A life course perspective on women’s health behaviours

Abstract

Abstract Adult behaviours such as smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, and exercise are sources of risk for many chronic diseases and the need to change unhealthy behaviours remains a key aspect of health promotion policies. The difficulty of changing adult behaviours has led to a growing interest in the origins and development of individual behaviours and healthy lifestyles. An interdisciplinary life course perspective seeks to integrate into a broad developmental framework alternative approaches to the study of health behaviour which currently focus either on individual characteristics or on the social context. This chapter reviews evidence for the long-term effects of the childhood social environment on adult behaviour and for role modelling and behavioural tracking, pathways through which behaviours are conventionally thought to be initiated and maintained into adult life.

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