Levinson’s Life Structure Theory
by Lloyd is a few months away from turning 18, and his high school graduation and 18th birthday coincide. At this point of his life, his main concern is the best way to spend his one-year vacation. As approved by his parents, he will be spending a year away from home before entering college.
Levinson mentioned that adults anticipate that life does begin at 40, which is regrettably the age when life actually ends. It must be considered that there are several articulated outlooks apparently have impacts on the society. First of all, several individuals are transitioning from adolescence to adulthood with the lack of optimism or aspiration. In the case of Lloyd, he agrees to go to college not because his parents forced him to. Neither is it because of his dream to have a college diploma someday. Rather, Lloyd agrees to spend a year vacation and enter college afterward because he perceives college graduation as something that most of his peers normally undergo. By peers, Lloyd is referring to those who have stable families like him.
What this indicates is several individuals in this entire age bracket today do not have sufficient motivation and eagerness. Today, the society in general expects that men around the age of thirty should provide both for their aging parents and their children. The incidence of an ending episode in the life of a man takes place during the midlife transition stage. More often than not, men become keen on humanitarianism acts during this stage as they become more conscious about the inevitability of death.
The core of this theory by Levinson (1996) is life structure, which is an essential pattern of human life at any particular instant. For the most part, the life structure of an individual is formed by his or her physical and social environment. The primary variables involved include family, occupation, race, religion, and status. In Lloyd’s case, it is evident that his family’s economic status and his parents’ values are key to the crucial decisions he has to make as an individual who is transitioning from adolescence to early adulthood. Lloyd personally perceives the influence of his family status to his status quo in general. He also perceives that his family’s race and religion are not strongly influential to his life decisions, considering that his condition is not similar to most people of his age.
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