Age: Patterns and trends Flashcards
Moore:
- 27 Year old dressed up as an 85 year old woman.
- Changed her appearance by wearing glasses, using makeup and a walking stick.
- Portrayed in 3 different ways:
- Wealth widow
- Comfortable granny
- Destitute bag lady
Findings of Moore’s study:
- When dressed as the poorest old woman she was robbed and beaten.
People shouted assuming she was deaf and found that she began to view herself differently.
Restrictions u18’s face at work:
- When and where they can work
- Minimum wage
- Limit to hours at work
Johnson and Bytheway:
- Ageism is the offensive exercise of power through reference to age.
- Happens in institutions such as healthcare and employment
One advantage to u18’s working:
- They are cheaper to employ
Elderly in the workplace:
- Once retiring, older people can face discrimination
- Also have financial issues due to this discrimination
- 38% of discrimination cases filed said age was the reason
Structuralist view of age:
- Society decides the age of retirement, not the individuals
- Not everyone retires at the same time
- Those who have financial security won’t grow old the same as those that have to work for longer
Jones:
- Retirement has changed from being a lonely period to being seen as a flexible period
Now retirement has 3 main themes for the wealth:
- Conscious choice – arranging their retirement – seen as a high-status thing
- Positive view of retirement – opportunity to find new hobbies and interests
- Fortunate – more lucky than their parents and future children
Child poverty:
- 3.5 million children living in poverty
- Child poverty effects life chances through education and health
- Child poverty is increasing
Elderly poverty:
- 18% of pensioners live in poverty
- Poverty for the elderly has been described as the ‘dark ages’
- Given this name due to the lack of electricity and heating they may be able to afford
- Spend more than a 10th of their money on the fuel bill
- Some elderly have to make the decision between food and heating because of the financial strain
Winter fuel allowance:
- Helps the elderly pay for their heating bills
- You can get it if you were born before 1958 and receive pension credit, income support
- Anywhere from £100-£300
Social mobility:
- Movement between strata varies depending on lot’s of different variables
- Being young or old isn’t a clear defining factor of social mobility
- Age must be looked at in reference to other factors (class, ethnicity etc)
Marsh and Keating:
Different culture attach different meanings and values to age groups
Hepworth and Featherstone:
- Discussions about age inequality are too simplistic.
- They generalise too much as these 2 groups of ‘youth’ and ‘elderly’ are very broad.
Disparity of experience: Youth
- FGM
- Femicide – where women are killed because of their gender
- Some countries don’t allow females to gain an education
- Forced into early marriage by the family
Disparity of experience: Elderly
- Elderly females are more likely to be worse off than elderly men
Green:
- the UK is institutionally ageist
- The media creates negative attitudes around age
- Represents age as a crisis
- E.g. Anti-ageing products
- Older people are depicted as villains in the media
Gerontocracy:
- When a society is ruled by leaders who are older than most of the population
- E.g. Samburu tribe - Elders get to pick their wives first in the polygamist society
Nomadic society
- Moving from place to place with non intention of staying in the new location
Age and cultures around the world - elderly
- Ideas about getting old vary from culture to culture
- Ageing is socially constructed
- Some countries have a system of gerontocracy (leaders are people who are significantly older than the adult population)
- Some countries have a nomadic culture where they move continuously from place to place. The elderly are neglected and killed when they become a hinderance due to them not keeping up with the lifestyle
Kagan:
Study = ‘Activity and ageing in a Colombian peasant village’
- The older people stayed socially and economically active
- It wasn’t a gerontocracy but were seen as valued and respected members of society
Gentleman
- Looked at a care home in the UK
- Said that even with good care, the lack of visits from the family make it unpleasant
- ‘elderly are left by their families to die’
Digital generation gap:
- Clear gap of the ability of old and young using technology
- Causes issues in employment for older people as they are less comfortable using technology
- Can restrict communication between the young and old as the youth culture is linked to technologies so elderly feel like ‘strangers in their own land’
- E.g. dealing with paperless banking
- Silver surfers = those who are 65+ are accessing and using digital technology and growing their digital skills
