Stages of life

All living beings on planet Earth go through different stages of life. Starting from the small gamete to being an old person, a human body develops and matures over time. The process starts from fertilization where the egg produced by the female’s ovary comes in contact with the sperm cell of the male. They diffuse together through mitosis and cell differentiation and make an embryo that gets transferred to the uterus of the female where it undergoes the fetal development phase until the birth of the child. After birth, a child undergoes physical, psychological and environmental growth and finally enters a teenage. After this, a teenager enters adolescence and finally old age.

Throughout these stages, a person keeps maturing and growing, physical growth may stop at adolescence period but psychological enhancement still takes place.

Different stages of life are:

  1. Before birth
    1. Embryonic stage: It refers to the development of the human embryo inside the mother’s uterus. This stage continues for 8 weeks after which a fetus is developed.
    2. Fetal Development: This is a stage that occurs at the 9th week of pregnancy, Upto this stage, all major organs of the human body are present inside the fetus, they may not be fully developed but are present in their specific locations.
  2. After Birth
    1. Infancy: A child under 1 year of age is called an infant. At this stage, it has a significant relationship only with the mother and is just trying to adjust to the world around.
    2. Toddlerhood: This phase occurs between 1-3 years of age. Here the child is close to its parents and learns about basic life skills like potty training, clothing themselves, speaking, walking e.t.c.
    3. Early childhood: This lasts from 3-6 years of age and the kid gets attached to the whole family. They start exploring their surroundings, gets creative and try to use every possible new thing
    4. Middle childhood(7-10 years): Here the kid gets close to the outside world through school. They start their basic education, play sports and enjoy their daily activities
    5. Adolescence(11-19 years): This stage is primitive in a person’s psychological development and affects our whole life. This is where our school education completely shapes us to our future.
    6. Early Adulthood (20-44 years): In this phase, human beings work towards having a defined career path to lead a smooth life. We undergo a lot of social relationships in this phase too but only a few remain together by the end of it.
    7. Middle Adulthood(45-64 years): Here, a term gets introduced called “midlife crisis”, if a person is not at a certain point in their career at this stage they feel depressed at hit midlife crisis but others who somehow managed to fulfil their dreams or maybe settled for good keep going on with their lives.
    8. Late Adulthood(65 years and above): Most humans get retired from their work-life at this stage and like to spend time with their family doing leisure activities. It is said that an old person starts reliving their childhood after hitting retirement and maybe it is true. At this stage, people become quite liberated, they don’t take any stress, do as much work as needed and like to take lots of naps in a day, maybe reminiscing about their childhood. 

References: