Life Cycle, Human

Theorists who have written about the human life cycle include Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Erik Erickson, and Daniel Levinson. They usually describe universal stages that people pass through during their lives and present the life cycle as one where people progress toward certain goals. Some theories, such as Freud's, were based mainly on speculation about what “must” occur in individuals in terms of oral, anal, and phallic stages of infancy and the later latency and genital stages. The oral stage (birth to 1 year) focuses on the conflict that the infant experiences between pleasure and pain from the mouth, the pleasure of food, and the pain of its denial. The anal stage (1–3 years)looks at the anus as a source of sexual pleasure and control, and the phallic stage (3–6 years) focuses on the genitals and a love/hate relationship with the parents. The latency stage (6 years to puberty)involves redirecting sexual energy to activities of the larger society. The genital stage (puberty to adulthood) involves becoming a mature adult in a heterosexual relationship. Others theories, such as Piaget's, were based on research on children. For example, Piaget did research on how children developed different ways of thinking. Today, the most influential of these theories is that of Erickson, who developed an eight-stage model of human development that modified Freud's theory to work better with non-Western cultures. Erickson looked at non-Western cultures, for example, how the Sioux, who freely breast-fed children up to 3 years of age and had a relaxed method of toilet training, produced generous adults, whereas the Yurok, who breast-fed children for 6 months and had strict rules [Page 1470]against urinating in the Klamath River, produced suspicious and miserly adults.

Although all of these theories have influenced particular anthropologists, many anthropologists have ignored them because they say such theories represent at best the Western life cycle and not the life cycles of even all members of Western society. Anthropologists who look at the life cycle are more likely to describe the four basic stages of the life cycle as birth, puberty, marriage, and death and to describe how people in different parts of the world think about these and the practices associated with them. The work of Arnold Van Gennep (1873–1957) has had a lot of influence in how anthropologists deal with the life course. In The Rites of Passage, Van Gennep described specific rituals that mark transitions in a person's social life in various societies in terms of the life cycle rituals related to pregnancy and childbirth, birth and childhood, initiation rites, betrothal and marriage, and funerals. These rituals move people from one social position to another. People often mark these changes in age-based identities with bodily mutilations such as scarification and circumcision.

Other anthropologists have looked at age grade and age sets, where males or females move into groups of approximately the same age, sometimes according to rites of passage and sometimes not. People in each age grade or age set take on specific roles. Thus, among the Tiriki of Kenya as described by Walter Sangree, adolescent boys undergo an initiation into an age grade at puberty. The Tiriki have seven named age groups, with each involving males who were initiated during the same 15-year period. Although it has changed over the years, it had the following form in 1939. Small boys entered the first age group, which consisted of boys up to 10 years of age. The next group consisted of 11- to25-year-olds who in the past were divided into those who were initiated or uninitiated. The third consisted of men ages 26 to 40 years and was made up of warriors. The fourth group consisted of men ages 41 to 55 years and was made up of older warriors. The fifth group consisted of men ages 56 to 70 years and was made up of judicial elders. The sixth group consisted of men ages 71 to 90 years and was made up of ritual elders. The last group consisted of men ages 91 to 105 years and was made up deceased or senile elders. Many anthropologists have written about age sets and age groups as ways for people to find help outside of groups based on kinship or marriage.

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