Overview

A sociological perspective does not often come easily because it requires looking at the world in a very unaccustomed way. In our everyday lives, we deal with individuals on a personal basis, whether they are members of our family or strangers in the grocery store. However, a sociological perspective requires moving beyond a single person to look at the common behaviors and experiences of many people. It also requires looking at how the actions of individuals cumulate into the social structure. The phrase "the whole is more than the sum of its parts” is a good way to think about sociology.

Given this unfamiliarity with a sociological perspective, we need to spend a bit of time on what it means to study aging from a sociological perspective. This is especially important because many of us have only secondary knowledge of what being an older person in U.S. society entails. We begin with an overview of how U.S. society defines aging and then consider why that creates a social problem.