Think About Aging
Aging. We’re all doing it. Yet most of us do not know much about growing older. Many of our ideas about what aging means are mainly projections – both fears and hopes – about our future selves. Why do we age? Were we always afraid to age? In a long-lived society, when does old age begin? On this web page we will explore what we need to know to think about our own aging.
The History of Old Age
Were we always afraid of old age?
People’s ideas about old age are shaped by their culture and the time and place in which they live. Today, especially in the U.S., many are obsessed with youth and dread old age. That was probably not as true during previous centuries in Western nations—the only countries historians of old age have studied extensively. Nevertheless, the prospect of frail, final years has always been unsettling to some degree.
The history of old age has a great deal to teach us about the present as well as the past. There are many ways in which aging has not changed over the centuries, and they’re as significant as the ways in which it’s very different today. People’s ideas about old age have been at least as important: what they expected of it, how they felt about it, and how they felt about elders. Those feelings inevitably had an impact on social policies and on how older people were treated, and they still do.
There’s also something to learn from history about the meaning of old age. What did our ancestors see as the purpose of life’s later years? What might that suggest to us about its possibilities today?
What aging was like in the past
Many people are convinced that elders had a better life in past centuries. They believe that before industrialization, so few individuals survived to old age that those who did were cherished and respected. Supposedly, they worked for as long as they could and then lived out their final years in the bosom of a married son or daughter’s family, their wisdom and experience valued by the community in a way that it isn’t in modern, fast-paced societies where knowledge and skills are quickly outmoded.
Some scholars have supported this idealized version of the past but others, such as the British historian, Pat Thane, have not. Thane, who is at the University of London, notes the irony of the situation. Our forbears would have envied us because for the first time, the great majority of humans can count on surviving to a reasonably healthy old age, not only in developed countries but increasingly in the rest of the world, as well. Most elders don’t suffer anything like the misery and destitution that were the lot of impoverished older people in previous centuries. Yet instead of celebrating this achievement, politicians, economists and others worry about the difficulty of caring for so many elders, while the average person dreads the prospect of old age only slightly less than the alternative—a premature death.
Some things haven’t changed
What is the real history of aging in Europe and its colonies? In a number of surprising ways, old age wasn’t very different in the past from what it is today.
To begin with, older people were never that scarce. Though in England, for example, between the 1540s and 1800, the average life expectancy at birth was about 35, that doesn’t mean that most people died in their thirties. There were so many deaths in infancy and childhood that they pulled down the average. Those who lived to be 20 had a good chance of surviving into their late fifties or sixties. In 1671, about 9 percent of England’s inhabitants were 60 or older. By comparison, in 2006, 16 percent of the U.K.’s citizens were 65 and up—not a huge difference.
The gender advantage is also unchanged: it appears that for many centuries women have outlived men despite the hazards of childbirth. During the Middle Ages, men commented on this with surprise. They found it unnatural, noting that because males were stronger, they should be the ones who survived for longer. Eighteenth century French physicians were equally puzzled, observing that it “went against nature” for women to outlive men.
In the past, as in the present, people recognized that old age occurs in stages. The English, for example, used to speak of a “green old age,” during which individuals were still active but had begun to slow down. This was followed by a second stage as elders became increasingly frail. In a somewhat similar vein, social scientists today distinguish between the “young old” and the “old old.” Fortunately, as more people have begun to survive for longer, fewer of them are chronically disabled. Today, many scientists are looking for ways to extend life still farther while minimizing the difficult time at the end.
For many centuries, people have been considered “old” at about the same age as they are today, though an individual’s precise chronological age didn’t matter as much in the past. Men and women were thought to be old once they began to look old, or once they could no longer work for a living or were unable to maintain themselves and a household. Until about the middle of the sixteenth century, most people didn’t know their exact age because in general they didn’t need to know it. In some circumstances, however, chronological age could be important. In Europe from medieval times on, men generally became exempt from military service at the age of 60. As for women, in some places a feudal lord could no longer compel a widow to remarry once she reached 60.
These age limits confirm that the threshold of old age hasn’t moved much over the centuries. That makes it all the more remarkable that in the U.S. today, people are considered “old” at younger and younger ages, as Brandeis University women’s studies scholar Margaret Morganroth Gullette has pointed out. Some Americans have begun to use the term, “seniors,” to refer to everyone over 50, and columnist William Safire has dubbed those who are between 40 and 60 “near-elderly.”
How families supported elders
There’s a common belief that before industrialization, most older people lived with their adult children, who cared for them with no outside help, and that in today’s more mobile society, older people are more likely to be isolated and left to manage on their own. This is largely a misconception.
It’s true that in Mediterranean countries and some peasant cultures, it was customary for elders to live under the same roof with a married son or daughter, but in much of Northwestern Europe, older individuals have always preferred to maintain their own household and remain independent for as long as possible—to “age in place,” as we say today. In pre-industrial England, elders rarely lived with their children except for a short period at the very end of their life. Fewer than 10 percent of households included parents, children, and grandparents, partly because there were so many early deaths that one third of all elders didn’t have a single, surviving child. Others lost touch when their young moved away in search of work.
As for those who were lucky enough to have adult children nearby, many still chose to live independently, but that didn’t necessarily mean they received no assistance from family. Then, as now, relatives in the neighborhood may have helped to sustain them. Furthermore, family support was seldom one-sided: elders did their share, caring for their grandchildren and those who were ill, helping their children financially when they could, and contributing to family and community in other ways.
Today, older people are much more likely to have living children and, when they do, researchers report, most can count on them for help when they need it. Though families are more often separated geographically, telephones, email and modern transportation help them stay in touch in a way that wasn’t possible in the past. As in previous centuries, caregiving is a two-way street, especially when it comes to young children. Record numbers of American elders are currently caring for their grandchildren—one in twelve grandparents, according to some estimates—especially in the African American and Native American communities.
How elders survived financially
In every era, there have been wealthy people who were able to retain their authority and comfortable circumstances to the end. Some who were not wealthy also had a reasonably comfortable old age. In England from the 13th century on, elderly peasants who owned property or were tenants on a piece of land would draw up a retirement contract: in return for some form of support for the rest of their life—food, shelter, and perhaps clothing—they signed over their land or the right to work it to a relative or another villager. The concept was a bit like today’s reverse mortgage, in which an older homeowner receives regular payouts from a bank, which are repaid eventually with interest when the homeowner moves out or dies and the house is sold.
There’s one way in which old age is very different in Western nations today. In the past, those who were poor and landless were often in dire straits once they could no longer work full time, especially men who did manual labor and had to look for less strenuous work once they reached their fifties. The jobs available to older people who were no longer able-bodied tended to be demeaning and meagerly paid. An old man might become a street sweeper, for example. Women could sometimes go on earning for longer than men, caring for the sick or perhaps taking in laundry.
Most impoverished elders resorted to what scholars have called “an economy of makeshifts.” They did paid work whenever possible, accepted help from family and friends, applied for charity or for support from the government, and, when they had to, took to the streets as beggars.
For many centuries, all European countries had systems for sustaining the “deserving poor,” especially elders who had no family to turn to and could no longer support themselves. (The undeserving poor were those who could work but chose not to.) Poor relief in England was not intended to replace a living wage but to supplement whatever other resources individuals had. Older people who received these subsidies and were not totally disabled were expected to work, and most communities set aside specific tasks for elders: a man might maintain a churchyard or a woman might do housecleaning.
The history of retirement
Pensions were available in the Middle Ages in England to a fortunate few, such as clergymen, some public servants, and members of crafts guilds. In 1889, Germany created the world’s first national pension scheme for elders and the disabled. It was primarily intended to cover better-paid male workers.
After 1900, Western nations edged gradually toward universal retirement. In the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century, more and more private companies began to offer pensions to white-collar employees. During the depths of the Depression in 1935, the government created a Social Security system to provide retirement benefits for older workers, partly to ease them out of the job market so that younger ones could fill their positions. After World War II, employers began to give pensions to blue-collar workers.
By the 1960s, many American companies required their employees to retire, usually at age 65 when their Social Security benefits began. During the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government gradually banned policies that forced workers out at a certain age, though age limits were still allowed for firefighters, air traffic controllers, and others in a few specific occupations and professions. Nevertheless, by the late 1990s, more and more people were retiring while still in their fifties, either by choice or because they’d been downsized out of a job.
How beliefs about aging evolved
Were elders once more respected than they are today? Did our ancestors have a more positive view of old age?
According to Pat Thane, every generation has believed that elders were more respected in the past—the subject is even discussed in Plato’s Republic. Yet it’s difficult to identify any time or place in which all elders were treated with deference just because they were old and had accumulated a lifetime of experience.
Scholars who aren’t convinced of that sometimes note that in the Middle Ages and later in some communities in England, knowledgeable older men were asked to exercise their memories to settle local legal cases such as disputes over property. That could be taken as a sign of respect. In those same communities, however, knowledgeable older women were sometimes accused of witchcraft because of their expertise in medicine or midwifery.
The recurrent belief that life used to be better for older people probably expressed a fear harbored by many: that when they themselves were old, family and community would cast them aside. Their anxiety about the future created a hunger for an imagined past.
Old age is no place for sissies, as Bette Davis famously said, though most people would agree that it’s better than the alternative, an early death. Of course, death is the other thing that has always been worrying about old age: nobody gets out of it alive. Some have suggested that the connection between later life and death is stronger today than it once was because people used to expire at all ages. Now most die in their seventies or later, confirming that old age is life-threatening.
Positive and negative views of aging
In all times, Pat Thane writes, a general dread of what might happen in old age has fueled negative ideas about the aging process, but there were also competing, more positive ideas about what it means to be old. It’s difficult for historians to tell which view predominated in the distant past, but in more recent centuries there have been times when the balance between them seems to have shifted.
According to University of Texas historian Thomas R. Cole, until about 1800 many Americans took the bad with the good. They saw life as a spiritual journey and accepted the infirmities and sorrows of old age as part of that journey, a reminder of the fact that everyone is dependent on God and of the need for piety. “God’s grace did not alter the signs of physical decay,” Cole writes. “It transformed their meaning.”
During the 19th century, however, many Victorians came to believe that people get the old age they deserve. Cole suggests that the Victorians weren’t comfortable with the ambiguities of aging—the fact that it can produce both suffering and wisdom, disabilities and spiritual growth. They preferred to believe that those who worked hard, were self-disciplined and had faith would be rewarded with a healthy and independent old age, followed by a quick and painless death. Those who were lazy, promiscuous, and had no faith would die young or their final years would be miserable. For many, these ideas may have provided the illusion of control: because they themselves were good people, they believed, their own later years were likely to be benign.
Today, gerontologists and other writers often suggest that individuals who maintain a sensible lifestyle can expect to be healthy and vital in their later years. As a result, when elders develop chronic health problems, it may be tempting to blame them for their condition and conclude that they’re getting the old age they deserve. Lifestyle does has a huge impact on health in old age, but it’s not the whole story—heredity counts for something, as does plain luck.
Opinions about aging in the 20th century
According to Cole, since the Victorian era the balance between positive and negative visions of aging has shifted twice, each time in reaction to what went before. Early in the twentieth century, in an effort to counter the belief that anyone who had a hard time in old age deserved it, advocates for elders began to argue that most older people were frail, impoverished, and unable to support themselves; therefore, they merited help.
The pendulum swung the other way in the late 1960s, as academics, health professionals, and others launched a social movement to combat ageism—including the myth that old age is bound to be a time of frailty and dependency. They fought the negative image of aging by promoting a positive vision: that older people are healthy, productive, self-reliant, and sexually active.
Neither the totally positive view nor the totally negative one captures the truth about aging. The first seems to describe what was once called “a green old age,” while the latter focuses on the period of frailty some (but not all) elders experience at the end of life.
Cole objects to the positive view for another reason. To him, elders are not exactly like younger people except for their chronological age. He believes they’re different in ways that should be “acknowledged, respected, and cherished.”
How beliefs about aging affect elders
When a culture devalues elders, old age becomes a more difficult experience. At the turn of the 20th century, for example, older patients were sometimes simply written off. Doctors felt they weren’t worth the effort because, with or without treatment, they hadn’t long to live. Echoes of that kind of thinking can be found today in the debate over who will be vaccinated if there’s a flu pandemic. Bioethicists at NIH, the National Institutes of Health, have proposed that healthy people between the ages of 13 and 40 be given priority because they have the most years left to live. If the flu kills a lot of older people, the bioethicists say, that’s not as bad because elders “already have a shorter life span.”
There have also been debates in recent years about that 20th century invention, universal retirement, and the programs that make it possible. In the late 1970s, American opponents of Social Security and Medicare began blaming older people for the poverty of children and families. They argued that too much of the federal budget was spent on programs to help elders, rather than on families. The opponents offered their own image of older people—not as needy and dependent, or healthy and productive, but as “greedy geezers” who supposedly lived in luxury, had a powerful lobby and were selfish in their demands.
Others, including Thomas Cole, have focused on a different possible downside to universal retirement. They believe that government pension systems such as Social Security legitimized separating elders from the world of work and created a new phase of life beyond gainful employment, a phase Cole sees as a kind of meaningless void. “Old age remains a season in search of its purposes,” he writes.
Pat Thane concedes that universal retirement may have helped to define older people as a separate social group and may even have reinforced the belief that elders are marginal workers and generally incompetent. She disagrees, however, with some historians, who say that getting the ability to retire deprived older people of respect they once earned by staying in the workforce. She warns against romanticizing the past, noting that elders who were forced to eke out a living by sweeping streets or cleaning houses were poorly paid and far from respected.
The panic over aging populations
The issue of retirement is very much alive today as governments around the world consider what they can do to minimize the cost of supporting a rapidly growing population of elders. Life expectancy in many nations continues to inch upward while birth rates drop, and policymakers worry aloud that in the near future there will be many fewer individuals in the workforce, paying taxes that can be used to support the burgeoning population of elders.
This is not the first time there has been panic, even anger, at the prospect of an increasing number of older citizens. Pat Thane points out that in the 1930s and 1940s in England, politicians and economists decried the “menace” of demographic trends that were shrinking the size of the general population even as the proportion of older citizens mushroomed. Experts predicted the worst: by 1980, they said, about 30 percent of the British would be over 65. Supposedly, as the nation lost its youthful vitality, it would also grow more conservative, and its economy and military strength would degenerate.
The worst never happened because the population grew in size, rather than shrinking. In addition, women went to work in unprecedented numbers, and there was an unexpected influx of young immigrants. As of 2006, individuals 65 and over constitute just 16 percent of the population of the United Kingdom. (In the U.S. at the time of the 2000 census, the comparable figure was about 12 percent.)
Demographers’ worst fears may not be realized in the 21st century, either. Though the cost of providing benefits for elders is bound to rise, the drop in the birth rate will save taxpayers money that would previously have been spent to support children through education and other programs.
Though there will undoubtedly be difficulties as the boomers reach retirement age, immigration may bring in more young people, or boomers themselves may choose to go on working for longer. On some surveys, 80 percent have said that they expect to stay on the job or perhaps take a part-time position once they reach retirement age. Some will need the income, but others explain that they simply enjoy working.
Many people today remain physically fit at least until their late seventies, and there’s ample evidence that elders can function effectively on the job. If there’s a shortage of workers as boomers retire, the age discrimination that has pushed many out of the job market prematurely will no longer make sense. In fact, in 2008, some U.S. corporations were already experimenting with new policies designed to persuade older employees to delay their retirement.
Pat Thane writes, “It is unnecessary to demand that armies of 70-year-olds should march out to work to support those older still, and certainly many will not wish to do so, but we need to shift out of the mode of thinking that assumes that somewhere in their sixties most people become dependent, incapable burdens, to realize that most of them have at least as much to offer as much younger people, and seek ways to use their capacities positively….We need to work with a more complex and realistic picture of who older people are and of their roles in society and the economy than the simple, depressing, inaccurate, image of burdensome dependency.”
Unspoken fears that shape public debates
Why have there been recurrent panics about an aging population? Thane suggests that deeper fears have been involved. In the 1930s, the British were concerned about the military threat from countries such as Germany, which had populations that seemed to skew younger than theirs. They were also worried about the state of their Empire and felt threatened by high birth rates in India, for example. In Britain and in France, as well, Thane writes, “The ageing of populations symbolized the decline of nations.”
Thane believes that such fundamental fears have shaped the public debate about population aging throughout the 20th century. She warns that, as today’s doomsayers once again predict demographic catastrophe, we need to beware of contrasting an idealized past with present circumstances that are poorly understood. If we begin to think of older people as a resource, rather than a burden, in the future the benefits of an aging society will far outweigh its costs.
American historian Thomas Cole has a somewhat similar interpretation. He suggests that today people fuse their personal anxieties about growing old with pessimism about the future. When we focus on fear of an aging population, he says, we forget that their growing numbers represent a human triumph because so many people now survive into old age, a situation that has vast potential for society.
At the Silver Century Foundation, we believe that to resolve the dilemma of aging populations, we must first grapple with the meaning of old age, as individuals and as societies. If we’re going to live for 20 or 30 years after the conventional age of retirement, what are we supposed to do with that time? What should our later years be about?
We need to identify many purposes for aging and different ones for the two stages—for our green old age and for the time when we have grown frail. Individuals need to define goals for themselves, but we also need public discussions and changes in the culture so that people can make the best of life’s bonus years, the extra time most of us have been given simply because we’re lucky enough to be alive in the 21st century.
This article is based primarily on three fascinating books, all of them well worth reading:
A History of Old Age, edited by Pat Thane. Getty Publications, 2005.
The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America by Thomas R. Cole. Cambridge University Press, 1992
Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues, by Pat Thane. Oxford University Press, 2000.
