage & the Family, 42(4), 855-871.

McCubbin, M.A., & McCubbin, H.I. (1996). Resiliency in families: A conceptual model of family adjust-
ment and adaptation in response to stress and crises. In H.I. McCubbin, A.I. Thompson, & M.A.
McCubbin (Eds.), Family assessment: Resiliency, coping, and adaptation—Inventories for research and
practice (pp. 1-64). Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin System.

McGee, M., Nagel, L., & Moore, M.K. (2003). A study of university classroom strategies aimed at increas-
ing spiritual health. College Student Journal, 37, 583-594.

McQuaide, S. (1998). Women at midlife. Social Work, 43(1), 21-30.

Morrison, G.M., Robertson, L., Laurie, B., & Kelly, J. (2002). Protective factors related to antisocial behav-
ior trajectories. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58, 277-290.

Murray, C. (2003). Risk factors, protective factors, vulnerability, and resilience: A framework for under-
standing and supporting the adult transitions of youth with high-incidence disabilities. Remedial and
Special Education, 24, 16-26.

Musil, C.M. (2000). Health of grandmothers as caregivers: A ten-month follow-up. Journal of Women &
Aging, 12, 129-145.

Naerde, A., Tambs, K., & Mathiesen, K.S. (2002). Child-related strain and maternal mental health: A lon-
gitudinal study. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 105, 301-309.

Neugarten, B.L. (1985). Interpretive social science and research on aging. In A.S. Rossi (Ed.), Gender and
the life course (pp. 291-300). New York: Aldine.

Newman, B.M., & Newman, P.R. (1975). Development through life: A psychosocial approach. Homewood,
IL.: The Dorsey Press.

Norman, S.M., McCluskey-Fawcett, K., & Ashcraft, L. (2002). Older women’s development: A comparison
of women in their 60s and 80s on a measure of Erikson’s developmental tasks. International Journal on
Aging and Human Development, 54, 31-41.

Norman, W.H., & Scaramella, T.J. (Eds.). (1980). Mid-life: Developmental and clinical issues. New York:
Brunner/Mazel.

Oyama, S. (1985). The Ontogeny of information: Developmental systems and evolution. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

Patterson, G.T. (2003). Examining the effects of coping and social support on work and life stress among
police officers. Journal of Criminal Justice, 31, 215-226.

Patterson, J.M. (2002). Integrating family resilience and family stress theory. Journal of Marriage and
Family, 64, 349-360.

Postrel, V. (2003). The substance of style. New York: Harper Collins.

Quamma, J.P., & Greenberg, M.T. (1994). Children’s experience of life stress: The role of family social sup-
port and social problem-solving skills as protective factors. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 23,
295-305.

Richardson, G.E. (2002). The metatheory of resilience and resiliency. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58,
307-321.

Robbins, S.P., Chatterjee, P., & Canda, E.R. (1998). Contemporary human behavior theory. Needham
Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

166 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

Rolf, J., Masten, A.S., Cicchetti, D., Nuechterlein, H.H., & Weintraub, S. (Eds.). (1990). Risk and protective
factors in the development of psychopathology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Rutter, M. (1983). Cognitive deficits in the pathogenesis of autism. Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry, 24, 513-531.

Rutter, M. (1987). Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms. American Journal of
Orthopsychiatry, 57, 316-331.

Rutter, M. (1993). Resilience: Some conceptual considerations. Journal of Adolescent Health, 14, 626-631.

Rutter, M. (1999a). Psychosocial adversity and child psychopathology. The British Journal of Psychiatry,
174, 480-493.

Rutter, M. (1999b). Resilience concepts and findings: Implications for family therapy. Journal of Family
Therapy, 21, 119-144.

Rutter, M., & the English & Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study Team. (1998). Developmental catch-up, and
deficit, following adoption after severe global early privation. Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry, 39, 465-476.

Rutter, M., Quinton, D., & Hill, J. (1990). Adult outcomes of institution-reared children: Males and females
compared. In L.N. Robins & M. Rutter (Eds.). Straight and devious pathways from childhood to adult-
hood (pp. 135-157). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Saltman, J.E. (2002). Theory and practice in social work: Two perspectives on reality. Arete, 26, 84-99.

Saltman, J.E.E., & Greene, R.R. (1993). Social workers’ perceived knowledge and use of human behavior
theory. Journal of Social Work Education, 29, 88-98.

Santrock, J.W. (1989). Life span development (3rd ed.). Dubuque, IA: W.C. Brown.

Schafft, K.A. (2006). Poverty, residential mobility, and student transiency within a rural New York school
district. Rural Sociology, 71, 212-231.

Shanahan, M.J. (2000). Pathways to adulthood in changing societies: Variability and mechanisms in life
course perspective. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 667-692.

Sheehy, G. (1976). Passages. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Smith, C., & Carson, B.E. (1997). Stress, coping, and resilience in children and youth. Social Service
Review, 6, 231-256.

Smith, P.L. (2003). Adaptive coping strategies of other mothers: An examination of social support, spiri-
tuality, stress, and depression. University of Maryland Baltimore: Unpublished doctoral dissertation.

Smith-Osborne, A. (2005a). Antecedents to postsecondary educational attainment for individuals with
psychiatric disorders: A meta-analysis. Best Practices in Mental Health: An International Journal, 1, 15-
30.

Smith-Osborne, A. (2005b). Comparative theoretical perspectives on a social problem: Psychopathology
and middle-class teen female shoplifters. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 2, 73-84.

Smith-Osborne, A. (2006). Mental health risk factors and protective mechanisms for post-secondary edu-
cational attainment among young adult veterans. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Maryland at Baltimore.

Smith-Osborne, A. (in press). Use of meta-analysis to study resilience factors: An exemplar. In M. Unger
& L. Liebenberg (Eds.), Researching youth across cultures and contexts. Toronto, CA.: University of
Toronto Press.

Stanton-Salazar, R.D., & Spina, S.U. (2000). The network orientations of highly resilient urban minority
youth: A network-analytic account of minority socialization and its educational implications. The
Urban Review, 32, 227-261.

Strauss, W., & Howe, N. (1991). Generations: The history of America’s future, 1584-2069. New York: William
Morrow.

Streever, K.L., & Wodarski, J.S. (1984). Life span developmental approach: Implications for practice. Social
Casework: The Journal of Contemporary Social Work, 267-278.

Sutker, P.B., Davis, J.M., Uddo, M., & Ditta, S.R. (1995). War zone stress, personal resources, and PTSD in
Persian Gulf War returnees. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 104, 444-452.

167Smith-Osborne/LIFE SPAN AND RESILIENCY THEORY

Thelen, E. (1987). We think, therefore we move. Current Psychology of Cognition, 7, 195-198.

Thelen, E., & Smith, L.B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Thoits, P.A. (1983). Life stress, social support, and psychological vulnerability: Epidemiological consider-
ations. Journal of Community Psychology, 10, 341-362.

Unger, Michael. (2004). A constructionist discourse on resilience: Multiple contexts, multiple realities
among at-risk children and youth. Youth & Society, 35, 341-365.

Vaillant, G.E. (1977). Adaption to life. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.

Vaillant, G.E. (1993). The wisdom of the ego. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Werner, E.E., & Smith, R.S. (1992). Overcoming the odds: High risk children from birth to adulthood.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

West, L., Mercer, S.O., & Altheimer, E. (1993). Operation Desert Storm: The response of a social work out-
reach team. Social Work in Health Care, 19, 81-98.

Winterowd, C.L., Street, V.L., & Boswell, D.L. (1998). Perceived social support, disability status, and affect
in college students. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 13, 53-70.

Author’s Note:

Address correspondence to: Alexa Smith-Osborne, Ph.D., assistant professor, The University of Texas at
Arlington School of Social Work, 211 S. Cooper, Box 19129, Arlington, TX 76019, USA. e-mail:
alexaso@uta.edu.

168 ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK

https://doi.org/10.1177/1044389419873240

Families in Society: The Journal of
Contemporary Social Services
2019, Vol. 100(4) 351 –366
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1044389419873240
journals.sagepub.com/home/fis

Article

In the early 1990s Germain (1990, 1994) recom-
mended that social workers use the emerging
life course perspective (LCP) for under-
standing human behavior. She and colleague
Gitterman applied the LCP to the ongoing
development of a social work practice model
they called the life model (Germain & Gitter-
man, 1996). In 2005, Hutchison provided an
updated report on the LCP and suggested that
the perspective has promise for assisting social
workers to bridge the micro and macro worlds
in their practice. Since that time, researchers
across several disciplines have continued to use
the main themes of the LCP to add breadth and
depth of understanding of individual and collec-
tive human behavior and the ways in which
they are connected. The basic concepts and
major themes have not changed in the past 15
years, but they have been elaborated by ongoing

research. This article provides an updated
understanding of the LCP and its implications
for social workers.

The LCP looks at how biological, psycho-
logical, and socio-cultural factors act inde-
pendently, cumulatively, and interactively to
produce great diversity in life course journeys
and shape people’s lives across family gen-
erations. It is a relatively recent attempt to
contextualize human behavior, to understand
how people and their environments influence
each other and change over time. A primary

873240 FISXXX10.1177/1044389419873240Families in SocietyHutchison
research-article2019

1PhD, professor emeritus, Virginia Commonwealth
University

Corresponding Author:
Elizabeth D. Hutchison, School of Social Work, Virginia
Commonwealth University. Mail: 3275 Iris Rose Drive,
Reno, NV 89509.
Email: ehutch@vcu.edu

An Update on the Relevance
of the Life Course Perspective
for Social Work

Elizabeth D. Hutchison1

Abstract
In recent years, the life course perspective has received increasing support from researchers
across a number of behavioral science disciplines. The purpose of this article is to examine the
relevance to social work of selected findings of the last 15 years of empirical investigation of life
course concepts and themes. This discussion is organized around five basic concepts (cohorts,
transitions, trajectories, life events, and turning points) and six interrelated themes (interplay
of human lives and historical time, timing of lives, linked or interdependent lives, human agency
in making choices, diversity in life course trajectories, and developmental risk and protection).
Implications of life course theory and research for social work are overviewed.

Keywords
evidence-based /evidence-informed practice, modes of practice, theory /conceptual models
applied to practice, development across the lifespan, subjects of practice, disparities/ social
determinants of health, equity issues/ human rights /social justice, family systems and functioning

Manuscript received: May 22, 2019; Revised: July 23, 2019; Accepted: August 6, 2019

Disposition editor: Sondra J. Fogel

352 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

contribution of the LCP is its focus on the life
course as a whole, on how what happens in
one period of a person’s life is connected to
what happens in other periods of that person’s
life. For example, it calls attention to the ways
in which what happens in adolescence is
influenced by what happened in childhood
and also influences the long period of adult-
hood (Johnson, Crosnoe, & Elder, 2011).

In the past 15 years, the LCP has grown in
popularity across a broad range of disciplines
(Alwin, 2012). It has been used to understand
the pathways of families (Min, Silverstein, &
Lendon, 2012), organizations (King, 2009),
and social movements (Della Porta & Diani,
2006) as well as individual life journeys. It has
potential for understanding patterns of stability
and change in all types of social systems. Ger-
ontologists increasingly use the perspective to
understand how old age is shaped by events
experienced earlier in life (Seabrook & Avison,
2012), but it has also become an increasingly
popular perspective for considering adolescent
and young adult transitions. The LCP has
become a major theoretical framework in crim-
inology (Prior, 2013) and the leading perspec-
tive driving longitudinal study of physical and
mental health (Bauldry, Shanahan, Boardman,
Miech, & Macmillan, 2012; Evans, Crogan,
Belyea, & Coon, 2009). It is also being used to
understand patterns of lifetime drug use (Lind-
ström, Modén, & Rosvall, 2013).

The LCP was developed from and contin-
ues to be amplified by empirical research. The
early roots came from two different streams of
research: Glen Elder, Jr.’s (1974) analysis of
three pioneering large-scale longitudinal stud-
ies, and inquiry by social historians of how
families change and adapt under changing his-
torical conditions (Hareven, 1978). Research-
ers in both of these traditions were interested in
the social, cultural, and economic contexts of
human behavior. The social historians were
interested in telling the historical story from the
point of view of ordinary people rather than
from the traditional vantage point of elites and
focused particularly on the extraordinary cop-
ing mechanisms families have used in the face
of adversity. In the ongoing development of the

LCP, large-scale national longitudinal studies
have continued be a dominant method of study,
and new methods of quantitative data analysis
have been designed for studying specific con-
cepts (see Elder & Giele, 2009). The social
history tradition of using life stories and other
qualitative methods to study the context of
human behavior continues to play a role in
ongoing LCP theoretical development (Sprague,
Scanlon, & Pantalone, 2017).

In keeping with these traditions, the most
common method of empirical research cited in
this article is large-scale panel national longitu-
dinal study (12 studies) following the same
people over time, using representative samples,
convenience samples, and stratified probability
samples. Seven of the cited studies report on
repeated cross-sectional studies using large-
scale nationally representative sample studies
taken at different time points to track trends in
social life. Four of the cited studies analyze
cross-sectional surveys based on convenience
samples. Other cited research includes three
studies based on qualitative interviews, two
experimental studies, two large-scale cross-
sectional random surveys, two population-
based studies, and one cross-sectional national
representative sample study. Consistent with
trends in life course research, two cited studies
use mixed methods, triangulating national rep-
resentative samples with qualitative interviews.
The cited studies are found in peer-reviewed
journals covering the disciplines of addiction
studies, criminology, demography, family stud-
ies, gerontology, medicine, psychology, public
health, and sociology. They include samples
from Australia, Canada, China, 27 European
countries, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and the
United States.

Basic Concepts of the Life
Course Perspective

Fifteen years of research have elaborated the
handful of LCP staple concepts noted in
Hutchison (2005): cohorts, transitions, trajec-
tories, life events, and turning points. Each of
these concepts is summarized here and shows
up again in discussion of major themes.

Hutchison 353

Cohorts

Life course scholars find the concept of cohort
to be particularly useful to emphasize the
important influence of the historical context
on human behavior, one of the major themes
to be discussed later. A cohort is a group of
persons who were born during the same time
period and who experience particular social
changes within a given culture in the same
sequence and at approximately the same age.
Generation is another term used to convey a
similar meaning, but life course scholars often
make a distinction between the two terms,
suggesting that a birth cohort becomes a gen-
eration only when it develops some shared
sense of its social history and a common iden-
tity (see Alwin, McCammon, & Hofer, 2006).

Cohorts differ in size, and these differences
affect opportunities for education, work, and
family life. The baby boom that followed
World War II (1946-1964) in the United States
produced a large cohort that faced tight com-
petition as they entered the labor market, a
situation that drove wages down and unem-
ployment up (Pearlin & Skaff, 1996). Baby
boomers adapted by marrying later, having
fewer children than earlier generations, and
increasing the presence of mothers in the
labor force. Generation X, born from 1965 to
1979, grew up with fewer siblings and experi-
enced higher rates of parental divorce than
the baby boomers. They have been less likely
than earlier generations to marry (Carlson,
2009). The Millenial Generation, born from
1980 to the late 1990s, has now surpassed the
Baby Boomers as the largest adult demo-
graphic group in the United States. They have
been found to have more student loan debt,
poverty, and unemployment when compared
to the previous two generations at the same
age, and it is not clear how these circum-
stances will affect the long-term trajectories
of their lives (Drake, 2014). They are also
more ethnically diverse than previous cohorts
and grew up in a time of great technological
innovation. Not surprisingly, they have been
found to be more tolerant of diversity and
more media-connected than earlier cohorts
(Fry, Igielnik, & Patten, 2018).

Although it is too early to know what major
social, cultural, or economic factors might
influence the adult trajectories of Generation
Z, born from the late 1990s until about 2012,
recent survey research indicates that they are
as large as the Millennial Generation and even
more diverse. As children and youth, they
have lived in households that are, on average,
more well educated and more affluent than
any earlier cohort, and they are on track to be
the best-educated generation yet (Fry &
Parker, 2018). As they enter adulthood, they
are reporting attitudes on social issues such as
sexual orientation, gender identity, and cli-
mate change that are very similar to the atti-
tudes of the Millennial Generation, attitudes
that are more liberal than the Generation X
and Baby Boomer generations (Parker, Graf,
& Igielnik, 2019). It remains to be seen how
the Millennial and Generation Z cohorts will
adapt to changing circumstances across the
life course and, more importantly, what effects
they will have on major social institutions.

These four cohorts have grown up with
different communication technologies. Baby
Boomers grew up as television was becoming
ubiquitous; Generation Xers grew up in the
computer revolution, Millenials as the Internet
exploded, and Generation Zers with multi-pur-
pose mobile devices (Dimock, 2019). These
differences will have an impact on receptivity
to different social work interventions.

Transitions

The LCP puts a spotlight on the numerous
transitions in roles and statuses experienced by
individuals across the life course (Torres &
Young, 2016). A transition can produce both
stress and opportunity (Benner, 2011). Many
transitions relate to family life: marriages,
births, divorces, remarriages, and death, all
transitions that involve entrances and exits of
family members. Social workers McGoldrick,
Preto, and Carter (2016) make a distinction
between normative life course transitions and
unpredictable transitions in the lives of individ-
uals and families. Health professionals have
used the LCP and the concept of transitions
to understand role changes that occur in the

354 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

family caregiving of older adults (Carpentier,
Bernard, Grenier, & Guberman, 2010). The
concept of transitions is also increasingly used
to study the migration/immigration process
(Gong, Xu, Fujishiro, & Takeuchi, 2011).
Transitions in collectivities other than the fam-
ily, such as small groups, communities, and
formal organizations, also involve exits and
entrances of members as well as changes in
statuses and roles. The concept of transitions is
useful for social workers, no matter the setting
or role; in all settings, social workers must be
mindful of the stress as well as the opportunity
for positive change created by transitions.

Trajectories

Each life course transition is embedded in a
trajectory that gives form to the life course
(Alwin, 2012). Transitions are entry points to a
new life phase. Trajectories involve relatively
stable long-term processes and patterns of life,
involving multiple transitions (Ruark et al.,
2016). For example, Hser, Hamilton, and Niv
(2009) recommend the LCP for understanding
drug use trajectories (or careers) that may
include onset of use, acceleration of use, regu-
lar use, cessation of use, and relapse. Treatment
may or may not be included in this trajectory.
Trajectories are best understood in the rearview
mirror; the multiple transitions of a trajectory are
usually not anticipated at earlier points along the
life course. Because individuals and families
live in multiple spheres, their lives are made up
of multiple intertwined trajectories—such as
educational trajectories, family life trajectories,
health trajectories, and work trajectories (Leong,
Eggerth, & Flynn, 2014). These strands are
woven together to form a life story.

Life Events

A life event is a significant occurrence that
may produce serious and long-lasting effects
for an individual or a collectivity. We experi-
ence both positive and negative life events, but
researchers have paid much more attention to
the impact of negative life events. Psycholo-
gists have long studied the short- and long-
term impact of stressful life events on child,
adolescent, and adult functioning. More

recently, they have also studied the relation-
ships among stressful life events, genetics, and
personality. Three examples of that research
are presented here.

A Swiss research team (Orth & Luciano,
2015) studied the relationships among self-
esteem (defined as one’s evaluation of one’s
worth), narcissism (characterized by grandi-
ose self-concept, feelings of superiority, and
self-centeredness), and stressful life events.
They found that people who are high in nar-
cissism have an increased likelihood of expe-
riencing a larger number of stressful life
events. They also found that an increase in
stressful life events was predictive of lower
self-esteem.

A team of international researchers (Salvatore
et al., 2015) studied a U.S. sample to investigate
the interaction of stressful life events and the
GABRA2 gene in producing intergenerational
continuity in parents’ and adolescents’ external-
izing behavior. They found that parental exter-
nalizing behavior predicts a greater number of
stressful life events for their adolescents, which
in turn predicts higher levels of adolescent
externalizing behavior. However, they found
that the pattern of parental externalizing →
stressful life events → adolescent externaliz-
ing was stronger for those adolescents with a
specific GABRA2 genotype.

Another international research team
(Hygen et al., 2015) studied longitudinal data
from a sample of children living in Norway to
investigate the relationships among child
exposure to stressful life events, the COMT
gene, and aggression. They found that chil-
dren with the COMT gene were more likely to
behave aggressively in reaction to stressful
life events than children without the gene.
Taken together, these three studies suggest
that both genetic and personality factors play
a role in how people respond to stressful life
events, and that the same interventions may
have different outcomes for different people.

Turning Points

A turning point is a time when major change
occurs in the life course trajectory, a lasting
change not just a detour. Turning points may
occur in the individual life course, but social

Hutchison 355

science researchers also study turning points
in social systems such as families, communi-
ties, organizations, cultures, economies, and
governments. At the individual level, the turn-
ing point may involve a transformation in how
the person views the self in relation to the
world and/or a transformation in how the per-
son responds to risk and opportunity (Cappe-
liez, Beaupré, & Robitaille, 2008; Ferraro &
Shippee, 2009).

The addition of the concept of turning point
is an important way that the LCP departs from
traditional developmental theory. In life course
theory, the human life course is not smooth
and predictable. Inertia tends to keep us on a
particular trajectory but turning points add
twists and turns or even reversals to the life
course. One research team interviewed older
adults aged 60 to 87 about perceived turning
points in their lives and found that the most
frequently reported turning points involved
health and family. The perceived turning
points occurred across the entire life course,
but there was some clustering at midlife (ages
45-64) (Cappeliez et al., 2008). Gender differ-
ences have been found in reported turning
points in samples of young adults as well as
sample of older adults, with women reporting
more turning points in the family domain and
men reporting more turning points in the work
domain (Cappeliez et al., 2008). It is not clear
whether this gender difference will be mani-
fested in future cohorts if women’s work tra-
jectories continue to become more similar to
men’s. Researchers have studied the turning
points that lead women to leave abusive rela-
tionships (Khaw & Hardesty, 2007); the turn-
ing points in the care-giving careers of
Mexican American women who care for older
family members (Evans et al., 2009), and the
role transitions that can become turning points
in a criminal career, leading to desisting from
criminal activities (Kirk, 2012).

Most life course pathways include multiple
turning points, some that send life trajectories
off track and others that bring life trajectories
back on track. In fact, we could say that the
intent of many social work interventions is to
precipitate a turning point that will get life

course trajectories on track (Olsson, Strand, &
Kristiansen, 2014). Such interventions may
occur at the individual, family, small group,
community, organizational, or institutional
level. By calling attention to turning points,
the LCP puts a spotlight on human strengths
and capacity for positive change, even revolu-
tionary change.

Major Themes of the Life
Course Perspective

In 1994, Elder (1994) identified four domi-
nant, and interrelated, themes in the life course
approach: interplay of human lives and histori-
cal time, timing of lives, linked or interdepen-
dent lives, and human agency in making choices.
Two other related themes were later identified
by Elder (1998) and Michael Shanahan (2000):
diversity in life course trajectories and devel-
opmental risk and protection. These six themes
continue to be the framework for life course
researchers, with different researchers empha-
sizing different themes. Each of these themes,
and relevant examples of recent research about
them, are discussed below.

Interplay of Human Lives and
Historical Time

Persons born in different years face different
social, political, and economic worlds, with
different options and constraints. Historical
eras may produce cohort effects when distinc-
tive formative experiences are shared at the
same point in the life course and have a lasting
impact on a birth cohort. The same events of a
particular historical era may affect different
cohorts in different ways. For example, Aus-
tralian researchers (Page, Milner, Morrell,
& Taylor, 2013) found that the cohort born
in the years immediately following 1974 was
more prone to suicide across the young adult
period than earlier cohorts. The researchers
also found that this cohort faced higher rates of
unemployment and underemployment as they
entered young adulthood than earlier cohorts
and propose a relationship between these two
factors.

356 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

Analysis of large data sets by a number of
researchers provide forceful evidence that
changes in social institutions impinge on family
and individual life course trajectories (Vikat
et al., 2007). Researchers have examined the
impact of globalization, declining labor mar-
ket opportunities, and rising housing costs on
young adult transitions (Arnett, 2015). Tran-
sitions associated with young adulthood (leav-
ing home, marriage, first parenthood) are
occurring later for the current cohort of young
adults than for their parents in many countries,
particularly in countries with weak welfare
states. Military service during non-war eras
often has been found to be a protective factor
for later health and mortality, but this benefit
does not accrue to veterans who serve during
war eras (Landes, Wilder, & Williams, 2017).
Shifting immigration policies and attitudes
toward particular immigrant groups change
the landscape for immigrants over different
historical eras (Torres & Young, 2016).

Public policy often lags behind such social
changes, presenting social workers with a
responsibility to keep the public informed
about the impact of changing social condi-
tions on individuals, families, communities,
and organizations. For example, many service
members from the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq are living with horrific combat injuries;
others are experiencing substance abuse, post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), relationship
problems, and work problems from prolonged
periods of combat stress (Tanielian & Jaycox,
2008; Wadsworth & Southwell, 2011). Social
workers in all practice settings should be alert
to possibilities for engaging the involved mili-
tary families in supportive services and to the
need for more supportive public policies and
programs.

Timing of Lives

Every society appears to use age as an impor-
tant variable, and many social institutions are
organized, in part, around age: age for starting
school, age to be legally recognized as an
adult, retirement age, and so on. Age is a prom-
inent attribute in efforts by social scientists to
bring order and predictability to understanding

human behavior. Life course scholars are inter-
ested in the age at which specific life events
and transitions occur, which they refer to as
timing of lives. They may classify entrances
and exits from particular statuses and roles as
“off-time” or “on-time,” based on social norms
or shared expectations about the timing of such
transitions (McFarland, Pudrovska, Schieman,
Ellison, & Bierman, 2013). One research team
found that people who are diagnosed with can-
cer at earlier ages had a greater increase in reli-
giosity than people diagnosed at later ages,
suggesting that off-time transitions are more
stressful than on-time transitions or require
different coping strategies (McFarland et al.,
2013). Another researcher found that non-
normative early entry into family formation
and parenthood is associated with lower self-
reported health over the life course (Barban,
2013). Chronological age itself is not the only
factor involved in timing of lives. Age-graded
differences in roles and behaviors are the result
of biological, psychological, and social pro-
cesses (Solomon, Helvitz, & Zerach, 2009).

Biological age indicates a person’s level of
biological development and physical health, as
measured by the functioning of various organ
systems. It is the present position of the bio-
logical person in relation to the potential life
cycle. There is no simple, straightforward way
to measure biological age, but there is an ongo-
ing effort to identify an optimal set of bio-
markers for accurate measure of biological age
(Jee & Park, 2017). One method is to compare
an individual’s physical condition with the
conditions of others, for example, bone den-
sity scans are compared with the scans of a
healthy 20-year-old.

Psychological age has both behavioral and
perceptual components. Behaviorally, psycho-
logical ages refers to the capacities that people
have and the skills they use to adapt to chang-
ing biological and environmental demands,
skills in memory, learning, intelligence, moti-
vation, emotion regulation, and so forth. Per-
ceptually, psychological age is based on how
old people perceive themselves to be. Recent
research has referred to this perceptual aspect
of age as “subjective age” or “age identity.”
Culture plays a role in subjective age, with

Hutchison 357

older adults in Western societies consistently
found to feel younger than their chronological
age (Stephan, Chalabaev, Kotter-Grühn, &
Jaconelli, 2013). This has not been found in
research among Chinese older adults, but
recent research indicates that this may be
changing as traditions around filial piety
weaken (Liang, 2014). Subjective age among
early adolescents has been found to be influ-
enced by pubertal timing (Hubley & Arim,
2012). Subjective age of middle-aged and
older adults is related to self-reported health
(Stephan, Demulier, & Terracciano, 2012). A
workforce that, on average, feels younger than
their chronological age has been found to be
associated with an improvement in the overall
performance of the organization (Kunze, Raes,
& Bruch, 2015).

Social age refers to the age-graded roles
and behaviors expected by society, the socially
constructed meaning of various ages. Age
norms indicate the behaviors expected of peo-
ple of a specific age in a given society at a
particular point in time. They may be informal
expectations, or they may be encoded as for-
mal rules and laws. Life course scholars sug-
gest that age norms vary not only across
historical time and across societies, but also
by gender, race, ethnicity, and social class
within a given time and society. They have
paid particular attention to recent changes in
age norms for the transitions of young adult-
hood (Arnett, 2015; Newman, 2008; Scherger,
2009). Social age receives special attention in
the LCP, and life course scholars call attention
to the changing nature of the social construc-
tion of life phases, noting that mass longevity
is leading to finer gradations in life phases.
For example, Arnett (2015) proposes that the
changing nature of young adult transitions
calls for the acknowledgment of a life phase
between adolescence and young adulthood, a
phase he calls emerging adulthood.

Linked or Interdependent Lives

The LCP emphasizes the interdependence of
human lives and the ways in which people
are reciprocally connected on several levels
(Djundeva, 2015). It calls attention to how

relationships both support and control an indi-
vidual’s behavior. Social support is an obvi-
ous element of interdependent lives, but
relationships also control behavior through
expectations, rewards, and punishments. The
family is seen as the primary source of both
support and control, and life course scholars
have paid particular attention to how lives of
family members are linked across genera-
tions, with both opportunity and misfortune
having an intergenerational impact. They
have also been interested in how families are
linked to the wider world.

Links with family members. We are all linked
genetically to our intergenerational families,
and we may live with both genetic vulnerabil-
ity and genetic advantage. But shared genetics
is not the only way that parents’ and children’s
lives are linked. The connection between fam-
ily hardship, family nurturance, and child
behaviors and well-being is now well estab-
lished (e.g., Barajas, Philipsen, & Brooks-
Gunn, 2008). In addition to the economic
connection between parents and children,
racial discrimination has an intergenerational
effect (Rowley, Helaire, & Banerjee, 2010). In
recent years, we are also aware that deporta-
tion-related family separation impacts long-
term relationships between children and
parents (Yoshikawa, 2011). Parental hardship
has a negative impact on child development,
but parents also provide social capital for their
children, in terms of role models and networks
of social support (Szydlik, 2012).

Parents’ lives are also influenced by the
trajectories of their children’s lives. For exam-
ple, parents may need to alter their work tra-
jectories to respond to the needs of a terminally
ill child. Or parents may forgo early retire-
ment to assist their young adult children with
education expenses. Parents may be nega-
tively affected by stressful situations that their
young and adult children face (Greenfield &
Marks, 2006).

Older adults and their adult children are
also interdependent. Midlife adults may need
to alter their social and work roles to take on
greater caregiving roles with their aging par-
ents. The pattern of mutual support between

358 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

older adults and their children is formed by
life events and transitions across the life
course. They may be fundamentally changed
when families go through historical disrup-
tions such as wars, major economic down-
turns, or by the migration of younger
generation family members (Clark, Glick, &
Bures, 2009).

Family roles must often be synchronized
across three or more generations at once, and
sometimes the synchronization does not go
smoothly. Divorce, remarriage, and disconti-
nuities in adult work and educational trajecto-
ries may conflict with the needs of children
and aging parents (Huinink & Feldhaus,
2009). When a significant life event in one
generation (such as death of a grandparent) is
juxtaposed with a significant life event in
another generation (such as birth of a child),
families and individual family members are
especially vulnerable to stress pile-up.

Links with the wider world. The LCP has its ori-
gins in Elder’s research (Elder, 1974) on the
ways that families and individuals are linked
to situations in the economic institution, and
in recent years life course researchers have
been documenting the ways that individual
and family life course trajectories are linked
to situations in the labor market, housing mar-
ket, education system, and social welfare sys-
tem (Newman, 2008; Scherger, 2009; Szydlik,
2012). Newman (2008) examined young adult
transitions in Western Europe and Japan and
found that changes in the labor market that
result in less secure employment are driving
the delayed departure of young adults from the
parental home in southern Europe and Japan
but not in the Nordic countries. These regional
differences are at least partially explained by
differences in other social institutions.

Newman (2008) found that timing of depar-
ture from the parental home is linked to situ-
ations in the housing market. In Southern
European countries, great emphasis is put on
owner-occupied housing and relatively little
rental housing is available. In contrast, there is
a large rental sector in the housing market in
Nordic countries, a situation that facilitates
early home leaving. Timing of departure is also

linked to the education system. Young adults
who participate in post-secondary education
tend to leave the parental home later than those
who do not pursue post-secondary education,
but regional differences are found in this rela-
tionship as well. Nordic countries have a higher
proportion of emerging adults in post-secondary
education than countries in Southern Europe,
and yet young adults in the Nordic countries
depart the parental home earlier than those in
Southern Europe. This regional difference is
related to differences in the social welfare sys-
tems of the two regions. The earlier departure
from the parental home in Nordic countries is
subsidized by a liberal welfare system that pro-
vides generous housing and educational bene-
fits. Newman’s research (2008) indicates that it
is a confluence of policies in different social
institutions that impact individual and family
life trajectories.

The importance of social policy in life course
trajectories has also been found in relation to
family solidarity between older adults and their
adult children (Szydlik, 2012) and in the career
trajectories of mothers (Abendroth, Huffman,
& Treas, 2014). Family-friendly social policies
support family solidarity and decrease the
motherhood penalty in career trajectories. These
findings have important implications for legis-
lative advocacy by social workers.

It is important for social workers to remem-
ber that lives are also linked in systems of
institutionalized privilege and oppression.
Philip McMichael (2017) reminds us that, in
the global economy, lives are linked around
the world. The lifestyles of people in affluent
countries depend on cheap labor and raw
products from Africa, South America, the
Caribbean, parts of Asia, and other places.
Children and women in impoverished coun-
tries labor long hours to make an increasing
share of low-cost products consumed in afflu-
ent countries. Women migrate from impov-
erished countries to become the domestic
laborers in affluent countries, allowing women
in affluent countries to leave the home to take
advantage of career opportunities and allow-
ing the domestic workers to send money they
make home to support their own families.
Social workers should be well informed about

Hutchison 359

these international linkages in an increasingly
globalized world.

Human Agency in Making Choices

Human agency is the LCP theme most rele-
vant to social work’s emphasis on individual,
family, and community strengths. Hitlin and
Elder (2007) note that although the concept of
human agency is used differently by different
disciplines, life course theorists and research-
ers use it to refer to “attempts to exert influ-
ence to shape one’s life trajectory” (p. 182).
It involves acting with an orientation toward
the future, with an eye for “possible selves”
(Markus & Nurius, 1986). Possible selves
represent our ideas of what we might become,
what we would like to become, and what we
are afraid we will become. They serve as
incentives for action and may be enacted at
the individual, family, small group, commu-
nity, organization, or institutional level.

Emphasis on human agency in the LCP has
been greatly aided by the work of psycholo-
gist Albert Bandura. Bandura (2006) proposed
three modes of human agency: personal
agency is exercised individually to shape
environmental events or one’s own behavior;
proxy agency is exercised when others who
have greater resources act on one’s behalf to
meet needs or accomplish goals; and collec-
tive agency is exercised on the group level
when people act together to meet needs and
accomplish goals. Cultural psychology critics
of the concept of human agency argue that it is
a culture-bound concept that does not apply as
well in collectivist societies as in individualis-
tic societies (Markus & Kitayama, 2003).
Bandura (2006) responds that although people
in all cultures must use all three modes of
agency, there are cultural variations in the
relative emphasis put on the different modes,
with some cultures putting greater emphasis
on personal agency and other cultures putting
greater emphasis on collective agency. Par-
sell, Eggins, and Marston (2017) argue that
“human agency is core to social work” (p.
238), but social workers also recognize barri-
ers to expressing personal agency. The con-
cepts of proxy agency and collective agency

add important dimensions to the discussion of
human agency and can serve to counterbal-
ance the extreme individualism of U.S. soci-
ety. Human agency is a major resource for
positive turning points in the life trajectories
of individuals and collectivities.

Diversity in Life Course Trajectories

Life course researchers have long had strong
evidence of diversity in individual life pat-
terns. Early research emphasized differences
between cohorts, but over time more and more
attention was paid to diversity within cohorts.
Recently, life course researchers have begun
to incorporate intersectionality theory to under-
stand diversity in life course trajectories (see
Raphael & Bryant, 2015; Warner & Brown,
2011). Intersectionality theory recognizes that
all of us are jointly and simultaneously mem-
bers of a number of socially constructed iden-
tity groups, such as those based on gender,
race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation,
gender identity, age, religion, geographic loca-
tion, abilities, and so on. Our social location, or
place in society, is at the intersection of our
multiple identity groups. Either advantage or
disadvantage can be associated with each iden-
tity group, and when considering the life jour-
ney of any one individual, it is important to
consider the multiple identity groups of which
that person is a part (see Hankivsky, 2012).

Developmental Risk and Protection

As the LCP has continued to evolve, it has
more clearly emphasized the links between the
life events and transitions of childhood, adoles-
cence, adulthood, and old age (Gilman, 2012).
Studies indicate that childhood events some-
times shape people’s lives 40 or more years
later (Shonkoff, Garner, Committee on Psycho-
social Aspects of Child and Family Health,
Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and
Dependent Care, & Section on Developmen-
tal and Behavioral Pediatrics, 2012). Indeed,
recent biomedical research suggests we should
look at factors that occur earlier than child-
hood, focusing on fetal undernutrition as a
contributing factor in late-life cognition and

360 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

late-life health conditions such as coronary
heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension
(see Rooij, Wouters, Yonker, Painter, & Rose-
boom, 2010).

It is quite an old idea that what happens at
one point in the life journey influences what
happens at later points, However, the idea of
earlier life experiences affecting later develop-
ment has taken on new energy since the explo-
sion of longitudinal research a few decades ago.
Two different research traditions have exam-
ined how early life experiences affect later out-
comes, one based in sociology and the other
based in ecological developmental psychology.
The sociological tradition is interested in cumu-
lative advantage/cumulative disadvantage. The
ecological developmental tradition is interested
in risk, protection, and resilience.

Sociologists propose that social institutions
and societal structures develop mechanisms
that ensure increasing advantage for those who
are well-resourced early in life and increasing
disadvantage for those who struggle (Ferraro
& Shippee, 2009). Researchers have applied
these concepts to study racial health disparities
across the life trajectory (Pais, 2014), financial
assistance from midlife parents to adult chil-
dren (Padgett & Remle, 2016), and evolving
patterns of inequality among late-life adults
(Crystal, Shea, & Reyes, 2017).

Through the lens of ecological develop-
mental risk and protection theory, longitudinal
researchers have identified multidimensional
risk factors at one stage of development that
increase the probability of developing and
maintaining problem conditions at later stages.
They have also identified protective factors
or resources that decrease the probability of
developing and maintaining problem condi-
tions, a process known as resilience. In the
past decade or so, biomedical researchers have
proposed an ecobiodevelopmental framework
for studying health and disease across the life
course. They are articulating the ways that
genetic predispositions interact with social and
physical environments to drive development,
referring to the human life course as “nature
dancing with nurture over time” (Shonkoff
et al., 2012, p. e234). The major focus of eco-
biodevelopmental research is on the ways that

early toxic stress disrupts development in the
brain and other biological systems. It is impor-
tant to note, however, that neither cumula-
tive advantage/disadvantage theory nor the
ecological developmental risk and protection
approach argue that early deprivations and
traumas inevitably lead to a trajectory of
failure. When resources are mobilized, the
effects of deprivation and trauma are reduced
(Gilman, 2012).

Implications of the Life
Course Perspective for
Social Work Practice

Like other professions, social work aspires to
engage in evidence-informed practice and that
requires using evidence-based theories of
human behavior as well as evidence-based
models of practice. The LCP was developed
from empirical research and continues to be
refined by ongoing research. The theoretical
perspective, and the research that supports it,
has many implications for social work prac-
tice. It can be used at multiple levels of prac-
tice and to support a variety of social work
roles. The most important implication for
social work’s efforts to promote societal well-
being is the robust evidence that what happens
throughout the life course is strongly influ-
enced by what happens in the early years,
beginning with conception, and even before in
the preconceptual health of the mother. Soci-
etal health is associated with public policies
that support early development, and social
workers can play an important role in promot-
ing supportive public health and child and
family policies.

The extensive research on risk and protec-
tion has implications for both policy and pro-
gram development. Social workers Jenson
and Fraser (2016) make use of available
research on risk and resilience to propose pol-
icy recommendations in a variety of policy
sectors, including antipoverty, child welfare,
education, health, child mental health, disabili-
ties, substance abuse, and juvenile justice. The
Communities That Care (CTC) model of com-
munity prevention developed at the University
of Washington School of Social Work trains

Hutchison 361

and supports community coalitions to promote
positive youth development by identifying
and prioritizing community risk factors and
suppressed protective factors that can be mobi-
lized to become community strengths. Recent
program evaluation found that involvement in
the CTC system during adolescence was
associated with reduced drug use, antisocial
behavior, and violence perpetration at age 21
(Oesterle et al., 2018). These two examples
provide a window into the far ranging implica-
tions of risk and protection research for social
work intervention.

Social work, at its best, is a profession that
puts human behavior in context. A major
thrust of the LCP is to provide contextual
understanding of human behavior, to place it
in the context of biology, culture, historical
time, and social systems. Special attention to
the forces that create diversity in life course
trajectories is consistent with social work’s
goal to “engage diversity and difference in
practice” (Council on Social Work Education,
2015, p. 7). Life course research can help social
workers recognize the many ways of enacting
personal identity and inform the process of
engaging a diverse client population. Research
on cohorts alerts social workers to the spe-
cific opportunities and challenges faced by
members of particular cohorts and may sug-
gest ways to tailor interventions to the charac-
teristics of a particular cohort. For example,
younger cohorts may respond better to Inter-
net and wireless-supported interventions than
older cohorts (National Association of Social
Workers, Association of Social Work Boards,
Council on Social Work Education, & Clinical
Social Work Association, 2017).

The LCP emphasis on linked lives is con-
sistent with the National Association of Social
Worker’s (2017, p. 1) stated value of the
“importance of human relationships.” It sup-
ports social work’s historical tendency to
engage in family, small group, and community
interventions. It recommends interventions that
enhance social support and open lines of com-
munication. Life course research is beginning
to provide evidence that family-friendly pub-
lic policies support family solidarity and alter
individual and family life course trajectories,

findings with implications for social work
involvement in legislative advocacy. The LCP
emphasis on linked lives also calls social work-
ers to keep a laser focus on how lives are linked
in systems of institutionalized privilege and
oppression and to seek ways to advance “social,
economic, and environmental justice” (Council
on Social Work Education, 2015, p. 7).

LCP emphasis on transitions, trajectories,
life events, and turning points can inform
practice at multiple system levels. Research
on human reactions to transitions alerts social
workers to the possibility of at least tempo-
rary dysfunction in relationships at times of
major transition and suggests that targeted
interventions may help to avoid communica-
tion breakdowns and stress pileup in times
of pronounced change. Indeed, social work-
ers have often targeted interventions to peo-
ple involved in transitions, such as the use of
support groups for children involved in
divorcing families and for people living with
a recent major loss. Life course research also
indicates that transitions can create opportu-
nities for positive change and social workers
should be mindful of such opportunities.
Imber-Black (2016) proposes the use of ther-
apeutic rituals to assist families with difficult
transitions and life events.

With its emphasis on life stories (trajecto-
ries) that unfold over time, the LCP is a particu-
larly good fit with narrative approaches to social
work. Narrative practice focuses on helping
clients examine the meanings they attribute
to events in their life journeys. It attempts to
uncover clients’ dominant story lines and to
help them move from problem-centered stories
to coping and empowering stories (Burack-
Weiss, Lawrence, & Mijangos, 2017). Narra-
tive approaches to practice can be used with
families, small groups, communities, and orga-
nizations, as well as with individuals. For exam-
ple, the appreciative model of organizational
change seeks to engage organizational stake-
holders in identifying positive components of
the organization and shared dreams of what it
can become. Stakeholders are encouraged to
recall and tell stories about events when the
organization was vibrant, energetic, and lively
(Newhard, 2012).

362 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

Research on life events suggests that social
workers should be alert to recent stressful life
events when assessing individuals, families,
and communities, as well as to stressful life
events, especially traumatic ones, in earlier life
stages that may be impacting current function-
ing. The expanding research on turning points
in life trajectories can help social workers
design turning point interventions that help to
break cycles of dysfunction in individuals and
the social systems with which they interact.

The LCP emphasis on human agency is con-
sistent with social work approaches that focus
on individual, family, community, and organi-
zational strengths. It is a source of hope even in
the most intractable situations. Making careful
assessments about whether circumstances call
for personal agency of the client, proxy agency
by the social worker or some other advocate, or
for organizing for collective agency opens
more opportunities for action. Enhancing col-
lective agency is a major goal of family, small
group, and community interventions.

Conclusion

The Council on Social Work Education (2015)
states that social work practice is guided by
“knowledge based on scientific inquiry” (p. 5)
and informed by “multi-disciplinary sources
and multiple ways of knowing” (p. 8). It fur-
ther states that social workers critically
evaluate and apply theories of human behav-
ior to engage with, assess, intervene with, and
evaluate practice with individuals, families
groups, organizations, and communities. This
article has demonstrated that the LCP is a theo-
retical perspective on human behavior that is
informed by multiple methods of scientific
inquiry in multiple disciplines. It shows that
the LCP and the research that supports it have
implications for practice with families, groups,
organizations, and communities, as well as
with individuals. It is an important perspective
for social workers to add to their multi-theoret-
ical tool kit.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of
interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD

Elizabeth D. Hutchison https://orcid.org/0000
-0002-9344-8757

References

Abendroth, A., Huffman, M., & Treas, J. (2014).
The parity penalty in life course perspective:
Motherhood and occupational status in 13
European countries. American Sociological
Review, 79, 993-1014. doi:10.1177/0003122
414545986

Alwin, D. (2012). Integrating varieties of life course
concepts. The Journals of Gerontology, Series
B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences,
67, 206-220. doi:10.1093/geronb/gbr146

Alwin, D., McCammon, R., & Hofer, S. (2006).
Studying baby boom cohorts within a demo-
graphic and developmental context: Conceptual
and methodological issues. In S. Whitbourne &
S. Willis (Eds.), The baby boomers grow up:
Contemporary perspectives on midlife (pp. 45-
71). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Arnett, J. J. (2015). Emerging adulthood: The
winding road from the late teens through the
twenties (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.

Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of
human agency. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 1, 164-180. doi:10.1111/j.1745-
6916.2006.00011.x

Barajas, R., Philipsen, N., & Brooks-Gunn, J.
(2008). Cognitive and emotional outcomes for
children in poverty. In D. Crane & T. Heaton
(Eds.), Handbook of families & poverty
(pp. 311-333). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Barban, N. (2013). Family trajectories and health:
A life course perspective. European Journal of
Population, 29, 357-385. doi:10.1007/s10680-
013-9296-3

Bauldry, S., Shanahan, M., Boardman, J., Miech,
R., & Macmillan, R. (2012). A life course
model of self-rated health through adoles-
cence and young adulthood. Social Science &
Medicine, 75, 1311-1320. doi:10.1016/j.socs-
cimed.2012.05.017

Benner, A. (2011). The transition to high school:
Current knowledge, future directions. Educa-
tional Psychology Review, 23, 299-328. doi:
10.1007/s10648-011-9152-0

Hutchison 363

Burack-Weiss, A., Lawrence, L., & Mijangos, L.
(Eds.). (2017). Narrative in social work prac-
tice. New York, NY: Columbia University
Press.

Cappeliez, P., Beaupré, M., & Robitaille, A. (2008).
Characteristics and impact of life turning
points for older adults. Ageing International,
32, 54-64. doi:10.1007/s12126-008-9005-4

Carlson, E. (2009). 20th-century U.S. generations.
Population Bulletin, 64, 1-17.

Carpentier, N., Bernard, P., Grenier, A., &
Guberman, N. (2010). Using the life course
perspective to study the entry into the illness
trajectory: The perspective of caregivers of peo-
ple with Alzheimer’s disease. Social Science &
Medicine, 70, 1501-1508. doi:10.1016/j.socs-
cimed.2009.12.038

Clark, R., Glick, J., & Bures, R. (2009). Immigrant
families over the life course: Research direc-
tions and needs. Journal of Family Issues, 30,
852-872.

Council on Social Work Education. (2015).
Educational policy. Alexandria, VA: Author.

Crystal, S., Shea, D., & Reyes, A. (2017). Cumula-
tive advantage, cumulative disadvantage, and
evolving patterns of late-life inequality. The
Gerontologist, 57, 910-920. doi:10.1093/geront/
gnw056

Della Porta, D., & Diani, M. (2006). Social move-
ments: An introduction (2nd ed.). Malden,
MA: Blackwell.

Dimock, M. (2019). Defining generations: Where
Millennials end and generation Z begins. Pew
Research Center. Retrieved from https://www
.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where
-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/

Djundeva, M. (2015). Linked lives. In International
encyclopedia of the social & behavior sciences
(2nd ed., Vol. 14, pp. 230-235). doi:10.1016/
B978-0-08-097086-8.34051-X

Drake, B. (2014). 6 new findings about Millennials.
Pew Research Center. Retrieved from www
.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/07/6-new
-findings-about-millennials

Elder, G., Jr. (1974). Children of the great depres-
sion. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press.

Elder, G., Jr. (1994). Time, human agency, and
social change: Perspectives on the life course.
Social Psychology Quarterly, 57, 4-15.

Elder, G., Jr. (1998). The life course as develop-
mental theory. Child Development, 69, 1-12.

Elder, G., Jr., & Giele, J. (2009). The craft of life
course research. New York, NY: Guilford
Press.

Evans, B., Crogan, N., Belyea, M., & Coon, D.
(2009). Utility of the life course perspective in
research with Mexican American caregivers of
older adults. Journal of Transcultural Nursing,
20, 5-14. doi:10.1177/1043659608325847

Ferraro, K., & Shippee, T. (2009). Aging and
cumulative inequality: How does inequality
get under the skin? The Gerontologist, 49,
333-343. doi:10.1093/geront/gnp034

Fry, R., Igielnik, R., & Patten, E. (2018). How
Millennials today compare with their grand-
parents 50 years ago. Pew Research Center.
Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org
/fact-tank/2018/03/16/how-millennials-compare
-with-their-grandparents/

Fry, R., & Parker, K. (2018). Early benchmarks
show “post-Millennials” on track to be most
diverse, best-educated generation yet. Pew
Research Center. Retrieved from https://www
.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/11/15/early-bench
marks-show-post-millennials-on-track-to-be
-most-diverse-best-educated-generation-yet/

Germain, C. (1990). Life forces and the anatomy of
practice. Smith College Studies in Social Work,
60, 138-152. doi:10.1080/00377319009516670

Germain, C. (1994). Emerging conceptions of fam-
ily development over the life course. Families in
Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human
Services, 75, 259-268.

Germain, C., & Gitterman, A. (1996). The life
model of social work practice: Advances in
theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.

Gilman, S. (2012). The successes and challenges
of life course epidemiology: A commentary on
Gibb, Fergusson and Horwood. Social Science
& Medicine, 75, 2124-2128. doi:10.1016/j.
socscimed.2012.08.007

Gong, F., Xu, J., Fujishiro, K., & Takeuchi, D.
(2011). A life course perspective on migration
and mental health among Asian immigrants:
The role of human agency. Social Science &
Medicine, 73, 1618-1626. doi:10.1016/j.socs-
cimed.2011.09.014

Greenfield, E., & Marks, N. (2006). Linked lives:
Adult children’s problems and their par-
ents’ psychological and relational well-being.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 442-454.

Hankivsky, O. (2012). Women’s health, men’s health,
and gender and health: Implications of intersec-
tionality. Social Science & Medicine, 74, 1712-
1720. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.11.029

Hareven, T. (Ed.). (1978). Transitions: The family
and the life course in historical perspective.
New York, NY: Academic Press.

364 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

Hitlin, S., & Elder, G., Jr. (2007). Time, self, and the curi-
ously abstract concept of agency. Sociological
Theory, 25, 170-191. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558
.2007.00303.x

Hser, Y., Hamilton, A., & Niv, N. (2009).
Understanding drug use over the life course:
Past, present, and future. Journal of Drug
Issues, 31, 231-236. doi:10.1177/00220426090
3900119

Hubley, A., & Arim, R. (2012). Subjective age in early
adolescence: Relationships with chronological
age, pubertal timing, desired age, and problem
behaviors. Journal of Adolescence, 35, 357-366.
doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.08.005

Huinink, J., & Feldhaus, M. (2009). Family
research from the life course perspective. Inter-
national Sociology, 24, 299-324. doi:10.1177
/0268580909102910

Hutchison, E. (2005). The life course perspective:
A promising approach for bridging the micro
and macro worlds for social workers. Families
in Society: The Journal of Contemporary
Social Services, 86, 143-152.

Hygen, B., Belsky, J., Stenseng, F., Lydersen, S.,
Guzey, I., & Wichstrom, L. (2015). Child
exposure to serious life events, COMT, and
aggression: Testing differential susceptibility
theory. Developmental Psychology, 51, 1098-
1104. doi:10.1037/dev0000020

Imber-Black, E. (2016). Creating meaningful
rituals for new life cycle transitions. In M.
McGoldrick, N. Preto, & B. Carter (Eds.), The
expanding family life cycle: Individual, family,
and social perspectives (5th ed., pp. 493-505).
Boston, MA: Pearson.

Jee, H., & Park, J. (2017). Selection of an optimal set
of biomarkers and comparative analyses of bio-
logical age estimation models in Korean females.
Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 70, 84-
91. doi:10.1016/j.archger.2017.01.005

Jenson, J., & Fraser, M. (2016). Social policy for
children and families: A risk and resilience
perspective (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA:
SAGE.

Johnson, M., Crosnoe, R., & Elder, G. (2011).
Insights on adolescence from a life course
perspective. Journal of Research on Adoles-
cence, 21, 273-280. doi:10.1111/j.1532-7795
.2010.00728.x

Khaw, L., & Hardesty, J. (2007). Theorizing the
process of leaving: Turning points and tra-
jectories in the stages of change. Family
Relations, 56, 413-425. doi:10.1111/j.1741-
3729.2007.00470.x

King, W. (2009). Toward a life-course perspective
of police organizations. Journal of Research
in Crime and Delinquency, 46, 213-244.
doi:10.1177/0022427808330874

Kirk, D. (2012). Residential change as a turning
point in the life course of crime: Desistance or
temporary cessation? Criminology, 50, 329-
357. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00262.x

Kunze, F., Raes, A., & Bruch, H. (2015). It matters
how old you feel: Antecedents and performance
consequences of average relative subjective age
in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology,
100, 1511-1526. doi:10.1037/a0038909

Landes, S., Wilder, J., & Williams, D. (2017).
The effect of race and birth cohort on the
veteran mortality differential. Social Science
& Medicine, 179, 37-44. doi:10.1016/j.socs-
cimed.2017.02.030

Leong, F., Eggerth, D., & Flynn, M. (2014). A
life course perspective on immigrant occupa-
tion health and well-being. In S. Leka & R.
Sinclair (Eds.), Contemporary occupational
health psychology (pp. 97-113). Chichester,
UK: John Wiley.

Liang, K. (2014). The cross-domain correlates of
subjective age in Chinese oldest-old. Aging &
Mental Health, 18, 217-224. doi:10.1080/1360
7863.2013.823377

Lindström, M., Modén, B., & Rosvall, M. (2013). A
life-course perspective on economic stress and
tobacco smoking: A population-based study.
Addiction, 108, 1305-1314. doi:10.1111/
add.12143

Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (2003). Models of
agency: Sociocultural diversity in the con-
struction of action. In G. Berman & J. Berman
(Eds.), Cross-cultural differences in perspec-
tives on the self (pp. 2-57). Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press.

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves.
American Psychologist, 41, 954-969.

McFarland, M., Pudrovska, T., Schieman, S.,
Ellison, C., & Bierman, A. (2013). Does a can-
cer diagnosis influence religiosity? Integrating
a life course perspective. Social Science
Research, 42, 311-320. doi:10.1016/j.ssre-
search.2012.10.006

McGoldrick, M., Preto, N., & Carter, B. (Eds.).
(2016). The expanding family life cycle:
Individual, family, and social perspectives (5th
ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

McMichael, P. (2017). Development and social
change: A global perspective (6th ed.). Los
Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Hutchison 365

Min, J., Silverstein, M., & Lendon, J. (2012).
Intergenerational transmission of values over the
family life course. Advances in Life Course
Research, 17, 112-120. doi:10.1016/j.alcr.2012
.05.001

National Association of Social Workers. (2017).
Code of ethics of the National Association of
Social Workers. Washington, DC: Author.

National Association of Social Workers,
Association of Social Work Boards, Council
on Social Work Education, & Clinical Social
Work Association. (2017). Standards for tech-
nology in social work practice. Washington,
DC: National Association of Social Workers.

Newhard, M. (2012). Appreciative inquiry. In W.
Rothwell (Ed.), The encyclopedia of human
resource management: Short entries (pp. 42-49).
New York, NY: John Wiley.

Newman, K. S. (2008). Ties that bind: Cultural
interpretations of delayed adulthood in Western
Europe and Japan. Sociological Forum, 23, 645-
669. doi:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.00089.x

Oesterle, S., Kuklinski, M., Hawkins, D., Skinner,
M., Guttmannova, K., & Rhew, I. (2018). Long-
term effects of the communities that care trial
on substance use, antisocial behavior, and vio-
lence through age 21 years. American Journal
of Public Health, 108, 659-665. doi:10.2105/
AJPH.2018.304320

Olsson, H., Strand, S., & Kristiansen, L. (2014).
Reaching a turning point—How patients in
forensic care describe trajectories of recovery.
Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 28,
505-514. doi:10.1111/scs.12075

Orth, U., & Luciano, E. (2015). Self-esteem, nar-
cissism, and stressful life events: Testing
for selection and socialization. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 707-
721. doi:10.1037/pspp0000049

Padgett, C., & Remle, R. C. (2016). Financial assis-
tance patterns from midlife parents to adult
children: A test of the cumulative advantage
hypothesis. Journal of Family and Economic
Issues, 37, 435-449. doi:10.1007/s10834-015-
9461-4

Page, A., Milner, A., Morrell, S., & Taylor, R. (2013).
The role of under-employment and unemploy-
ment in recent birth cohort effects in Australian
suicide. Social Science & Medicine, 93, 155-
162. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.03.039

Pais, J. (2014). Cumulative structural disadvan-
tage and racial health disparities: The path-
ways of childhood socioeconomic influence.
Demography, 51, 1729-1753. doi:10.1007/
s13524-014-0330-9

Parker, K., Graf, N., & Igielnik, R. (2019).
Generation Z looks a lot like Millennials on
key social and political issues. Retrieved from
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/01/17
/generation-z-looks-a-lot-like-millennials-on
-key-social-and-political-issues/

Parsell, C., Eggins, E., & Marston, G. (2017).
Human agency and social work research: A
systematic search and synthesis of social work
literature. The British Journal of Social Work,
47, 238-255. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcv145

Pearlin, L., & Skaff, M. (1996). Stress and the life
course: A paradigmatic alliance. The Geronto-
logist, 36, 239-247.

Prior, N. (2013). Juvenile justice and alterna-
tive education: A life course assessment of
best practices. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly
Publishing LLC.

Raphael, D., & Bryant, T. (2015). Power, intersec-
tionality and the life-course: Identifying the
political and economic structures of welfare
states that support or threaten health. Social
Theory & Health, 13, 245-266. doi:10.1057/
sth.2015.18

Rooij, S., Wouters, H., Yonker, J., Painter, R., &
Roseboom, T. (2010). Prenatal undernutri-
tion and cognitive function in late adulthood.
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America, 107,
16681-16886. doi:10.1073/pnas.1009459107

Rowley, S., Helaire, L., & Banerjee, M. (2010).
Reflecting on racism: School involvement
and perceived teacher discrimination in
African American mothers. Journal of Applied
Developmental Psychology, 31, 83-92.
doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2009.08.001

Ruark, A., Kennedy, C., Mazibuko, N., Diamini, L.,
Nunn, A., Green, E., & Surkan, P. J. (2016).
From first love to marriage and maturity: A life-
course-perspective on HIV risk among young
Swazi adults. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 18,
812-825. doi:10.1080/13691058.2015.1134811

Salvatore, J., Meyers, J., Yan, J., Alieve, F.,
Lansford, J., Pettit, G., . . . Dick, D. (2015).
Intergenerational continuity in parents’ and
adolescents’ externalizing problems: The
role of life events and their interaction with
GABRA2. Journal of Abnormal Psychology,
124, 709-728.

Scherger, S. (2009). Social change and the timing of
family transitions in West Germany: Evidence
from cohort comparisons. Time & Society, 18,
106-129. doi:10.1177/096143X080089.x

Seabrook, J., & Avison, W. (2012). Socioeconomic
status and cumulative disadvantage processes

366 Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 100(4)

across the life course: Implications for health
outcomes. Canadian Review of Sociology, 49,
50-68. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.2011.01280.x

Shanahan, M. (2000). Pathways to adulthood in
changing societies: Variability and mecha-
nisms in life course perspective. Annual
Review of Sociology, 27, 667-692.

Shonkoff, J., Garner, A., Committee on Psycho-
social Aspects of Child and Family Health,
Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and
Dependent Care, & Section on Developmental
and Behavioral Pediatrics. (2012). The life-
long effects of early childhood adversity and
toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232-e246.
doi:10.1542/peds.2011-2663

Solomon, Z., Helvitz, H., & Zerach, G. (2009).
Subjective age, PTSD and physical health
among war veterans. Aging & Mental Health,
13, 405-413. doi:10.1080/13607860802459856

Sprague, C., Scanlon, M., & Pantalone, D. (2017).
Qualitative research methods to advance
research on health inequities among previ-
ously incarcerated women living with HIV in
Alabama. Health Education & Behavior, 44,
716-727. doi:10.1177/1090198117726573

Stephan, Y., Chalabaev, A., Kotter-Grühn, D., &
Jaconelli, A. (2013). “Feeling younger, being
stronger”: An experimental study of subjec-
tive age and physical functioning among older
adults. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B:
Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 68,
1-7. doi:10.1093/geronb/gbs037

Stephan, Y., Demulier, V., & Terracciano, A. (2012).
Personality, self-rated health, and subjective age
in a life-span sample: The moderating role of

chronological age. Psychology and Aging, 27,
875-880. doi:10.1037/a0028301

Szydlik, M. (2012). Generations: Connections
across the life course. Advances in Life
Course Research, 17, 100-111. doi:10.1016/j.
alcr.2012.03.002

Tanielian, T., & Jaycox, L. (Eds.). (2008). Invisible
wounds of war: Psychological and cognitive
injuries, their consequences, and services to
assist recovery. Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation.

Torres, J., & Young, M. (2016). A life-course
perspective on legal status stratification and
health. SSM—Population Health, 2, 141-148.
doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2016.02.011

Vikat, A., Speder, Z., Beets, G., Billari, F., Buhler,
C., Desesquelles, A., . . . Solaz, A. (2007).
Generations and Gender Survey (GGS):
Towards a better understanding of relationships
and processes in the life course. Demographic
Research, 17, 389-440. doi:10.4054/DemRes
.2007.17.14

Wadsworth, S., & Southwell, K. (2011). Military
families: Extreme work and extreme “work-
family.” The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 638,
163-183. doi:10.1177/0002716211416445

Warner, D., & Brown, T. (2011). Understanding
how race/ethnicity and gender define age-
trajectories of disability: An intersectionality
approach. Social Science & Medicine, 72, 1236-
1248. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.02.034

Yoshikawa, H. (2011). Immigrants raising citizens:
Undocumented parents and their young chil-
dren. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Turn in your highest-quality paper
Get a qualified writer to help you with

“ 6210 Week 10 Assignment Draft ”

Get high-quality paper

NEW! AI matching with writer

Order a unique copy of this paper

Type of paper needed:

Pages:

600 words

Academic level:

We'll send you the first draft for approval by September 11, 2018 at 10:52 AM

Total price:

$26

Our Services

6210 Week 10 Assignment Draft

Order a unique copy of this paper