Defining Aging: Sociological Aging

The third aspect of aging that is likely evident in your list deals with the social statuses older adults occupy and the activities in which they engage. Before we can talk specifically about this third image of aging, the one at the foundation of this course, we must deal with some basic terminology.

We can think about social status as the recognized position that a person holds in society. We all occupy certain statuses. For example, by taking this course you are occupying the status of "student.” The student status carries with it expectations about behaviors which are known as a social role. Roles are scripts for positions in society, which include rights, responsibilities, and activities such as the expectation of working on assignments, synthesizing knowledge, and taking exams. Moreover, we usually think of the student status in relation to the "instructor” or "teacher” status. In other words, we define statuses in relation to their designated rights, activities, and obligations to other social roles. In our example, the instructor expects the student to follow assignment directions and the students expect the instructor to grade the assignments in a fair and impartial manner. These statuses often occur in hierarchical arrangements to reflect the level of importance associated with each role—the instructor status is more prestigious than the student status because the instructor role contains more rights and responsibilities.

Now turn again to the remaining items on our list. These items reflect our shared expectations about the social statuses that older adults occupy. Here, "retired” and "grandparent” are easily identifiable statuses. Moreover, the activities of "bingo,” "golf,” and "bus trips” also suggest a social role based on the availability of unstructured time to pursue individual interests and hobbies. These expected behaviors are associated with the leisure role. The retirement status frequently implies the leisure role because there is the expectation that with freedom from the time constraints of the worker role one has the time to pursue leisure activities. However, as we will see in this course, retirement does not always mean one is free of other time-demanding obligations or is functionally able to lead a leisurely lifestyle.

The statuses and associated roles that we associate with aging also assume something about when it is appropriate to occupy these statuses. Recall that when we were discussing biological aging, we made the point that we tend to link physical changes to certain chronological ages. We make a similar association between various statuses and chronological aging, particularly retirement and grandparenthood. Consider these questions: "How old are you when you typically become a grandparent?” "What age should one be when he or she retires?” It is unlikely that you would consider 25 or 30 years of age to be the usual age at which one becomes a grandparent or retires—we would say he or she is "too young.” Likewise, we generally would also consider 75 "too old” to begin one’s first job and assume the worker role. Thus, many statuses carry with them implicit age norms—expectations about the chronological age that a person must be to occupy a given status and its associated roles. We note that there is no clear age norm for the leisure role, in part because it is an American ideal to be "successful” enough not to need to work. Much like biological aging though, chronological age and social statuses are loosely correlated and there is a good deal of variation in when people enter the statuses that we identify with aging.

If we juxtapose these broader images of aging—chronological age, biological functioning, and social roles—we quickly notice that they present conflicting ideas about what it means to grow older in the U.S. On one hand, we have the image of aging as the "golden years;” a time when we are no longer bound by full-time work and parenting. The new social statuses that may come with age—grandparenthood, retirement, and leisure—all contain less structure and fewer associated role obligations than those statuses occupied earlier in the life course. On the other hand, we also have an image of aging as a time of increasing frailty and the loss of physical and cognitive independence. These two images are largely incongruent. Despite their seeming contradiction, both images are presented by the mass media and the dominant culture. We simultaneously see elders as in need of assistance and able to lead lives of luxury. This is the context in which aging takes place in our society.

In this course, we are interested in the process by which we come to associate these contradictory images with aging—that is sociological aging. More specifically, your text defines sociological aging as "the process defining appropriate behavior patterns constructed from the expectations and belief systems of the structural characteristics of society” (Matcha 1997:4). What does this mean? This means that the values we place on aging are socially constructed, and do not come from qualities that are due solely to the age of the individual. Simply put, aging is more than a long life. Rather, how we define aging is the result of the complex interplay between various structures of society—the family, the economy, the government, and the medical establishment. These contradictory images of aging result because these institutions have disparate beliefs about and expectations of older individuals. These conflicts result in role ambiguity, the lack of a clear universal script for older adults, and lead us to classify aging as a social problem.