If you only need the buying answer: the current paperback listing is the strongest clean route in this snapshot. It is lower than the sampled long-term Pearson+ option, lower than the sampled short-term rental, and lower than the sampled marketplace print options. For a helping-professions development text, print is the clean winner here.

Current price comparison

Format	Source	Price	Link
Paperback	Merybook	$87.99	Check price
Marketplace	eCampus	$93.64	Check price
Pearson+ / eTextbook (1825 days)	eCampus	$107.99	Check price
Short-term rental	eCampus	$112.88	Check price

What this book actually teaches

The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals is a development text built for counseling, social work, human services, and related helping fields. The book matters because it connects developmental stages to practice, intervention, and professional understanding rather than presenting development as a detached chronology.

That gives it unusual reuse value. Developmental frameworks often show up again in later helping-professions coursework, practicum, and clinical thinking, which makes a keepable copy more useful than a short-term access model might suggest.

Why print is the strongest route here

Here the financial picture already favors ownership. The current paperback undercuts every other clean comparator sampled, including the longer-term digital route. When the keepable copy is also the cheapest clean option, the decision becomes much easier.

I would lean strongly toward print for counseling, social work, education, and human-services readers who expect to revisit life-span development later. The only real case against ownership would be reliable access elsewhere and no need to return to the material, which is less common for this kind of text.

Sources checked

• eCampus marketplace check
• Pearson+ market check
• short-term rental check