Age

Question 1

Four main stages of age groups

Answer 1

• Childhood
• Youth
• Middle age
• Old age

Question 2

Statistics to back up social age construction

Answer 2

• Only 59% of people didn’t experience age discrimination in the workplace in a recent survey.
• 41% of old people interviewed reported experiencing some form of age discrimination in the workplace

Question 3

Rites of Passage

Answer 3

One reason that age is considered to be socially constructed is that passage vary between different societies and cultures

Question 4

Legal age limits

Answer 4

• Smoking = 18
• Sexual intercourse = 16
• Responsible for wearing a seatbelt = 14

Question 5

Initiation with ant bullets

Answer 5

• To become men in Amazon Satere Mawe Tribe, boys as young as 12 have to wear ceremonial gloves filled with stinging bullet ants.
• Each ant packs neurotoxins that cause pain 30 times more agonizing than the sting of a common wasp.
• Must wear the gloves 10 minutes 20 times

Question 6

Land diving

Answer 6

• Tiny south pacific Island of Pentecost, boys as young as 5 engage in a tradition that can be described as bungee jumping
• Jump towers as high as 100 feet up in the air with vines tied around their ankles
• Whole point is that jumpers head must touch the ground

Question 7

Blood Initiation

Answer 7

• Papua New Guinea, Matausa Tribesmen believe in order for timid boys to become brave men and attract women, they have to expel the contaminating female blood from their mothers.
• In order to do that they undergo brutal bloodletting rituals that involve shoving canes down their throats, sharp reeds up their nostrils and sharp arrows into their tongues

Question 8

Childhood

Answer 8

• Can be seen as socially constructed
• Seen as innocent, dependent and vulnerable in the UK
• Children are portrayed as little angels or as little devils in the media

Question 9

Parsons

Answer 9

That in all societies childhood is a period when socialisation into society’s culture take place. He states that children learn the norms and values associated with different social roles.

Question 10

What did Parson believe in the family two main functions?

Answer 10

1. Primary socialisation of children
2. Stabilization of the adult personalities of the population of society

Question 11

What did Parsons argue

Answer 11

That adolescence is a time when children begin to develop independence from their parents. For a smooth society it is vital that children develop independence from their parents

Question 12

How does the media portray youths

Answer 12

Represent youth negatively, they may amplify their deviance and create moral panics about “the youths today”.

Question 13

How does the media portray youths according to Griffin?

Answer 13

• Dysfunctional
• Suffering a deficit
• Deviant

Question 14

McRobbie and Garber

Answer 14

“Bedroom culture” to describe the way girls spend their leisure time with their peer group in their bedroom. They are socialised into traditional gender norms

Question 15

Sewell about young African Caribbean boys

Answer 15

Membership to a peer group may not be the only way to gain a sense of identity and status for young black boys: to belong to the group may mean adopting the norms of the group.
Suggests that young black Afro Caribbean boys often have no high achieving career aims or goals and therefore reject school.

Question 16

Willis

Answer 16

Suggests working class “lads” often have no career aims or goals and rejected school because they see it as irrelevant to them and the manual labour jobs they end up with

Question 17

Brannen

Answer 17

Researched informal care responsibilities and roles and suggested that for many people, middle age is a time when they shoulder many caring responsibilities. Not only caring for children, but also for elderly parents for middle ages identities

Question 18

What is a pivot generation

Answer 18

Refers to the idea that middle aged people carry the responsibility of caring for their children and their parents so they swing between the two

Question 19

What is a dual burden?

Answer 19

Refers to the idea that caring for both children and parents is a double responsibility

Question 20

How might media reinforce middle age identity?

Answer 20

Through targeting them through advertising as they are the group with the highest disposable income

Question 21

Saunders study on consumption

Answer 21

Suggests that those who satisfy their needs through ownership of various goods are influenced heavily by advertising and the media. Media targets middle age as they are the group with the highest disposable income and they define their identity by what they own

Question 22

One way peer groups may create and reinforce middle age identity is through association with groups…

Answer 22

With specific shared norms and values

Question 23

Hodkinson

Answer 23

Says that although looks and styles are important parts of subcultures, a primary feature of a subcultures, this sense of belonging could continue into middle age

Question 24

What did Hodkinson study?

Answer 24

Goths.
He argued that a level of commitment to the Goth scene, and friendship groups and identity that develop around being a Goth, can result in social lives that “are so intertwined that it would feel very odd to leave it”

Question 25

One way that the workforce may create middle age identity is through….

Answer 25

the workplace being the dominant source of your identity

Question 26

Willis

Answer 26

Interested in the types of jobs “lads” went into and how they are related to their fathers jobs. Many of them were in manual jobs and Willis found that this was a source of their identity

Question 27

What did they define themselves as?

Answer 27

Manual workers

Question 28

One way that the family may reinforce old age identity is through

Answer 28

exclusion and a disengagement process where they leave their social roles

Question 29

What is the term disengagement mean?

Answer 29

Refers to how people may leave social roles when they get older

Question 30

What roles do elderly people disengage from?

Answer 30

Elderly people disengage from their job roles within the workplace and their role within the home

Question 31

What does Parsons note about the family?

Answer 31

Elderly people have less status in a society, once children have grown up and men have retired, the elderly lose their most important role within the society.
Refers to disengagement theory, the time when elderly people disengage with their previous roles and “harvests the fruits of their labours” and enjoy recreational activites

Question 32

One way the media may portray old age identity is through…

Answer 32

Portraying the elderly in a stereotyped way

Question 33

Carrigan and Szmigins study of old people

Answer 33

That whilst old consumers have grown in numbers and affluence in the UK, research evidence suggests that they are less likely to be portrayed in adverts than younger people. Depictions of older people feature caricature and negative images such as them being smelly and incontinent

Question 34

What does Sontag suggest?

Answer 34

That there is a double standard of aging, especially in TV, whereby women are required to be youthful throughout their media careers and men are not

Question 35

One way peer groups may create and reinforce old age identity is through

Answer 35

inclusion into new groups by taking up activities during retirement

Question 36

What do Clarke and Warren suggest?

Answer 36

That old age may be the time to make new friends and engage in new interests. Inclusion into such activities may define an old age identity.

Question 37

Who did Clarke and Warren study?

Answer 37

Pensioners found that most of the respondents identified this phrase of their life as “active” for example they take time to take up leisure pursuits

Question 38

One way that the workplace may create and reinforce old age identity is through

Answer 38

exclusion as the labour market is institutionally ageist

Question 39

Johnson

Answer 39

Suggests that ageism occurs in the workplace in UK. Suggests that ageism is instituitonalised and embedded in practices and society

Question 40

One way religion may create and reinforce old age identity is through

Answer 40

inclusion and giving people a sense of comfort when facing death

Question 41

Voas

Answer 41

Suggests that older people are much more likely to identify themselves as being religious because -
1. The generational effect
2. The ageing effect

Question 42

Postmodernist outlook on how age identity has changed

Answer 42

Postmodernists would look at trends such as living and working longer, anti - aging products and procedures and the extension of “youth” and childhood to show how age is fluid and becoming less significant today

Question 43

Featherstone and Hepworth

Answer 43

Argue that the life course today has begun to be deconstruced and they claim two processes are being made -
- De-differentiation
- Deinstitutionalisation