How would you break down the life cycle?

In My Humble Opinion
1

What I mean is,

What ages would you set as defining, generally speaking, the various parts of the human life cycle?

An example is my opinion:

Infancy: 0-2
Toddler: 2-4
Early Childhood: 4-7
Late Childhood/PreTeen Years: 8-12
Early Teenage Years: 13-14
Mid Teen Years: 14-16
Late Teen Years: 17-20
Early Young Adulthood: 21-24
Late Young Adulthood: 25-29
Adulthood: 30-44
Early Middle Age: 45-49
Middle Age: 50-65
Late Middle Age: 65-69
Early Aging: 70-75
Middle Aging: 76-80
Elderly: 80+

2

Wow that’s a lot of divisions. Shakespeare only gave seven:

Infant (mewling and puking)
Schoolboy (whining and creeping unwillingly to school)
Lover (sighing like a furnace)
Soldier (sudden and quick in quarrel)
Justice (round belly and beard of formal cut)
Pantaloon (spectacles, his youthful hose now a world too wide)
Second childishness (sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything)

3

The Godfathers simplified it down to four phases: Birth, School, Work, Death

4

Erickson has eight:
Stage 1 - Trust vs. Mistrust
Stage 2 - Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Stage 3 - Initiative vs. Guilt
Stage 4 - Industry vs. Inferiority
Stage 5 - Identity vs. Confusion
Stage 6 - Intimacy vs. Isolation
Stage 7 - Generativity vs. Stagnation
Stage 8 - Integrity vs. Despair

5

The final one should be Metal Age: silver in your hair, gold in your teeth and lead in your ass.

6

I, for one, think that is too few. For instance Early Middle Age, Middle Age, and Late Middle Age could be broken down into Early Early Middle Age, Middle Early Middle Age, Late Early Middle Age, Early Middle Middle Age, Middle Middle Middle Age, Late Middle Middle Age, Early Late Middle Age, Middle Late Middle Age, and Late Late Middle Age.

7

As the owner of 2 year old and 4 year old children I find it very difficult to come up with good divisions for the early years. A new born is vastly different from a 1 year old, or even just from a 6 week old.

8

My son, age 6, told me these were the stages of life:
Baby
Toddler
Kid
Teenager
Grown Up
Really Old Grown Up Who’s About to Die

I…wasn’t a fan of those categories, but that’s one contribution.

I’ve also read, although I don’t necessarily subscribe:

Age 1-5: Everybody loves me
Age 6-12: I love everybody
Age 13-20: I hate everybody
Age 21-Death: Everybody hates me

9

0-2 baby
2-4 toddler
5-12 kid
13-19 teenager
20 Nothing. You’re absolutely nothing for this year.
21-35 young adult
36-59 middle aged
60 and up is old.

10

0 - 1 : Infant
2 - 4 : Toddler
5 - 8 : Child
9 - 12 : Kid
13 - 17 : Teen
18 - 24 : Young Adult
25 - : Adult

Have been in that last one ever since (soon turning 39). If there’s another stage, I think it doesn’t start before retirement.

11

Birth.
The moment after you start to die.
At some point you become dead.

But this horrible head and chest cold could be affecting my opinion.

12

Too fucking funny!

13

Since I turned 50, I think of “Old Age” as being 10 years older than my current age.

14
  1. Gamete
  2. Zygote
15

You’ll end up with a name for every year this way, or more. I see 3 divisions:

Child: 0 - 17 (according to law, it should be 0-13)
Adult: 18 - until you tell children to get off your lawn
Geezer: adult - death

16

Four legs
Two legs
Three legs

17

As I near 60, the idea of “thirds” has appealed to me.
0-30 - the first third is spent largely learning and growing.
31-60 - the second third is largely spent “striving” - establishing your career/household, having kids, focusing on getting the kids educated/employed/independent, saving/planning for retirement
61-90 - the final 3d is spent living. How do you want to spend the final 3d of your life?

18

Birth, School, Work, Death

19

There’s an xkcd for that.

0-3: Non-sentient.
4-12: “Everything is exciting!”
13-17: “Everything sucks!”
18-22: “Woooooo college! Woooo–” [vomit]
23-30: “Relationships are hard!”
31-42: “So are careers!”
43-54: “No daughter of mine is going out dressed like that!”
55-75+: [More sex than anyone is comfortable admitting]