The Eight Stages Of Lifespan Development

Human beings are very complex in so many ways. Physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and cultural changes are always take place through the course of a one's life. In general sequence of development, there are eight stages of lifespan development from birth to old age which are: prenatal, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood (Stirk, n.d.). Each phase carries own discrete set of considerations and expectations of physical and emotional maturation. In addition, the nature of development during each stage will have an impact on subsequent stages because one's emotional and physical development is cumulative. However, since those development stages seem very important to understand to prepare in our lives, I wondered which stage my friends think they belong to and why, so as a prerequisite to writing this paper, I interviewed two of my friends who are in between twenties and thirties to ask about which stage they would consider themselves to be a part of either young adulthood or middle adulthood.
An interview was conducted with two of my friends, Dogun Kim, who is 28 years old Korean male student at UC Berkeley, and Emily Lee, who just turned 34 years old and has one little son, by phone. The discussion revolved around the questions about the stages of lifespan development. Before sharing specific responses, I clarified the names of periods and explained the basic characteristics of young adulthood and middle adulthood. Both Dogun …show more content…
The rate of development can be differing depending on many factors, but after conducting this interview, I was more able to analyze the different stages in lifespan development and clearly understand the differences between early adulthood and middle adulthood. It was a unique experience to listen stories of other people's life to compare and