SANTROCK’S

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES
8 Developmental Stages (Santrock)
• Prenatal
• Infancy
• Early childhood
• Middle & late childhood
• Adolescence
• Early adulthood
• Middle adulthood
• Late adulthood
 PRENATAL PERIOD
(Time between conception and birth)
• Development happens quickly during this
stage(tremendous growth from a single cell to
an organism complete with brain and
behavioural capabilities)
• Divided into three stages which are:
germinal
embryonic
fetal
 GERMINAL STAGE
(2 weeks period after conception)

Conception occurs when a sperm cell combines with an egg cell

to form a zygote (about 36 hours after conception) zygote begins
to divide quickly. The resulting ball of cells moves along the
mother’s fallopian tube to the uterus.
(around 7 days after conception) the ball of cells starts to
become embedded in the wall of the uterus. This process is
called implantation and takes about a week to complete. If
implantation fails, as is quite common, the pregnancy
terminates. One key feature of the germinal stage is the
formation of a tissue called the placenta.
 Embryonic Stage
(from the end of the germinal stage to two months after conception)

• The developing ball of cells is now called an embryo. In this

stage, all the major organs form, and the embryo becomes
very fragile. At the end of the embryonic period, the embryo
is only about an inch long.
 Fetal Stage
(from two months after conception until birth.)
• About one month into this stage, the sex organs of the fetus
begin to form. The fetus quickly grows as bones and muscles
form, and it begins to move inside the uterus. Organ systems
develop further and start to function. During the last three
months, the brain increases rapidly in size, an insulating layer
of fat forms under the skin, and the respiratory and digestive
systems start to work independently.
 INFANCY
(Birth to 18-24 months)
 As newborns, we were not empty-headed organisms. We cried, kicked,
coughed, sucked, saw, heard and tasted. We slept a lot and occasionally we
smiled, although the meaning of our smiles was not entirely clear. We crawled
and then we walked, a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step.
Sometimes we conformed, sometimes others conformed to us. Our
development was a continuous creation of complex forms, and our helpless
kind demanded the meeting eyes of love. We split the universe into two halves:
“me and not me. “ And we juggled the need to curb our own will with
becoming what we could will freely. (Santrock, 2002)
 EARLY CHILDHOOD
End of infancy to 5-6 years old (preschool
years-grade 1)
 In early childhood, our greatest untold poem was being only four
years old, we skipped, played, and run all day long, never in our lives so busy,
busy becoming something we had not quite grasped yet. Who knew our
thoughts, which work up into small mythologies all your own. Our thought
and images and drawings took wings. The blossoms of our heart, no wind can
touch. Our small world widened as we discovered new refugees and new
people. When we said “I” we meant something totally unique, not to be
confused with any other. “ (Santrock, 2002)
Middle and Late Childhood
(6-12 years)
• “In middle and late childhood, we were on a different
plane, belonging to a generation and a feeling properly
our own. It is the wisdom of human development that at
no other time we are more ready to learn than at the
end of early childhood’s period of expansive imagination.
Our thirst was to know and to understand. Our parents
continued to cradle our lives but our growth was also
being shaped by successive choirs of friends. We did not
think much about the future or the past, but enjoyed the
present. “
Adolescence
(13 to 18 years)
 “In no order of things was adolescence, the simple time of life for us. We
clothed ourselves with rainbows and went ‘brave as the zodiac ‘, flashing from
one end of the world to the other. We tried on one face after another,
searching for a face of our own. We wanted our parents to understand us and
hoped they would give up the privilege of understanding them. We wanted to
fly but found that first we had to learn to stand and walk and climb and
dance. In our most simply and awkward moments, we became acquainted
with sex. We played furiously at adult games but were confined to a society of
our own peers. Our generation was the fragile cable by which the best and
the worst of our parent’s generation was transmitted to the present. In the
end, there were two but lasting bequests our parents could leave us - one
being roots, the other wings. (Santrock, 2002)
Early Adulthood
(19-29 years)
Early adulthood is a time for work and a time for love, sometimes leaving
little time for anything else. For some of us, finding our place in adult society
and committing to a more stable life take longer than we imagine. We still
ask ourselves who we are and wonder if it isn’t enough just to be. Our
dreams continue and our thoughts are bold but at some point we become
pragmatic. Sex and love are powerful passions in our lives – at times angels
of light, at other times of torment. And we possibly will never know the love
of our parents until we become parents ourselves. (Santrock, 2002)
Middle Adulthood
(30-60 years)
• In middle adulthood what we have been forms what we will be. For some
of us, middle age is such a foggy place, a time when we need to discover
what we are running from and to and why. We compare our life with
what we vowed to make it. In middle age, more time stretches before us
and some evaluations have to be made, however reluctantly. As the
young/ old polarity greets us with a special force we need to join the
daring of youth with the discipline of age in a way that does justice to
both. As middle- aged adults we come to sense that the generations of
living things pass in a short while and like runners hand on the torch of
life. (Santrock, 2002)
Late adulthood
(61 years and above)
“The rhythm and meaning of human development eventually wend their way
to late adulthood, when each of us stands alone at the heart of the earth and
“suddenly it is evening”. We shed the leaves of youth and are stripped by the
winds of time down to the truth. We learn that life is lived forward but
understood backward. We trace the connection between the end and the
beginning of life and try to figure out what the whole show is about before it
is over. Ultimately we come to know that we are what survive of us.
(Santrock, 2002)
 HAVIGHURST’S
DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS
Although many theorists are responsible for contributing to the Developmental
Tasks Theory, it was Robert J. Havighurst who elaborated on this theory in the most
systematic and extensive manner.
Developmental Tasks of Infancy and Early Childhood:
1. Learning to walk.
2. Learning to take solid foods
3. Learning to talk
4. Learning to control the elimination of body wastes
5. Learning sex differences and sexual modesty
6. Forming concepts and learning language to describe social and physical
reality.
7. Getting ready to read
Middle Childhood:
1. Learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games.
2. Building wholesome attitudes toward oneself as a growing organism
3. Learning to get along with age-mates
4. Learning an appropriate masculine or feminine social role
5. Developing fundamental skills in reading, writing, and calculating
6. Developing concepts necessary for everyday living.
7. Developing conscience, morality, and a scale of values
8. Achieving personal independence
9. Developing attitudes toward social groups and institutions
Developmental Tasks of Adolescence:
1. Achieving new and more mature relations with age-mates of both sexes
2. Achieving a masculine or feminine social role
3. Accepting one's physique and using the body effectively
4. Achieving emotional independence of parents and other adults
5. Preparing for marriage and family life
6. Preparing for an economic career
7. Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guide to behaviour; developing
an ideology
8. Desiring and achieving socially responsible behaviour
Developmental Tasks of Early Adulthood:
1. Selecting a mate
2. Achieving a masculine or feminine social role
3. Learning to live with a marriage partner
4. Starting a family
5. Rearing children
6. Managing a home
7. Getting started in an occupation
8. Taking on civic responsibility
9. Finding a congenial social group
Developmental Tasks of Middle Age:
1. Achieving adult civic and social responsibility
2. Establishing and maintaining an economic standard of living
3. Assisting teenage children to become responsible and happy adults
4. Developing adult leisure-time activities
5. Relating oneself to one’s spouse as a person
6. Accepting and adjusting to the physiologic changes or middle age
7. Adjusting to aging parents.

Developmental Tasks of Later Maturity:

1. Adjusting to decreasing physical strength and health
2. Adjusting to retirement and reduced income
3. Adjusting to death of a spouse
4. Establishing an explicit affiliation with one’s age group
5. Meeting social and civil obligations
6. Establishing satisfactory physical living arrangement