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Life History Essay

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Life History of Joanne
Joanne was born in National Women’s Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand in October 1964. Joanne’s father worked full time as a plumber, her mother worked part time as a factory worker while also bringing up Joanne and her older brother. Joanne has spent all her life, from birth to present day, living in West Auckland. Joanne has never married and does not have any children. At the time of this interview Joanne is at the middle adulthood stage of her life. This life history follows Joanne’s life stages and identifies her major normative age graded events, normative history graded events and also non normative events, and reflects on the impact of these events on her development. Normative age graded influence included …show more content…

Psychosocial Development
This stage in Joanne’s life also was a time of shyness for Joanne. Joanne remembers her mother telling her that she would cry and cling to her mother or father when Joanne was given to someone (age graded normative event). Attachment theory states that attachment is a developmental process based on the evolved adaptive tendency for young children to maintain proximity to a familiar person, called the attachment figure (Bowlby, 1999). Joanne’s parents were authoritarian (Burton, Western & Kowalski, 2009), placing high value on obedience and respect for authority, often not discussing why particular behaviours are important or listening to the child’s point of view. Joanne’s parents, particularly her mother often smacked her (history graded normative event) without discussion with Joanne of what she had done wrong.
Middle and late childhood
Physical Development
Joanne continued to gain weight throughout her middle to late childhood (age graded non normative event). Girls are more likely than boys to be overweight (Santrock, 2008), also a change in Joanne’s diet may have caused her weight gain to continue, with the introduction of several major fast food restaurants (historic normative event) such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds in the early 1970’s Joanne’s family was drawn to the easy access of this type of food. During this time the family also

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