PSYCH M140 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Gerontology, Old Age, Rugby League Positions
CONTROVERSY 1: DOES OLD AGE HAVE MEANING?
The Meaning of Age
• Humans live in a world full of symbolism and shared meaning
o “Meaning” is so powerful, it can even be a matter of life or
death
• Two questions examined in the textbook:
1. Does old age have a meaning for society?
2. How do individuals actually experience
their lives as meaningful in the last stage of
life?
• Social gerontology seeks to answer these questions by
studying to areas of life that provide contrasting views of
activity and disengagement:
§ Leisure and religion
Leisure Activities in
Later Life
• In old age, leisure often begins to take the place of work, both
in terms of having more free time and as a way of finding
meaning in life
• Leisure—defined as an activity engaged in for its own sake;
an end in itself
• Stereotypes of “old people’s activities” (e.g., shuffleboard,
bingo, etc.) are mistaken
o Age alone doesn’t predict what people do with their leisure
time in later life
o Old people are not all alike
o Individual differences, gender, and socioeconomic status
(SES) all play a big part
Changing Leisure
Participation
Patterns
• People over age 65 continue to engage in the same
activities with the same people as they did in middle age
• Patterns of late-life leisure have important implications for the
economy in an aging society
• Education and income are the biggest factors in how
older people spend their free time
o Retired people who have more money have more
choices, and are more likely to change their patterns of activity
more often
Religion and
Spirituality
• Three-quarters of older Americans say that religion is “very
important” in their lives
• Religious involvement in old age tends to follow a pattern of
multidimensional disengagement:
o As people grow older, they may withdraw from some
activities (such as attending church), but show an increase in
personal religious practice (such as Bible study or listening to
religious TV and radio)
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Document Summary
***the question of whether old age has meaning comes back to two alternatives: 1. continuation of midlife values into old age or. 2. discovering some new or special challenge that belongs to the last stage of life: either way, the future of an aging society will be shaped by all of us, because we are all simply our future selves . Simone de beauvoir, describing the life course journey of becoming an older person, asks, can i have become a different being while i still remain myself? . Discuss the tension identified in this quote between staying the same and changing as we grow older. A limited future and a frozen past: it paralyzes them. Physical disadvantage - the refusal to sink below the human level, to become an insect, the inert object to which the adult world wishes to reduce the aged. Old age may bring liberation: it sets one free from false notions.
