Critically discuss and analyse the key physical

Introduction

Sociology of the life course can be termed as the set of theoretical approaches that make the understanding of human lives in an easier and sophisticated manner. According to Deborah Carr the life course sociology is standing on the pillar of four key ingredients, these are like the fact that lives are rooted and shaped with the historical background, moreover social as well as historical factors bind the choice and the action of a particular person to construct their lifespan and though they try to regulate their life with respect to their own choice it is difficult to make it possible to full extent, life of different persons are connected with each other in a social structure, therefore the transition of life and its meaning is dependent with different relationship factors. (Deborah,2012) The flow of life course is always dependent on the different life phase, starting from childhood to the later phase of the life. The health status of a person becomes gradually complicated with the age factor, for a child the cognitive and behavioural factors are dependent on the parental care and social environment and during transition to adolescence these factors dominate a lot (Zhang, et al, 2020). On the other hand for a youth the factors shifts it’s regime to sensation seeking nature, level of anxiety, life goals and their achievement criteria and obviously hope in life, which sometimes push them towards behavioural disorders (Seligman, et al, 2011). On the other hand during mid and old life physical factors prevails the livelihood of a person (Agrigoroaei, et al, 2011). In this following essay we shall discuss the physical, cognitive and behavioural changes occur during the midlife of human.

Midlife and its sociological perspective

The gross span of midlife is 40 to 65 years age of a person. This time is very crucial and sometimes stressful, because during this time of life a person get involved in new responsibilities and under pressure of aging, mortality and chronic diseases. The definition of midlife crisis is broad and it is a psychological condition in which people feel anxiety, depression tension as well as boredom due to the fear of mortality and lower productive time remained in hand. The characteristics of the crisis is manifold and can be summed up as:

1. Boredom and discontent about life.

2. Restless behaviour.

3. Questioning behaviour about previous decisions taken in life.

4. Daydreaming behaviour.

5. Confused behaviour.

6. Depression and sadness.

7. Growing anxiety.

8. Changing in sexual desire.

9. Strange sexual behaviour, like affair with much younger person.

10. Changing in personal ambition.

The reason behind these changes are not straight forward and they occur due to change in physical and psychological balance. Each person face physical changes in midlife and these changes happen due to intricate change in molecular as well as cellular level of a person, called primary aging. On the other hand life style, food habit and psychological factors also effect aging in midlife termed as secondary aging. (Booth, et al, 2011)

Health, well-being and social power in later life course: Theoretical perspective

Study of life course is important because healthy aging is not an easy job and therefore life course study helps to understand the nature of aging and its influence on health and wellbeing. There is a relation between health at younger age and health at later life course in terms of various physical constraints. Life style and food habit also contribute in healthy aging, throughout aging the cognitive behavioural pattern changes, therefore the complexity of behavioural pattern in midlife is at focal position of later life course wellbeing. (Umberson, et al, 2010) In sociological perspective certain theories are there to define health, these theories are discussed with an emphasis on the complete picture of health, illness and medicine.

Functionalism: According to this theory the “ sick role” is a pattern or behaviour defined for the sick person and his/her caregiver. The sick person has no responsibility to fallen as sick and he/she must not have any obligation to fulfil his/her social duties like an well person. However, this exemptions are only given if the sickness is legitimated by a physician. The sickness also confers some responsibilities to the sick person like trying to get well and trying to be positive during illness. Gabe and Bury have discussed the role of functionalism in the analysis of drug and alcohol abuse (Gabe, et al, 2016). On the other hand, Powell has concluded that the functionalism theory may have some fallacious end (Powell, 2017).

Conflict perspective: According to this theory, the social problems related to health are originated due to capitalistic nature of the society. The theoreticians argued that capitalist society Have made health as a commodity and commodification made it saleable at market. People with money and power dominate the system and there fore the subordinate group suffer a lot. Along with this social classes of sexism, racism, agism as well as heterosexism also prevail the healthcare society. Homosexual couples are deprived of spousal healthcare benefits like health insurance in many countries. (Umberson,et al, 2016) As a whole this theory point out the inequality and in homogeneity in the structure of healthcare. Coburn has discussed the role of capitalism in dictating the healthcare system from a political, economic perspective (Coburn, 2010).

Symbolic interactionism: This theory attribute to the fact that health and illness is a social construct. It deals with medicalisation of deviance and emphasize on “sick behaviour rather than bad behaviour”. Once alcoholism was considered to be lazy, addictive and ill behaviour, but this theoretical model always, attribute on the medical reasons behind addictiveness rather than deviated nature of a person. Pederson has discussed the medical use of cannabis in the light of badness to illness (Pederson, 2015).

This above stated theories are unequivocally important for the problems related to midlife crisis. As stated earlier, the mid life is related to problems regarding health, wellbeing and various social problems, therefore, alcohol addiction a serious problem of midlife crisis can be theoretically exemplified by symbolic interactionism (Hanpatchiyakul, et al, 2014; Robinson, 2014). Moreover, Birchard et al. argued that sexual abuse in mid life can be approached by promotion of healthy sexuality (Birchard, et al, 2017).

The theoretical perspective of wellbeing is important to structure the psychological, cognitive behaviour of a person, without use of any instrument. Obviously wellbeing is not a single word and several challenges are there to make a standard theory. The theoretical points are:

Hedonism: In this theory it is stated that human being seek pleasure by balancing pleasure over pain. This is a psychological dogma supported by a few theoretical construct behind psychology of pleasure. However, they also trigger some kind of stand-of in moral psychology which cannot always be supported.

Desire theories: Desire is a central psychological context and it also drives a persons behavioural aspects. This theory has several components like, present desire, comprehensive desire, informed desire etc. It also attributes someone’s hallucination about a particular desire while pursuing some other job. This theory is also a part of welfare economics where desire is a relative term rather than an absolute on.

Objective list theories: This theory enlists the items of wellbeing which are nor related to pleasure or desire (like friendship). At the same time it is a part of hedonism and also related to pleasure out of pain theory.

Sneed et al. derived a relationship between wellbeing, intimacy and identity during midlife using a social study based model (Sneed, et al, 2012). However, Brim et al. have argued that the topic of midlife wellbeing is relatively uncharted (Brim, et al, 2019). Cheng et al. have described the pattern of happiness and wellbeing in life course as a ‘U’ pattern. Where midlife is at the bottom of U (Cheng, et al, 2017)./p>

Social theories related to life course and later life is important to discuss here. The social theory of life course is called life course theory (LCT). This theory deals with multiple factors that shape the people’s life starting from birth and ends at death, in terms of family and its cultural and historical development. The five key concepts, involved in this theory are life events, trajectories, cohorts, transitions during life, turning points. The six major themes involved in this theory are:

Relation between historical time and life course.

Timing

Interdependency of life

Role of human agency

Diversity in the trajectory of life course

Risk related to development and its necessary protection.

Lachman et al. have described the midlife as a pivotal point of life course where ups and downs in earlier phase of life make impression over later life course through the transitional behaviour of midlife (Lachman, et al, 2015). Raymo et al. have discussed the role of midlife employment on the choice of later life employment or retirement using a case study model.

Physical Changes in midlife

The physical changes can occur externally like greying of hair due to loss of loss pigmentation; wrinkled and drooping skin; a loss in muscle mass and strength (sarcopenia); growing problem at lungs and many others. Along with the above stated changes a significant change occurs in sensory organs of human such as change in vision power and ability of hearing. These changes contribute a lot in the cognition power of a person. These changes can also enhanced due to behavioural problems in lifestyle, like alcoholism and/or smoking. (Dasarathy, et al, 2017) Sabia, et al, have stressed on the effect of unhealthy behaviour of a person on age related complaints, in a cohort case study scenario (Sabia, et al, 2014). On the other hand Thorpe, et al, have stressed on the physical and mental health (Thorpe, et al, 2014) Lund, et al, have discussed the importance of the concept of midlife bio-banking in this regard (Lund, et al, 2016).

Major disease like myocardial infraction is a key important point related to midlife of women. Arguments shows that midlife women has relatively less change of returning home after myocardial infractions. Stevens and Thomas have described this matter under the framework of family, work role and other contextual ground. They found returning home after myocardial infraction triggers severe anxiety, emotional overwhelm, psychological changes and physical unrest among women (Stevens, et al, 2012). The change in oestrogen level in the midlife of an women mostly impacts on the heart diseases, as the higher oestrogen level helps to maintain the artery’s inner wall (Merz, et al, 2016). During mid life problems like urinary inconsistency are common. Menezes et al. have discussed this issue using an UK based case study model (Menezes, et al, 2010).

Cognitive changes in midlife

A common perspective regarding cognitive decline is, aging leads to cognition decline. However, this is not the true case in the real scenario. In reality aging leads to enhancement of few thought skills, like tactic knowledge, vocabulary, reasoning, using inductive methods and speaking power. There are controlled believes of a person and these are related to a person’s perspective of believing his/her role in the happening of their life, over the circumstantial reasons. It has been found that the person who believe in internal locus of control, pursued a better life with behavioural, cognitive and motivational positiveness. This control may decline with age but again it is not a hard and fast rule.

Cognitive aging is another key factor in life course. The cognitive ability or intelligence can be classified as fluid or crystalized in nature. With age cognitive skills decrease significantly and therefore performance and intelligence skill decreases significantly. Ryan et al. have connected the midlife cognition decline in women with hormonal changes (Ryan, et al, 2012). On the other hand Henderson discussed the role of Alzheimer’s disease in midlife in the declination of cognitive behaviour (Henderson, et al, 2014). Different types of physical activity is a key process of enhancing midlife cognitive skill. Chang et al. have discuss the importance of physical activity on midlife and later life cognitive function as well as dementia. At the same time it is arguable to connect obesity at midlife with risk of dementia (Xu, et al, 2011). Problems related to sleeping habit for both men and women is common in midlife, for both weight and hormonal change leads to breathing related problems during sleep and syndrome of restless legs (Polo-Kantaoa, 2011). Moreover, this sleep problems for women are also common due to menopause (Baker, et al, 2018). Out of all these negative instances one positive thing about aging is the practice of tactic knowledge can improve cognition skill of a person by using his/her vast knowledge of life experience in a patterned way.

Psychological changes in midlif

Midlife is a focal point of life course and it deals with a complex role of a person in terms of dealing with various challenges in professional and personal life, therefore the experiences, conceptual frameworks and psychological balance of a person at midlife is necessary to be figured out. Midlife is a time when a person look back to what has happened to his/her life, at the same time he/she plans about the future, therefore, it is a time for both reflection, retrospection and introspection. These processes are not always painful, rather it is goal oriented in nature. Erikson’s psychological stage model gives an account of psychological crisis and its positive or negative outcome at eight different stages of life. His model predicts how previous life practice influence midlife psychology like, success leading to a feel of usefulness, whereas failure leads to narrowing of involvement with world. (Foster, et al, 2012; Ardelt, et al, 2018) As stated earlier midlife crisis is a most problematic zone of midlife and it patterns the wellbeing of the time. This crisis can trigger from the fear of death, illness, economic problems leading to a transition of life. Robinson et al. have done a case study about this transition using Miles and Huberman interactive model (Robinson et al, 2010). This midlife crisis sometimes leads to suicidal tendency. As stated earlier the nature of human wellbeing is U shaped and midlife resides at the bottom of U, this makes a serious tendency towards the suicidal behaviour (Oswald et al, 2017).

Conclusion

Life course and later life is a complex mater and it’s intricacies are always important for psychological, cognitive, social and physical well-being of a person. Through the pathway of life, midlife is a focal as well as pivotal position where a person see’s his/her life in a mirror of introspection. The life course and it’s theories are important to discuss to get better idea about the positive and negative sides of midlife. The negative sides of midlife, like poor physical strength, poor cognition and midlife crisis needed to be considered using health, well-being and social theories of life course.

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