Life-Course Perspective: Children in Troubled Homes

Introduction

Throughout life, everyone experiences changes, some of these changes causes happiness while other changes are more difficult and can be sad. Life changes can affect each person individually as well as their family. In social sciences, this process of change is called the Life Course Theory. This essay discusses how a life course perspective examples can be used in the study to increase awareness and the importance of physical activities. The research talks about the importance of life-course principles. Additionally, the paper focuses on the involvement of a life-course perspective of children from troubled homes which many children face in their course of living. The research seeks to find out the physical, social and psychological conditions that affect teenagers. Teenagers have been argued to be the most hectic stage of human development. For parents, teenagers become difficult to deal with because of the psychological, physical and social conditions that they encounter which influences their way of life and behavior (Masten and Monn, 2015).

Although there is much information out there about the mental and physical benefits of getting regular exercise, many Americans are not exercising enough to continue to stay healthy Nevertheless, people are exercising more today than they did 20 years ago (Seibert, Allen, Eickhoff, & Carrel, 2018) Even though more people are exercising than they did years ago there is a vast majority of people who are not active enough. Due, to lack of activities this results in a growing number of reported cases of obesity coupled with other diseases that have had negative impacts on individuals and their families.

The Importance of Physical Activities

The life-course perspective approach is about understanding long term growth trajectories aspects of physical, psychological, or social development over time, or of family, educational, and work histories. Additionally, one’s environment; especially the ways in those trajectories or are set up by social settings of people. That is a person’s drive to be physically active is encouraged through friends, family, knowledge; their community. Therefore, the life-course perspective has emerged out of the knowledge of sociology (Karraker, & Jasper, 2018). The life-course perspective is similar to many other theories, it provides an adaptable, broad, and socially admissible framework for understanding changing lives in changing environments. The life-course perspective explains what happens before and what happens after which connects the actions on a trajectory to behaviors on others deeply surrounded by historical background.

Human Agency in Life-course Perspectives

Human Agency mirrors, to some extent, many theories previously described, in the essence that they assume that people make their own life choices. Nevertheless, this is done based on the advantages and disadvantages that one inherits. (Rousse, 2016). The choices people make or how they cope make a big impact on how they participate in physical activities. Some people are limited by lack of access or resources to exercise especially if they are disabled, i.e. fitness centers that accommodate people with disabilities

According to psychologists, during the teenage years, children tend to be explorative, adventurous and inquisitive. Resultantly, they interact with issues that disrupt their social, physical and psychological wellbeing. Admittedly, psychological, social and physical emotional wellbeing in teenagers establishes the anchorage for healthy behavior and attainment of other routines such as activity (Dingwall, Eekelaar and Murray, 2014). Additionally, the wellbeing in these three tenets of health facilitates the prevention of various behavioral problems among teenagers such as substance abuse. Precisely, stability in a mental, physical and social state among young people reduce the risks of mental health problems.

Human beings, in all stages of life, grapple through social, mental and physical conditions. People seek to attain stability in psychological, social and physical states so that they can be healthy. Traditional conceptualizations of physical health before the beginning of modern medicine argued that an individual that is deemed physically healthy is one that has not been attacked by serious illness.By contrast, the emergence of modern medicine and related innovations has brought changes in the way physical health is defined. Currently, the definition of physical health regards the disease and the fitness level of an individual.

Social Inequalities in Health-care

Socioeconomic inequalities in health care are related to people’s education, income, employment and demographic variations like age, or gender. These give unique exposure to the surrounding. Therefore, children whose parents are uneducated are likely to be affected by health-wise because their parents will not insure their children.

In recent years, many scholars have engaged in discussions regarding inequality, especially in the health sector. Admittedly, there are sharp elements of inequality among the white majority and the African American. Some of the instances of inequality include insecurity. have been racially harassed by the security agents (Hepworth, Rooney, Rooney and Strom-Gottfried, 2016). Also, there are stagnant wages for the African American citizens, therefore, they find it difficult to provide good health to their children. Besides wealth concentration can be seen on the side of the white majority. This implies that minorities or non-natives are not given equal opportunities and space to grow their wealth. Overall, racial inequality has been on the increase. For instance, high incarceration, as well as police brutality, has been on the increase leaving the parents for being jailed thereby leaving their children in trouble. Moreover, economic trends have inclined towards the white majority. Also, African American has experienced low employment levels (Ferguson, 2016). Finally, racial disparities in family wealth indicate the level of inequality between the African American and the white majority.

Additionally, the inequality between African American and the white majority has led to challenges in housing, criminal justice, wealth income, employment, education and health care among other factors have caused troubles to parents, therefore they cannot sufficiently fend for their children, Arguably, African Americans are not given equal opportunities to grow and expand their wealth (Pillas, Marmot, Naicker, Goldblatt, Morrison and Pikhart, 2014). They have received constant harassment from the security agents and their fellow white men majority. On criminal justice, most African Americans have complained of not being given fair judicial hearing and fairness. Besides, incarceration has been on the increase. Racial discrimination has been witnessed in the education and health sectors (Bartley, 2016). Thus, racial discrimination has prevented African American citizens from growing and expanding their economic base. Most of them have received regular discrimination from their fellow white men majority.

Immigrant children suffer many difficulties that relate to health. Some of these issues their parent's experience; unemployment, health care issues, and poor education. Due to financial matters, people who are not natives have experience dwindling health and educational challenges. Most children of the undocumented immigrants still lag regarding education and employment. Some of them have experienced racial discrimination in employment sectors as well as educational sectors. Other undocumented immigrants suffer from poverty. The level of poverty among the non-citizens is aggravated by a lack of employment among its population. Furthermore, immigration policies have not been resolved to cater to the interest of the immigrants’ children (Featherstone, Morris, White and White, 2014). Most of them still suffer from immigration policies that have seen some of them being deported. Thus, just, like other communities, undocumented immigrants suffer from several issues including health, education, and poverty.

Conclusion

Everyone desire to be healthy. The state of being healthy is not only seen in the absence of diseases. Instead, it encompasses the physical, social and psychological wellbeing of a person. The life-course perspective introduces a unique temporal perspective that can potentially inform future research in understanding physical activity behaviors over the life-course, particularly the timing of interventions. In the teenage stage of life, this study finds that the most prevalent problem is weight issues due to lack of enough physical activities. Socially, peer pressure is often reported among the teen since most of them aspire to fit in groups. Psychologically, low self-esteem prevails in the teenage stage. The life-course perspective introduces a unique temporal perspective that can potentially inform future research in understanding physical activity behaviors over the life-course, particularly the timing of interventions.

Physical activity participation is undoubtedly a lifetime pursuit, many stages and transitions in life at different times in history may afford a completely different set of challenges and opportunities for being physically active. A life-course perspective, which can provide a time-sensitive, opportunistic, and developmental approach for research and practices, should be more fully infused into the extant body of knowledge in physical activity promotion, to advance intervention development, and to promote physical activity to every segment of the population at any given time in history.

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