Reading: Aging - Slides

Aging

Henry Reyenga

Bible View of Aging

Proverbs 16:31   Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.

Exodus 20:12“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 

1 Timothy 5:4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. 

Aging

Aging (often alternatively spelt as ageing) is both a biological and sociological process wherein human beings experience and accomplish stages of biological and social maturation. Aging may be seen as a relatively objective biological process whereby one becomes older and experiences varied biological developments. Aging may also be seen as a subjective series of social processes whereby people interpret, negotiate, and make sense of biological development in relation to existing conceptualizations of what it means to be a certain age. 

Aging is Both Biological and Sociological

An example of the bio-social and objective/subjective nature of aging may be useful. Take, for example, a social being born into the United States in 1980. This person will likely experience a biological development characterized by the addition of years from birth and by biological understandings of the time (e.g., a being born in 1980 would have a life expectancy, medical and legal definition, and contextual series of economic, educational, and other possibilities based upon birth at this time). As such, our person born into the United States during the 1980’s can be expected to follow relatively stable patterns of biological development that will be interpreted in similar ways to others born at the same time.

Aging Process

Aging is a complex process of subjective biological and social realities intertwined with relatively objective biological and social standards that shift within and between historical and cultural periods.

Life Span

Human life is often divided into various age spans, like the following:

Infancy

Toddler

Childhood

Adolescence

Young adult

Prime adulthood

Middle age

Old age

Socially Constructed Interpretations of Aging 

While aging, itself, is a bio-social process, the ways people and cultures interpret ages (e.g., "old," "young," "mid-life") and the ways these interpretations are distinguished by varied biological age markers vary dramatically. In Western societies, where youth is highly valued, people are considered "old" at much younger ages than in Eastern societies where age is often seen to beget wisdom. This emphasis on youth translates into considerable expenditures on makeup, cosmetics, and surgeries to hide signs of aging, particularly among women, but also among men. Ironically, among adolescents, just the opposite approach is taken, as adolescents often try to appear "older", though obviously not too much older.

The Labels of Young and Old

The labels of "old" and "young" also vary by life expectancy. In societies where lifespans are relatively short (e.g., Chad) or in areas within a given society where violence and / or other means of "early" death are common, one could be considered "old" or "middle-aged" by her mid-twenties, whereas in countries and social settings with longer lifespans (e.g., Japan) and lower levels of "early" death, mid-twenties is still considered young-adulthood 

Age and Social Construction

The activities that are expected of one at different ages is also socially constructed and relative to culture. For instance, retirement only became a "universal" American ideal in the post-World War I era, as the growth of Social Security and private pensions dramatically expanded the safety net available to aging workers who were leaving the labor market. Likewise, the idea of childhood being an age of innocence when children should be kept from adult worries and spend their time pursuing education and recreating is only widely held in highly developed countries and is a relatively recent invention, following the industrial revolution and the introduction of child-labor laws.

Ageism

Ageism is prejudice on the grounds of age. While it can be targeted toward individuals of any age, two groups that are often targeted are the young and the elderly.

Young People

Each society sees this differently. 

From voting rights to the legal age to work. 

Elderly

While discrimination toward the young is primarily behavioral restrictions, discrimination toward the elderly ranges from behavioral restrictions to the realm of physical abuse. Elder abuse is a serious problem in the U.S. There are nearly 2 million cases of elder abuse and self-neglect in the U.S. every year.[15] Abuse refers to psychological/emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, caregiver neglect or financial exploitation while self-neglect refers to behaviors that threaten the person's own health and safety.

Social Programs for the Elderly

Prior to the introduction of Social Security in the U.S. and other programs for the needy, the elderly were the poorest age group in the U.S.  Social Security (technically Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance or OASDI) is an income redistribution program that takes taxes from those working and distributes it to those who cannot work or who are elderly enough to be considered past the age at which they can retire. With the introduction of Social Security, the poverty rates of the elderly in the U.S. dropped dramatically.

In USA, Women Tend to Live Longer

Why women live longer than men is not perfectly understood. Several factors may contribute to this. For instance, men do engage in riskier behaviors than women, reducing their life expectancy.[18] Men are also more "successful" when attempting suicide, which increases the rate of death among men of suicide.[18] Another factor that may contribute to the greater life expectancy of women is the different types of jobs men and women tend to have during their lifetimes.[19] Other biological factors likely play a role, including greater heart health among women, though how much they contribute to the greater longevity of women is not entirely clear.