Introducing ageing

Introduction

Have you ever thought about how long you might live? In the UK and in many other parts of the world, most people can expect to live longer than their parents and grandparents did. A baby born in 2011 is almost eight times more likely to live to be 100 than one born in 1931 (Department of Work and Pensions, 2011). The World Health Organization estimates that globally the proportion of people aged over 60 will double from 11% in 2000 to 22% in 2050 (WHO, 2012). These big changes can have really significant effects on individuals and on society more widely.

Figure 1

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Image showing four headlines as follows:

• Britain’s population timebomb: By 2060 there’ll be just two workers for every pensioner
• Facing the challenge of an ageing population
• Taxpayers would bear the brunt of free care for pensioners
• Woeful preparation for ageing population will cause misery, say Lords.

Figure 1

You may have seen headlines and comments like these yourself. But is this really the whole story? Do older people necessarily make greater demands on health care services? Shouldn’t we be celebrating the fact that most people are living longer? What about the quality of life people experience during these additional years? Isn’t it ageist to categorise all older people as nothing but drains on society? What about the contributions older people make to society? Asking lots of questions about something that is often taken for granted is an important part of what it means to approach a topic in an academic way. This course will help you to explore the topic of ageing in this way.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course K118 Perspectives in Health and Social Care.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge and understanding of current issues in ageing and later life

• reflect on experiences of ageing and later life

• analyse case studies of care situations, drawing out their wider relevance to concepts and ideas

• demonstrate developed literacy, numeracy, and digital and information literacy skills.

1 Thinking about your own ageing

We are all ageing from the moment we are born and most of us will be old one day. Particular events often make people suddenly aware of their own ageing – round number birthdays, for example, the first grey hair, or retirement. How people feel about their own ageing can vary hugely, depending on many different factors such as how generally happy they are with their lives, how much longer they expect to live, the older people they know and the ideas about ageing they have picked up from their wider culture.

Figure 2

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Three pictures of a womans face, where the woman ages gradually across the three pictures from young to elderly.

Figure 2

In Activity 1 you are going to reflect on your own experiences of ageing so far, whether you think of yourself as currently ‘young’, ‘old’, ‘middle-aged’ or ‘ageless’.

Reflecting on your own experiences of ageing is an important part of the academic study of ageing and later life because it affects the ways you approach the topic. Most people do not feel completely neutral about the topic of ageing. It is often difficult for people to imagine that they will ever really be old themselves (Jones, 2012). It is also very common for people who would generally be categorised by other people as ‘old’ to speak as if they were not old – to disassociate themselves from being old. Gerontologists (people who study ageing and later life) have been interested in why this happens, and come up with several different explanations (Bultena and Powers, 1978; Jones, 2006). However they tend to agree that the underlying reason is that we live in an ageist society – one which associates being old with being useless, redundant and of low value. It is therefore not surprising if people do not want to think of themselves as currently old or admit that they will one day be old.

The word ‘ageism’ was coined by Robert Butler:

You will return to the topic of ageism later in this course. But is being ‘old’ always a tale of decline, decrepitude and difficulty? This is the issue you will explore in the next section.

2 Introducing Monty Meth

In Activity 2 you will be introduced to Monty Meth, an 87-year-old man living in London. Thinking about issues through individual case studies can be a good way to start exploring ‘the bigger picture’. Case studies also help us to work through questions that are relevant for other people, in different situations.

Activity 2 A day in the life of Monty Meth

Timing: Allow about 45 minutes

Part 1

Watch Video 1. You might find it helpful to watch it through twice – all the way through to begin with, and then again, pausing it whenever you want to make notes.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 A day in the life of Monty Meth

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Transcript: Video 1 A day in the life of Monty Meth

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

MONTY METH:

I start the day at the Leisure Centre, which means getting up soon after five. I leave home at about half past five -- always depends on what time I get up, really. I go to bed quite early -- between half past nine and 10 o’clock. So I try and get six, seven hours’ sleep.

I start the morning with the swim, because I think it stimulates the brain, gets me thinking. The Leisure Centre opens at six, and there’s always been a group of older people -- pensioners -- who go there. Right. Here we are. I usually get a kiss from Jane.

[LAUGHTER AND INDISTINCT VOICES SPEAKING]

MONTY METH:

And I’ve always found that a source of contact that gets me going for the day. We have a chat about last night’s television, last night’s football, politics -- anything that people want to chat about, we have a chinwag.

MAN:

I’ll go get your friend and return.

MONTY METH:

I’ve made some extremely good lifelong friends at the swimming pool. There’s no question about that. You’re having a sauna today.

MAN:

[INAUDIBLE]

MONTY METH:

Are you talking to me?

MAN:

Yeah.

MONTY METH:

Because I can’t hear, can I? Yeah -- you know.

MAN:

Or I’m swearing at you.

MONTY METH:

I also feel that when I’ve ducked myself in the water, I wake up. And I use the time there, while I’m swimming up and down, I tend not to talk for -- no contact while I’m swimming. But I tend to think -- about family, friends -- but also about what I could be doing that day, what I should be doing.

Who I need to email, who I need to telephone. I wish I had a notebook under water. But I don’t. So very often I come out and I’ve forgotten what I was thinking about. But it comes back. And it’s a good stimulant for me.

And when I come out and drive home and have breakfast, I feel -- well, I’m pretty well on top of the world. I mean, I feel good.

BETTY:

Oh. That looks nice.

MONTY METH;

I get home about quarter past seven, and Betty -- my wife -- has breakfast ready. And then I usually -- after I look at the back pages of the papers, not the front very much -- I then pop into the garden, just have a look around and see that everything is OK.

I’m a bit behind this year because of the cold weather. My lifestyle is to have a bit of thinking time. And it’s surprising that out here what you can think of. These deadheads need to come off. Otherwise, new growth won’t come.

I usually go up to my office at the top of the house -- converted half of the loft into an office. We had a special ladder put in that takes me from the bedroom to the top of the house into the loft. And I climb up there. And stay up there.

My wife is not happy when I’m out of touch and out of sound. But here I am in the office, away from everybody. Very quiet. And I’m able to make my phone calls, look at the emails, do some thinking.

[COMPUTER CHORD]

MONTY METH:

I have a Macintosh Classic. I bought it in 1990. It’s still here. It’s still functioning. One chap tells me it’s worth a lot of money. I mean, I don’t know whether that’s true or not.

MONTY METH:

My main activity is obviously with the Enfield Over 50s Forum, which, when I became chair, had some 70 members. We’ve now got something like 5,000 members. I suppose we get involved in our campaigning in order to improve the quality of life of older people.

And it’s any and every issue that comes up. I write the newsletter, and that has been the source of publicising the work of the forum. Because of my contacts with the press -- I mean, I didn’t ask for them, but they approached me to write a monthly column for the newspaper under the banner of the Over 50s Forum.

We’ve always got, you know, something to do. And we think that has helped us to keep -- both of us -- touch wood -- are comparatively fit. Mentally we’re quite strong.

Put them straight up there.

BETTY:

Are you still trying to get through to Birmingham City Council?

MONTY METH:

No, I haven’t done that. We probably think that it’s been good for both of us to have outside interests -- that we’re not continually looking in on ourselves. We’ve never both sat back and wondered what we’re going to do today.

Now I’m 87 and I clearly have slowed down. If I do attend a meeting in the morning, then I feel quite tired by the afternoon. So I try and pace myself. There are times of the day when I feel tired. And I say, I’ve just got to sit down and have a rest. But then I get rejuvenated.

I can’t run to the betting shop as quick as I used to. But I go there on a Saturday morning and have a bet very often, and watch the racing on Channel 4 afternoon. Fitting in everything -- domestic, political with a small p, running the forum -- is very often very difficult.

And there are sometimes clashes and sometimes you have to have priorities, you know. We try and go to the theatre regularly, and I put that in the diary and that’s sacrosanct. But I am trying to cut down my commitments, if I possibly can. I’ve now told them I’m going to retire from running the newsletter.

Because some time I’m not going to be here, and they’ll have to carry on. So it’s what is known as succession planning. It’s about time we started it, you might think, at the age of 87. But we are.

End transcript: Video 1 A day in the life of Monty Meth

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Video 1 A day in the life of Monty Meth

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Then answer the following question:

How does Monty’s life compare to yours? What is different and what is similar?

Fill in Interactive table 1 using the first column for yourself and the second column for Monty. This will help you to think about the significance (or not) of your age and Monty’s age.

Please note: At this point you do not need to write anything in the third column (titled ‘Molly Davies, age 90’). It forms part of a later activity.

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Interactive table 1

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	Name / Age	Monty Meth, age 87	Molly Davies, age 90
Living situation
Health
Family responsibilities
Paid work
Unpaid work
Social life
Busyness
Satisfaction with life

Interactive table 1

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Comment

Here is what one person wrote:

	Me, age 41	Monty, age 87
Living situation	With my partner and her three kids.	Lives with his wife; children have grown up and left home.
Health	Okay. I seem to get constant colds and coughs, especially in the winter – think the kids bring them home from school.	Really good for his age! Goes swimming every morning.
Family responsibilities	The kids – looking after them practically and financially.	Does not mention any family responsibilities. His wife seems to be as healthy and active as Monty, so she does not seem to need any looking after.
Paid work	Full time.	Does not do any paid work.
Unpaid work	None except helping out at the kids’ school events sometimes. Unless you count looking after the kids!	Does lots, especially through the Enfield Over-50s Forum.
Social life	Not much! Can never get a babysitter. Sometimes go to the pub on a Friday night.	Seems very friendly with the group of people he swims with every day. Mentions going to the theatre. It seems likely that his work with the Enfield Over-50s Forum has sociable aspects.
Busyness	Too busy a lot of the time – there is just too much to fit in.	Seems very busy – he goes swimming every morning as well as all the other things.
Satisfaction with life	Fairly satisfied but I would like to have more time to do things for me, and more time to spend with my partner without the kids around.	Seems very satisfied with his life.

Part 2

Now think about two adults that you know personally, one younger than you and one older than you. Filling in Interactive table 2 will give you two more people to compare with your own and Monty’s experiences, which will give you further information about the significance of age

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Interactive table 2

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	Younger Adult / Age	Older Adult / Age
Living situation
Health
Family responsibilities
Paid work
Unpaid work
Social life
Busyness
Satisfaction with life

Interactive table 2

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Comment

And here is what the same person wrote in the second table:

	Younger adult My step-brother, aged 28	Older adult My mum, aged 61
Living situation	With my mum.	With my step-brother.
Health	Has asthma – mostly seems to be okay though.	Fine.
Family responsibilities	None, as far as I know.	Still doing the laundry, cleaning and cooking for my step-brother.
Paid work	Sometimes. He never seems to manage to keep jobs for long.	Works part-time at a garden centre.
Unpaid work	None, as far as I know.	Is ‘Brown Owl’ of her local Brownie group and secretary of local Gardening Club. Takes a neighbour shopping every week. Visits my Gran in the care home twice a week. Helps a friend with her garden.
Social life	At the pub or out clubbing most nights. Also goes on holiday with a group of friends every year.	Loads – goes walking with a group of friends most weeks, goes to a pilates group, goes out for meals with friends and goes on holiday with them most years.
Busyness	Not very busy.	Pretty busy, but do not think she feels ‘too busy’ like I do.
Satisfaction with life	I do not think he is actually very happy with his life. I know he would like his own place but cannot afford it.	Pretty happy. I know she gets a bit fed up with looking after my step-brother sometimes but she also says she likes his company. She had a tough time after my step-dad left, but she seems to have come through that now and to enjoy her life.

Although Monty is presumably coming to the end of his life, he is very far from being the burden on health and social care services that the newspaper headlines predict. Indeed he seems to be contributing more to society than some younger people. He also seems to find his life enjoyable, satisfying and meaningful. So how can we explain the mismatch between Monty’s experiences and the fears people have of what it means to have an ageing population? Is Monty just really unusual or really lucky? In other words, is he typical of older people, or atypical? In the next section you will look at one answer to this question which has had a very significant influence on people working in the field of ageing.

3 Introducing ‘the Third Age’

Peter Laslett (1915−2001) was an academic with wide-ranging interests including social history, politics and ageing. He was one of the founders of the University of the Third Age (U3A) (and also helped to establish The Open University). In 1989 he published a very influential book called A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age (Laslett, 1989a), which you will look at in more detail in Activity 3.

As Laslett himself acknowledges, there have always been some healthy and active people in their 70s, 80s and even older. But Laslett is arguing that this is now so common that we need to rethink our expectations about what is likely to happen over the course of someone’s life. Instead of thinking of life as falling into three main stages – childhood, adulthood and old age – we need to think of four. Rather than seeing healthy, active older people as exceptional, we need to recognise that many people can reasonably anticipate years of fulfilling life after they have finished paid work and any children have left home.

Figure 3

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An older man dressed in cycling gear, sat on a bike, outside, and looking at the camera.

Figure 3

Characterising the Third Age

You may already have thought of some objections to Laslett’s argument – is having a Third Age a lot to do with how much money you have got and how healthy you are, for example? What about people with disabilities or long-term conditions? Is this way of dividing up the life course a bit dismissive of people in the Fourth Age? These kinds of reactions are an important part of developing an academic critique. For the moment, just make a note of any disagreements or objections you might have to Laslett’s argument – we will return to these later.

So how does Laslett’s theory help explain Monty’s experiences? In Activity 4 you will think about this.

You may agree that the Third Age seems to be quite a good description for the experiences of some individuals – perhaps you yourself if you are ‘in later life’, or other people you know, as well as Monty. But how typical are these individuals? Laslett was writing in 1989. Do his claims that most people can now expect to experience a Third Age hold up more than 25 years later? These are some of the issues that the next section explores.

4 The Third Age and population changes

To find out whether experiencing a Third Age is common nowadays, researchers need to look at lots of people’s experiences. However, they cannot just ask people ‘are you experiencing the Third Age?’ because most people would not know what that meant. They could ask them about their experiences of ageing and whether they feel they are in a period of self-fulfilment, but this would probably involve quite a lengthy explanation and lead to quite a long conversation, which would be very expensive and time-consuming to do with thousands of people. For large-scale studies, researchers generally need to ask quite straightforward and factual questions or to look at data about how long people are living and their health status. This does not exactly answer the question ‘is having a Third Age now common?’ but it may give clues that help to answer this question.

Of course statistics like these are about the population as a whole – they do not tell you about a particular individual. If the average 65-year-old woman can expect 11.6 more years of good health, some are likely to experience only one more year while others some 30 more years. And of course not everyone below the age of 65 experiences good health or is without a disability. However, the statistics you have seen here do seem to support Laslett’s argument that most people nowadays can expect to experience many years of healthy and productive life after retirement. What the statistics here do not really tell you is whether this Third Age is also a time of self-fulfilment and freedom for most people.

A key academic skill is reading and thinking critically. This means not accepting things at face value but constantly asking yourself questions such as ‘is this really the case?’, ‘are there other possible explanations?’ or ‘how does this match up to what I already know?’ This is what you were beginning to do when you used the statistics to test out Laslett’s argument.

It is especially important to keep thinking critically when numbers and statistics appear, because many people do not feel fully comfortable with numbers, so they tend to skim over them, rather than reading them with full attention. This can mean that they do not really think about whether the numbers actually show what the author claims they do. People also tend to find numbers and percentages very convincing and persuasive, regardless of whether they are correct or not. For example, ‘63% of people living in this area are aged over 40’ sounds more authoritative and factual than ‘most people living in this area are aged over 40’. Working confidently and critically with numbers is also a very valuable skill in many employment contexts. In the next section, you are therefore going to apply and develop your critical reading skills with numbers and words to a short extract from an article in a local newspaper.

Applying the theory

Read the following article, which was featured in the Milton Keynes Citizen newspaper in 2013, and then undertake Activity 6.

Activity 6 Going beyond the headlines

Timing: Allow about 1 hour

Click on the following link to access a Word version of the newspaper extract ‘MK to be OAP capital of the UK’  (Downes, 2013). Use the following questions to help you think critically about what it says..

• a.Using the highlighting tool in your word processor, or a highlighter pen if you are working from paper, choose one colour to represent statistics. Highlight all the statistics that are cited in the article. Now use a second colour to highlight all the claims that are made about what these statistics mean.
• b.The article tells us that a quarter, or 25%, of the population of Milton Keynes will be aged over 60 by 2026, but it does not tell us what percentage of the population will be aged 80 or older. Using the figures in this article, calculate this figure.

  If you need a reminder of how to calculate percentages, try searching online using a search term such as ‘how to calculate percentages’. There are plenty of sources of help. If the first one you find does not make sense to you, try looking at another one.

• c.What further information would you need in order to find out whether Milton Keynes was going to be the OAP capital of the UK?
• d.What assumptions about ageing does this article make? How do the concept of the Third Age and the statistics you used in Activity 5 help to counter those assumptions?
• e.Can you think of alternative conclusions you could draw using some of the same statistics? Write the headline and first few sentences of a newspaper article giving a different spin on these figures. Do not worry too much about whether your version would really work as a newspaper article – just have a go at drawing some different conclusions.

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Comment

• a.Click on the following link and open the Word document to see how one of the authors of this course has highlighted the document.
• b.Watch the following animation, which shows how you should have calculated the percentage:

Download this video clip.Video player: Animation 1

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Transcript: Animation 1

Rebecca Jones:

The article says that there will be 14,400 people aged over 80 by 2026. To calculate what percentage of the population that is, we first need to know the total population.

We can work this out since we know that 25% of the population will be aged over 60, and that will be 70,000 people.

So 25% of the total is 70,000.

It’s quite easy to find 100% here, since we can just multiply 25% by 4 to get 100%, and 70,000 by 4 gets us 280,000.

So, there will be 14,400 people aged 80 or older out of a total of 280,000.

To calculate what percentage that is, we divide 14,400 by 280,000 and multiply by 100 to get 5.1%.

End transcript: Animation 1

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Animation 1

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• c.In order to find out whether Milton Keynes was going to become the OAP capital of the UK, you would also need to know:
  • What percentage of people aged 60+ and 80+ will other areas have by 2026?
  • Are 25% and 5.15% actually particularly high? Is 5.15% of the population aged 80+ by 2026 an usually high proportion for a UK town, or is it quite typical?
  • How reliable are these projections?
  • Where do they come from and is it a reputable source?

While a 75% increase in the number of people aged over 60, compared to a national increase of 32% sounds big, if there were not very many people aged over 60 in 2013 it might not be remarkable. In the case of Milton Keynes, which, as the article suggests, has historically had quite a small population of older people, this increase could be Milton Keynes becoming more like the rest of the UK, rather than becoming the OAP capital.

You might also ask:

• What is an OAP capital?
• Is it the place with the highest proportion of people aged over 60?
• Or is it a place that many older people choose to live?
• Or is it a place that is particularly well-designed and welcoming for older people?

MK has always had a reputation as a youthful city – a new town, full of young families just beginning their lives together. But statistics just out show that with people who moved here in the 60s and 70s growing older, it’s also becoming a place for older people too. By 2026, 25% of the population is expected to be aged 60 and over, and the population of people aged over 80 is expected to double, as people live longer healthier lives.

• Other headlines could be ‘Milton Keynes citizens are living longer!’ or ‘Milton Keynes is getting older and wiser!’ or ‘Volunteer army at the ready to help us all!’

Apocalyptic demography?

The article you just read could be seen as an example of what some gerontologists have termed ‘apocalyptic demography’ – that is, treating people living longer solely as a problem and burden to societies with terrible long term effects (Bytheway and Johnson, 2010). Rather than celebrating the fact that many people are living longer, and recognising the benefits that having more older people in the population might bring, apocalyptic demography focuses only on the negatives. An ageing population undoubtedly changes society and creates new challenges but it is both over-simplistic and ageist to frame this only as a problem. You may remember that part of Butler’s original definition of ageism was that it involved ‘systematic stereotyping’. As one commentator says:

(Longino, 2005, p. 79)

One of the ways ‘isms’ like racism, sexism and, here, ageism, work is by over-generalising and stereotyping, as if everyone who can be categorised in a particular way is the same as everyone else in that category. Laslett’s concept of the Third Age can help to resist apocalyptic demography by making it clear that ageing is not simply about decline, dependency and difficulty.

Maximise

Figure 4

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This image is a poster for ‘Say No To Ageism Week’. It shows five images, left-to-right, of people’s faces. The first four images are in black and white and show older people. Over their faces are the captions ‘useless’, ‘grumpy’, ‘past it’ and ‘burden’. The right-hand image is in colour and shows a young woman. Below her face is the caption ‘Lisa’. Beneath the pictures is the question ‘What’s your attitude to ageism?’

Figure 4

Laslett’s argument about the growth of the Third Age is an example of an academic theory. Theories take a complex social phenomenon (in this case, ageing) and attempt to understand it more clearly by carrying out research and by developing explanations, categories and concepts. Theories can make things look simpler and more tidy than they actually are. Reality is usually messy and very complex, so no theory is perfect and explains everything. However, a useful theory takes you beyond what you already think you know and helps you to see things that you otherwise might not. That is why developing and refining theories is a key part of academic work.

One of the ways in which theories are developed is by other people reading and responding to the original theory. Laslett’s theory of the growth of the Third Age has been very influential and many people have developed and also criticised his ideas. While there is broad agreement that more people are living longer, healthier lives, some gerontologists have argued that Laslett’s emphasis on self-fulfilment in later life is unhelpful because it puts too much emphasis on personal achievement (Gilleard and Higgs, 2002). This can make it seem that, if people do not experience a Third Age, it is somehow their fault when, actually, their socio-economic circumstances or a combination of unlucky events are the main cause. Another common criticism is that the idea of the Third and Fourth Ages is rather unhelpful when thinking about people who are more dependent and frail. It is this issue that the next section focuses on.

5 What about the Fourth Age?

Figure 5

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This photograph shows a group of older men sitting in wheelchairs which seem to have been abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Some of the men are flopped over as if they are asleep or unconscious.

Figure 5

In Activity 7 you are going to begin thinking about the Fourth Age by meeting Molly Davies, who lives quite a different life from Monty Meth.

Activity 7 A day in the life of Molly Davies

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Click on the following link to watch Video 3 through twice, as before, and fill in Interactive table 3 to compare Molly’s life with the comments you made about your own and Monty Meth’s in Activity 2. You will see the comments you made about yourself and about Monty previously are filled in below.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 3 Molly’s story

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Transcript: Video 3 Molly’s story

Video 3 Molly’s story

[CLOCK TICKING]

MOLLY DAVIES:

I’ve had my left hip done. And we thought my right hip had gone. But doctor wouldn’t let me have it done, because she said my circulation was so bad -- well, I would probably have had a stroke afterwards, which -- what could happen. So they didn’t operate. So I’ve had to put up with it.

Well, now -- apart from the hip being bad -- I may have a hernia, and my legs are bad, and I’ve got osteoarthritis. In the night, I wake up and I’m in pain. I’m allowed eight painkillers a day -- six at night to help me at night. They last about two or three hours, and then I have to take two more.

During the day, I’m only allowed to take two more. But I have got patches on my leg -- they’ve increased that with morphines going round my body. In this chair, I’m all right. I’m not in pain. And I feel fine sitting here. And I can’t believe it when I get up, and I find I can’t walk about and can’t do things. It comes as a shock.

I sit in my chair most of the day, but I can walk into the kitchen, and with difficulty I can walk to the front door. Some days it is very, very painful to do it, and other days it isn’t too bad. I can’t always see everything I’m eating. [LAUGHS] A bit of a nuisance. Ha!

I’ve read avidly since I was a teenager. I love reading. Until just before Christmas, oh, I was reading beautifully -- my big print books, and my bills are sent in big print. And then I discovered I couldn’t see my big print. So now -- excuse me -- the only way I can read is -- the optician’s been very good.

And I’ve got this from her. And I can read line by line with this. I can read 10 pages, and then I’m tired out, I’m afraid. So I have to put it down and sit for about 10 minutes, and then I read again. Now, I can’t see to write now, but I still write.

I’ve got cards by my chair, and if I want to send someone a card, I get it out and feel the edges and write. And the last two cheques I’ve written, I found very difficult to write my cheques.

I like hearing people. And I suppose I do like sounds, because next door [INAUDIBLE] have taken over the house, and I love it when I hear him hammering next door.

INTERVIEWER

[LAUGHS]

MOLLY DAVIES:

[LAUGHS] I don’t know if the other neighbours like it, but I like hearing him there. I love flowers. Love flowers. Tulips are good. Daffodils, I can see beautifully. Orange and yellow. And when my sister was going to get geraniums, I said, if you’ll get white, light red -- can’t see dark red -- and lilac.

And she got me some of each colour.

[PHONE RINGING]

MOLLY DAVIES:

8304-1930.

[INDISTINCT FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE]

MOLLY DAVIES:

Speaking.

[INDISTINCT FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE]

MOLLY DAVIES:

Mobile Mobility?

I suppose, over the years, I’ve had to keep changing with what’s happened to me.

I’m going into a care home for four weeks -- yes. And things are happening at the moment, but thank you for calling. I won’t be here. Thank you. Bye-bye.

I’ve had two scooters, and that helped me get out and about. And that was lovely, because I could visit people. But before Christmas, things got worse, and I couldn’t get my scooter out of the house. So that’s ended that adventure.

I used to go walking and I loved the country. And I must say, I do miss going out. And you see -- as happens when you’re older, as I’m 90 -- I mean, some of our friends have gone ahead. And the others are now too aged to push me in my wheelchair.

There’s one person who’s going to take me out in my wheelchair, hopefully, in a few weeks’ time. But I’ve only been able to go out in it twice this year. So you’ve got to get used to the fact that you’re more or less confined to the house.

CARER:

OK. And there’s your apple. OK. I’m going to just clean --

INTERVIEWER

Tell me about your carers.

MOLLY DAVIES:

I have four now. Anna gets me up. When I come down, the fire’s on, the cat’s been let out in the garden, the cat’s been fed, given her pill because she’s got an overactive gland. All that’s done. She gets me up, gets my glass -- I have to put my glasses hearing aid in before I can do anything -- and washes me and that.

Very good. She gives me my breakfast. Now, all that is done, amazingly, in half an hour. Very -- couldn’t have anyone better than Anna. Wonderful. Well then, lunch time, someone pops up. Then tea time, someone else pops up. And then I have a cooked meal.

Then someone comes about quarter past eight. Now, she -- it seems funny having a hot water bottle now, but if they wrap my nightie around a hot water bottle, it helps my circulation. That’s done. The curtains are drawn. Water is put there because of all the tablets I’ve got to take in the night.

So the room is left all right. Now, I get myself to bed, because I go very late. I go up about quarter to twelve. Because I have to get up every two hours in the night, it would only mean getting up another time. And it’s very painful to get out and get in. Blinking nuisance.

So I get myself to bed. I just about manage that -- only just now. I’m very fortunate that people visit me a lot. Now, my sister -- of course, she’s retired now, and she’s 86. And bless her heart, she comes down every Saturday to make sure I’m all right.

She does my shopping every week. If anything happens and she can’t come, I’ve got a lovely friend Violet, who was sister in hospital. And I’ve been friendly with her now about 48 years, you see.

INTERVIEWER

You still go to the hairdresser, I hear --

MOLLY DAVIES:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER

Is that right?

MOLLY DAVIES:

The cabbie comes to the door, because doctor said I could fall any moment. Twice I’ve fallen, and I’ve had to use Linkline, which is wonderful. They’ve been to the house in six minutes to rescue me.

And the cabbie comes right to the door, and Em, who does my hair, they know I’m going, and what time. And they get me in. They put the chair up -- they raise the chair up. They put a special cushion in my back. And because I’ve got arthritis in my neck, I can’t sit in the chair and put my head back, as you would -- I have to stand.

And they know all these things and they cope with me. Sometimes I have to take painkillers halfway through. But I do it. And they give me coffee and biscuits halfway to keep me going. And I do that about every fortnight.

INTERVIEWER

And that’s very important to you, isn’t it?

MOLLY DAVIES:

Well, it helps. And also, you see, I’ve known Em all these years. They’re not just anyone, sort of thing. They are really friends now.

INTERVIEWER

And do you think much about the physical changes in your life?

MOLLY DAVIES:

I suppose I just get on and cope. My father was wonderful, I think. And he taught us to cope. And Mum had this terrific sense of humour that we always made -- we were taught to make the best of everything.

End transcript: Video 3 Molly’s story

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Video 3 Molly’s story

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Interactive table 3

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	Name / Age	Monty Meth, age 87	Molly Davies, age 90
Living situation
Health
Family responsibilities
Paid work
Unpaid work
Social life
Busyness
Satisfaction with life

Interactive table 3

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Comment

Here is how one person filled in the table:

	Monty Meth	Molly Davies
Living situation	Lives with his wife, children have grown up and left home.	On her own with paid carers coming in four times a day.
Health	Really good for his age! Goes swimming every morning.	Pretty poor. She mentions being in pain at night and whenever she is not in her chair. She cannot see well or hear properly. She has arthritis in her neck. She cannot get herself dressed, washed or fed without help.
Family responsibilities	Does not mention any family responsibilities. His wife seems to be as healthy and active as Monty, so she does not seem to need any looking after.	Does not mention any.
Paid work	Does not do any paid work.	None.
Unpaid work	Does lots, especially through the Enfield Over-50s Forum.	None.
Social life	Seems very friendly with the group of people he swims with every day. Mentions going to the theatre. It seems likely that his work with the Enfield Over-50s Forum has sociable aspects.	Not much. A friend sometimes takes her out in a wheelchair and you could see from the card she was writing that she had a visitor named ‘David’ recently. She describes her hairdresser as having become a friend, and goes to the hairdresser about every fortnight.
Busyness	Seems very busy – he goes swimming every morning as well as all the other things.	Not at all busy.
Satisfaction with life	Seems very satisfied with his life.	She says she loves flowers and enjoys looking at the ones in colours she can still see. She loved reading but finds it hard to do now. She does not seem unhappy with her life, but most of the things she says she likes she cannot really do anymore.

Although Molly is only three years older than Monty, her life looks quite different. Her health is poor, she is in pain a lot of the time, she rarely goes out of the house and she needs quite a lot of help with everyday tasks like getting washed and preparing food. Molly, unlike Monty, does not seem to be in the Third Age. In Laslett’s terms she might be described as in the Fourth Age of decline towards death.

In some situations, it is useful to have a terminology to distinguish between people like Molly and people like Monty. As Laslett argues, it is important not to characterise everyone in the later stages of life as needing extensive support and having serious health issues. However, when you look more closely at the lives of people in the Fourth Age, like Molly, Laslett’s simple description of decline, dependency and decrepitude can seem a bit crude and possibly even a bit insulting to the individuals living those lives.

Studying the Fourth Age

Activity 8 is based on a study of people in the Fourth Age where the researchers found that the reality of people’s lives was much more complex than the rather stereotyped view of this stage in life that you encountered in the Laslett reading.

Reading 2 in Activity 8 shows that, while being more frail and dependent usually reduces people’s scope to do things that they find fulfilling and to contribute to society, it does not do so absolutely. Clearly the people in Katz et al.’s 2013 study are living very different lives from Monty Meth, but it is not a simple story of decline and despair, as Laslett’s version of the Fourth Age might seem to suggest.

Neither is the boundary between being ‘Third Age’ and ‘Fourth Age’ as clear and as impermeable as it might sound. People may move in and out of the Fourth Age (Midwinter, 2005), for example if they are in remission from cancer. Some gerontologists have suggested that the trouble with Laslett’s idea of the Fourth Age is that he was not really interested in it – his focus was on making the case that people should recognise the existence and significance of the Third Age. This means that the Fourth Age works as a kind of black hole (Gilleard and Higgs, 2010). People fear it and focus on the Third Age and what it might mean to age well when you are healthy and independent. The Fourth Age then becomes a kind of residual space that sucks in everything that people do not want to think about. This means that people who are categorised, usually by other people, as in the Fourth Age can be seen as completely different and ‘other’ from most people and this can mean that they are treated less well (Grenier, 2012).

Part of the definition of ageism at the beginning of this learning guide was ‘Ageism allows the younger generation to see older people as different from themselves, thus they subtly cease to identify with their elders as human beings’ (Butler and Lewis, 1973, p. 35). You could argue, then, that Laslett’s theory of the Fourth Age contributes to ageist attitudes towards some older people, even though the theory of the Third Age helps to break down ageist attitudes towards others.

As Molly Davies and Reading 2 suggest, people who might be categorised as living in the Fourth Age remain recognisably the same as younger, healthier people. They may have greater needs for support than other people but they continue to be complex individuals with different histories, personalities, needs and preferences.

Figure 6

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This photograph shows an older woman dressed as a punk.

Figure 6

6 Reflecting on the Third and Fourth Ages

In this final activity, you will draw together what you have learned about the Third and Fourth Ages and draw your own conclusions about the advantages and disadvantages of using these concepts to think about later life.

Conclusion

In this course, you have begun to think about the topic of ageing and later life. In particular, you have examined the idea of the Third and Fourth Ages and thought about how they can be applied to both individuals and population ageing.

Key points

• Many people growing older in the UK today can expect to have many years of reasonably healthy and active life after they reach retirement age.
• The period of life around and after retirement age is sometimes known as the ‘Third Age’ and can be a time some people find particularly fulfilling and satisfying.
• The ‘Fourth Age’ refers to the period when an older person is frailer and often dependent on other people for their daily needs.
• Categorising older people in this way can be useful because it makes it clear that being older is not the same thing as being dependent and in ill-health. This can help resist 'apocalyptic demography', which treats our ageing population as a problem, not a success.
• Some of the disadvantages of categorising people in this way are that it seems to imply that people in the Fourth Age don’t experience self-fulfilment or make contributions to society, and that they are very different from everybody else.
• Your own experiences of your own and other people’s ageing affect the ways you approach the topic of ageing and later life.

References

Acknowledgements

This course was written by Rebecca Jones.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:

Course image: Moyan Brenn in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.

Reading 1: Laslett, P. (1989) 'Chapter 1: A New Division of the Life Course', A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. © Peter Laslett

MK to be OAP capital of the UK: Downes, S. (2013) 'MK to be OAP capital of the UK', Milton Keynes Citizen, 19 September 2013, © Johnston Publishing Ltd. [Online] http://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/mk-to-be-oap-capital-of-the-uk-1-5504261 (Accessed 15 July 2014)

Reading 2: Katz, J., Holland, C., Peace, S. (2013) 'Hearing the voices of people with high support needs', Journal of Aging Studies, Vol. 27, Issue 1, pp. 52-60. © Elsevier. Used with permission.

Figure 2: © iStockphoto.com / evgenyatamaneko

Figure 3: © iStockphoto.com / diego_cervo

Figure 4: © Equality Authority. Used with permission.

Figure 5: © Jim Linwood. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Figure 6: © iStockphoto.com / Claudiad

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