Sugarman’s activity asks you to map out (draw) your lifeline so that you can identify the peaks (highs) and troughs (lows) that you have experienced over you

Life-Span Development Frameworks, accounts and strategies

Second edition

Léonie Sugarman

First edition published 1986 by Methuen & Co Ltd.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy copy of this or any of taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of ebooks please go to

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This edition first published 2001 by Psychology Press Ltd, 27 Church Rd, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc.,

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Psychology Press is a part of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2001 Léonie Sugarman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including

photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sugarman, Leonie, 1950–

Life-span development: frameworks, accounts, and strategies/ Leonie Sugarman–2nd ed.

p. cm. Previous ed. published under title: Life-span development.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-19264-1–ISBN 0-145-19265-X

1. Developmental psychology. I. Sugarman, Leonie, 1950– Life-span development. II. Title.

BF713. S84 2001 155–dc210 2001031826

ISBN 0-203-62694-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-63080-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-19264-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-19265-X (pbk)

Contents

List of tables vi List of figures vii List of boxes viii List of activities x Preface to second edition xi

1 Life-span developmental psychology 1 2 Collecting data about lives 31 3 Age stages and lifelines 54 4 Cumulative sequences 77 5 Developmental tasks 103 6 Life events and transitions 127 7 Dynamic continuity through narrative 156 8 Intervention 183

References 219

1 Life-span developmental psychology

It is interesting to note how rarely the term development is used to describe changes in the later years. Despite current emphasis on a lifespan perspective, change in later years is still typically described as aging. In the same way, although the word day can refer to the twenty- four-hour span, we normally use it to refer to only the brighter hours. Aging has come to refer to the darker side of growing old. To make changes in later life one must fight against all sorts of popular mindsets.

(Langer, 1989)

Life-span development is about every one of us. In keeping with this, the text of the present book is interspersed with activities that encourage you to reflect on both the ideas introduced in the text and their place in your own life and the lives of others. You are invited to complete these exercises as you read through the book, working alone or using them as the basis of class discussions. Beginning as you mean to go on, can I ask you first of all to turn your attention to Activity 1.1.

Activity 1.1 Lifeline

Take a blank sheet of paper and, allowing the left and right hand edges of the page to represent the beginning and end of your life respectively, draw a line across the page (in the manner of a temperature chart) to depict the peaks and troughs experienced in your life so far, and those you would predict for the future.

When finished, sit back and ask yourself some questions about this graph— your “lifeline”:

• What is its general shape? Does it continue to rise throughout life? Does it depict peaks and troughs around some arbitrary mean? Alternatively, is there a plateau and subsequent fall in the level of the curve? Is it punctuated with major or only relatively minor peaks and troughs?

• The horizontal axis represents time; but how about the vertical axis—what

Life-span development 2

dimension does that reflect? • What (or who) triggered the peaks and troughs in the graph? Why did they

occur at the time that they did? • What might have been done (or was done) to make the peaks higher and the

troughs shallower? How might the incidence and height of the peaks be increased in the future? And the incidence and depth of the troughs decreased?

• What positive results emerged from the troughs and what were the negative consequences of the peaks?

Consideration of questions such as those in Activity 1.1 form the subject matter of life- span developmental psychology. It is to questions such as these that the present book is directed. Whilst life-span developmental psychology is an area that has, as it were, come of age during the last two decades, it is founded on the work of theorists such as Jung (Staude, 1981), Bühler (Bühler & Massarik, 1968), Havighurst (1972), and Erikson (1980). None the less, it was not until 1980 that the Annual Review of Psychology included its first review of life-span developmental psychology, defining it as a discipline concerned with the description, explanation, and modification (optimisation) of within- individual change and stability from birth (or possibly from conception) to death and of between-individual differences and similarities in within-individual change (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980). Since the publication of this review the area has been accepted into the mainstream of psychology and its aims have remained largely unchanged.

Change and continuity

To live is to change. This truism is implicit in the notion of life-span development. We are each palpably different from the person we were 10 years ago and the person we will be in 10, 20, or 30 years’ time. Life-span developmental psychology is concerned with documenting, explaining, and influencing these changes. In Activity 1.2 you are asked to think about your own life in a different way to the Lifeline exercise—a way that will probably direct attention to how different we all are at different ages.

However, despite the changes that beset all of us as we grow up and grow older, we do not become totally different people. The life course is characterised by continuity as well as change, and we operate on the assumption that past behaviour and temperament are reliable guides to the future. Thus,

Life-span developmental psychology 3

Activity 1.2 Changes or consistencies?

• Think of yourself as you are, were, or imagine you will be, at the ages of 7, 17, 27, 37, 47, 57, 67, 77, and 87 years.

• Now think of your priorities, your skills, your worries, your relationships, your enjoyments:

– what changes? – what remains the same?

we might talk about someone acting “out of character” and in writing a job reference might strive to predict future performance on the basis of past and present achievements. The tension between change and continuity is taken up in more detail elsewhere— through an overview of change, consistency and chaos as concepts for organising life- span data (in Chapter 3), and through discussion of the concepts of dynamic continuity and narrative construction (in Chapter 7).

Development

This book is not merely about change. It is about development. Not all change across the life course would necessarily be described as developmental. “Development” is not an empirical term (Reese & Overton, 1970), although on occasions it is used as though it were (Kaplan, 1983). No matter how much data we were able to collect about the course of an individual’s life this, of itself, would not enable us to define what is meant by the term “development”, unless, that is, we were to say that whatever happens across the life span is what constitutes development. This, however, would reduce developmental psychology to a largely atheoretical data-collection exercise. Furthermore, because such a perspective makes no judgements as to what is better or preferable, it negates the notion of development-enhancing interventions. As, from this viewpoint, any life course is as good (or as developed) as any other, there are no grounds for attempting to influence it.

As an alternative, we might try to define development empirically by reference to norms—saying that development is what happens to the majority of people across the life course. This, however, would also be flawed. It represents a conflation of the “is” and the “ought”, seeing them as synonymous. The intervention implications would be that people should be encouraged to be like the average, discouraging both individuality and the exceptional.

Rather than emerging in some self-evident way from empirical data, the concept of development requires the initial postulation of assumptions,

Life-span development 4

Activity 1.3 How would you define development?

• How would you define development? How would you distinguish it from mere change?

• Jot down some ideas of your own and, if possible, discuss them with a group of colleagues,

• Think about the extent to which your ideas concur with those of the authors quoted below.

underlying premises or value judgements as to its defining characteristics. The concept of development centres on a value-based notion of improvement. These standards of comparison precede empirical observation. Changes in amount and in quality are evaluated against some implicit or explicit standard as to what constitutes the “good” or the “ideal”. In other words, we begin with a definition of development and then examine data to see whether they meet our criteria. For example, whether or not it is viewed as development when adolescents challenge the received wisdom of their elders depends on what we mean by the term. Opinions on such matters can vary. Value judgements are involved. Use Activity 1.3 to help you decide what you think of when you think of development.Box 1.1 provides some suggestions on how to structure your ideas.

The definitions in Box 1.1 paint a picture of a person learning and benefiting from experience; accomplishing tasks characterising different stages

Box 1.1 Defining development

Thomas (1990, p. 50) emphasises the value-laden basis of concepts of development when he writes:

People are developing normally (properly, desirably, satisfactorily, acceptably) when:

• they feel that they are fulfilling their own needs at least moderately well, • their behavior does not unduly encroach upon other people’s rights and

opportunities, • they fulfil the responsibilities typically held as reasonable for people of their

ability (physical and mental) and social environment, and • their personal characteristics do not cause others to treat them in ways

which harm them physically, psychologically, or socially or which deny them opportunities [equal to those of their peers of the same age, gender, and physical, intellectual, and/or social behaviour] to pursue their ambitions.

Life-span developmental psychology 5

Chaplin (1988, p. 45) focuses on the process of development, rejecting the idea of directional movement toward an explicit, coherent “end-state”:

We grow and change in more of a spiral than in a straight line. We go backwards as well as forwards. Perhaps we can only go forwards if we go backwards and regress into childlike feelings first. Growth is working with the rhythms, not proceeding from some depressing reality to a perfect harmonious self in the future.

Rogers (1980, p. 80), in contemplating his own life, sees development as the personal expansion that comes from learning, itself the outcome of risk taking:

Perhaps the major reason I am willing to take chances is that I have found that in doing so, whether I succeed or fail, I learn. Learning, especially learning from experience, has been a prime element in making my life worthwhile. Such learning helps me to expand. So I continue to take risks.

In an otherwise fairly abstract and technical discussion, Ford and Lerner (1992, p. 42) use the metaphor of a sea journey to capture the adaptive nature of human development. Although maps and charts can help us on our travels, there is always the chance that we will meet the unexpected, the unforeseeable and the unfamiliar. They see development as:

…a continuous and sometimes unpredictable voyage throughout life, sailing from seas that have become familiar into oceans as yet uncharted toward destinations to be imagined, defined, and redefined as the voyage proceeds, with occasional, often unpredictable transformations of one’s vessel and sailing skills and the oceans upon which one sails resulting from unforeseen circumstances.

of the life course and on which later development, at least to some extent, rests; and working through the implications of significant life events to emerge a stronger, more mature, more “developed” person (Sugarman, 1996).

In the past, developmental psychology was, with a few exceptions, synonymous with child development. The term development was applied only to physical, cognitive, personal, or social changes that met a number of criteria, such as being sequential, unidirectional, universal, irreversible, and end-state or goal-directed. Because these criteria are met by few of the life changes of the adult years, if adulthood is not to be construed as a period largely devoid of development, then this restrictive definition must be challenged.

How, though, should we proceed with the task of defining development? First, a good

Life-span development 6

place to begin is by following Kaplan’s (1983) advice to distinguish between development as an ideal process and the realities of what actually happens during the course of a life. Development, “pertains to a rarely, if ever, attained ideal, not the actual” (Kaplan, 1983, p. 188). With this in mind, empirical studies can then furnish data concerning the extent to which individuals do or do not develop and may provide information concerning factors that facilitate or impede development.

Second, development is better thought of as a process than as a state. Thus, we ask not whether a person has reached some ideal end-state or telos, but rather (assuming such an end-state exists, even in theory) the extent to which he or she is moving in its direction. In this vein, Kaplan (1983) defines development as movement in the direction of perfection, although he acknowledges that what we mean by perfection is neither transparent nor easy to articulate. None the less, from a variety of theoretical perspectives come common themes if not of perfection, then at least of successful ageing (Ryff, 1989). Thus, accounts of personal growth and ways of being that “surpass the average” (Jourard, 1974) include descriptions of self-actualisation (Maslow, 1970), the healthy personality (Jourard, 1974), and the mature personality (Allport, 1964). Rogers’ (1961) concept of the fully functioning person—summarised in Box 1.2—serves to illustrate the notion of development as a process towards a theoretical ideal.

Box 1.2 The fully functioning person (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1989; Rogers, 1961)

It is somewhat misleading to talk of “the” fully functioning person because Rogers does not see it as an achievable, “developed” state. Rather, development is denoted by the process of moving in the direction of becoming more fully functioning. It is a process with some discernible, universal qualities: an increasing openness to experience, increasingly existential living, and an increasing trust in one’s own organism.

1. An increasing openness to experience. To become more open to experience involves becoming less defensive—the polar opposite of openness. Defensiveness is where experiences are distorted in awareness or are denied awareness because they are perceived as threatening. In this way they are temporarily rendered harmless. Movement from the pole of defensiveness towards the pole of openness to experience allows people to become more able to listen to themselves and to experience what is going on within them. It is movement towards greater emotional self-awareness and acceptance. Feelings—be they positive or negative—are experienced more fully.

2. Increasingly existential living. As a person becomes more open to experience he or she tends to live less in the past or the future and more in the present moment. This is what Rogers means by increasingly existential

Life-span developmental psychology 7

living. To live fully in the moment, “means an absence of rigidity, of tight organization, of the imposition of structure on experience. It means instead a maximum of adaptability, a discovery of structure in experience, a flowing, changing organization of self and personality.” (Rogers, 1961, p. 189).

3. An increasing trust in one’s own organism. Rather than depending on abstract principles, codes of action or previous experience for guidance, people who are open to their own experience and are living fully in the present are able to trust and be guided by their “total organismic reaction” to situations. They are confident that their own experience provides a sufficient and satisfactory basis for deciding how to respond to a particular situation.

The process of becoming a fully functioning person is rarely smooth. Rather, it tends to occur unevenly, by what Rogers (1961) refers to as “moments of movement” occurring in situations where people (who are often, but not always, in therapy) feel themselves to be fully accepted and “received”. The good life that results from this movement is not a fixed state of virtue, contentment, or happiness in which the person is adjusted, fulfilled or actualised. Indeed, it is not a state at all. It is a movement from fixity towards changingness, from rigid structure towards flow, and from stasis to process. It is a continuing process of being in which people discover that, if they are open to their experiences, then doing what “feels right” is “a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying” (Rogers, 1961, p. 189).

Age

The question “What is your age?” might seem to have a simple, unambiguous answer— you are 18 years and 6 months, 30 years and 2 months, 89 years and 11 months, or whatever. However, our chronological age is an incomplete statement of “how old we are” (see Activity 1.4), as is indicated when we describe someone as being “young for their age”, as “old before their time”, or as “having aged 10 years in the last 3 weeks”. At any one time we are both old and young—the 15-year-old is “too young” to vote and “too old” for primary school.

Non-chronological concepts of age, that is, our psychological, social, functional, and biological ages (see Box 1.3), all contribute to the question of how old we are. None the less, it is chronological age that is almost universally used in developmental psychology as either a main or subsidiary criterion in anchoring accounts of change over the life course. Such categorisation of people and processes according to age serves to facilitate the organisation of knowledge, individuals, and society, and provides a framework in relation to which we can order much of our daily lives. However, age norms are

Life-span development 8

inevitably averages, with many, if not most,

Activity 1.4 How old are you?

How old are you? I am———years old. But are you?

• I look as if I am———years old. • I feel as if I am———years old • I behave as if I am———years old.

Complete the following sentences:

• The best thing about my current age is… • At my age I should… • At my age I should not… • I will be old when… • In ten years’ time I will… • In ten years’ time I won’t be able to… • I feel I’m already too old to… • The best age to be is…

If possible, compare your answers with those of other people of different ages. You might find that notions of “old” and “young” bear very little relation to chronological age. I once overheard my 3-year-old daughter describing her babysitter to a friend as being “Really, really old—at least twelve”. In fact the babysitter was fifteen, and my concern was that she might be “too young”.

individuals deviating from them to some degree. An “age-irrelevant” concept of development (Baer, 1970) focuses not on the age at which particular experiences occurred, but at their point in a sequence of experiences.

Ageism

Because the topic of age is almost inevitably implicated in discussions of life-span development, it is important constantly to be on the alert for evidence of ageism in our own or others’ thinking. However, in the same way as we asked what is meant by the concept of age, so, too, we need to ask what we mean by ageism. Perhaps you could spend a few moments reflecting on and jotting down what you understand by the term.

Over a quarter of a century ago the term ageism was invoked to express concern about the condition and treatment of older people during the 1960s

Life-span developmental psychology 9

Box 1.3 Non-chronological age variables

Key “non-chronological” age variables (Barak & Schiffman, 1981; Birren & Renner, 1977) include:

• Subjective (or psychological) age—people’s sense of their own age as, for example, “young”, “middle-aged” or “grown up”, irrespective of their chronological age. Subjective age is reflected in the adage, “You’re as old as you feel”.

• Social age—the extent to which a person’s social roles, lifestyle, and attitudes conform to the norms and the social expectations for someone of their chronological age. Are they “acting their age”, or perhaps behaving as “mutton dressed up as lamb”?

• Functional age—a person’s capacities or abilities relative to others of similar age. Functional age can be applied to the condition of an individual’s organ and body systems (such as heart and lung capacity) and to his or her intellectual and practical skills.

• Biological age—an estimate of the individual’s present position in relation to his or her potential life span. The biological age of, say, a fit 70-year-old may be less than that of an unfit 50-year-old.

and 1970s. Thus Butler (1987; Butler & Lewis, 1973) defined ageism as, “a process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this for skin colour and gender” (Butler, 1987, p. 22). This remains the most widely assumed meaning of the term, although it does have certain weaknesses and limitations. Seeing ageism as something that applies only to older people fosters a “them” and “us” view of “the elderly” as a minority group, different and separate from the rest of society (Bytheway, 1995; Johnson & Bytheway, 1993). In this sense, the concept of ageism can itself be seen as ageist. This is perhaps understandable given the prevalence of the view of old age as a period of decline and marginalisation. If old age is seen as inevitably accompanied by decrement and decline then it is not surprising if fear or, at best, ambivalence about ageing leads young and middle-aged people to distance themselves from those who are older. The result is that so-called “enlightened” views of ageing may incorporate a Victorian sense of noblesse oblige accompanied by images of a gracious but patronising Lady Bountiful. Kalish (1979, p. 398) expressed this perspective thus:

You are poor, lonely, weak, incompetent, ineffectual, and no longer terribly bright. You are sick, in need of better housing and transportation and nutrition, and we—the nonelderly and those elderly who align themselves with us—are finally going to turn our attention to you, the deserving elderly, and relieve you

Life-span development 10

from ageism.

However, even i

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