In North America, society tends to glorify youth, associating it with beauty and sexuality. Many media portrayals of the elderly reflect negative cultural attitudes toward aging. Did any of them feature older actors? What roles did they play? How were these older actors portrayed? Were they cast as main characters in a love story? Grouchy old people? How were older women portrayed? How were older men portrayed?
Think of the movies and television shows you have watched recently. However, many aspects of the aging experience also depend on social class, race, gender, and other social factors. With medical advancements that prolong human life, old age has taken on a new meaning in societies with the means to provide high-quality medical care. Age represents the wealth of life experiences that shape whom we become. It is also a product of the social norms and expectations that apply to each stage of life.
In fact, while bouncing her grandchild on her knee, Bridget tells her daughter, 38, “I never felt younger.”Īge is not merely a biological function of the number of years one has lived, or of the physiological changes the body goes through during the life course. She does not expect to retire from the workforce for five or ten more years, and though the government officially considers her a senior citizen, she doesn’t feel old. She enjoys golfing and camping with her husband and taking her terriers to the local dog park. Today, Bridget Fisher, 62, is a wife, mother of two, grandmother of three, part-time nurse, master gardener, and quilt club member. Bridget no longer had to travel to work and she was able to spend more time with her family and to cultivate new hobbies. She worked two more years, then quit her job in HR, and accepted a part-time nursing job at a family clinic. Completing evening classes in nursing at the local technical school, she became a registered nurse after four years. She took advantage of the company’s policy to put its employees through college if they continued to work two years past graduation. Seeking to avoid the crisis she would face if she were laid off, Bridget went into action. Because of laws against age discrimination, the company executives were careful to prevent any records from suggesting age as the reason for the layoffs. Bridget had seen many employees put in 10, 15, or 20 years of service only to get laid off when they were considered too old. The company did not offer retirement benefits. Her fast-paced job required her to travel around the country, setting up meetings and conferences. She had raised two children, divorced her first husband, remarried, and survived a cancer scare. She worked in human resources (HR) at a scientific research company, a job she’d held for 20 years. Compare and contrast sociological theoretical perspectives on agingĪt age 52, Bridget Fisher became a first-time grandmother.Learn about elderly individuals’ risks of being mistreated and abused.Recognize ageist thinking and ageist attitudes in individuals and in institutions.Understand the historical and current trends of poverty among elderly populations.
Name the five stages of grief developed by Dr.Examine attitudes toward death and dying and how they affect the elderly.Describe the birth of the field of geriatrics.Consider the biological, social, and psychological changes in aging.Phases of aging: the young-old, middle-old, and old-old.Describe the “greying of Canada” as the population experiences increased life expectancies.Understand the difference between senior age groups (young-old, middle-old, and old-old).
0 kommentar(er)
