Age Identity

• Hockney & James

  • Elderly are infantilised and have no control over their lives, becoming dependent on their children.
  • Common in nursing homes - low status, seen as 'simple', given pocket money and bedtimes
  • Develop learned helplessness as a result
• Arber & Ginn

  • Elderly contribute to the economy via unpaid work, like charity shops and babysitting
  • Provide emotional support and help with practical issues where necessary
• Roberts - 3 types of childhood to adulthood transition

  1. Abrupt - Bemba girls are classed as women after their period
  2. Gradual (13-21) - UK compulsory state education is 18
  3. Lengthy - 13-25+ years
• Goffman

  • Stigma about age leads to a ‘master status’
  • Older people may experience ageism where they are stereotyped and discriminated against due to their age.  
• Master status definition


  This identity transcends all other aspects of identity and becomes one’s defining characteristic. 
• Featherstone and Hepworth

  • An increasing number of older people refuse to conform to stereotypes and choose lively and imaginative activities like exotic holidays, windsurfing and salsa dancing 
  • Most of these activities depend on consumer power, which WC older people can’t afford and suffer poverty in their later life.  
• Philipson

  • Old age is shaped by personal communities, friends and media are now as important as family   
  • More time watching TV means media is a large factor now  
  • Unpaid work and a wider contribution to society is important for self-image and identity 
• Berry - Digital divide

  • Only 8% of over 55s has social media  
  • ¼ of over 60’s has online shopped   
  • 4 factors (DISC) = Disability, lack of Interest, lack of Skills, Cost
• Gannon

  • Elderly women are doubly disadvantaged as their economic status declines when they retire from work and they lose the status given to attractive women  
• Moore

  • Tried to reduce loneliness in the elderly through weekly befriending phone calls from volunteers
  • Most of the sample remained lonely, some reported an increase in loneliness.
• Cult of the Youth

  • Western society teaches us to celebrate and preserve our youth more than anything else, old age is something to be pitied
  • Thousands of anti-aging products available
  • Media presents the elderly as unattractive and chronically ill.