age and identity

• childhood


  • Meaning differs in different cultures
  • Postman - the emergence and spread of the media in the twentieth century has brought about a decline in childhood and threatens to bring about its disappearance.
  • electronic babysitter
• Youth


  associated with those between the ages of 12 and 25. In our culture, youth is socially constructed as a period of transition from childhood to adulthood and a time of rebellion/resistance.

  • Margaret Mead argued that the ‘storm and stress’ associated with youth is culturally specific and not found in all cultures.
  • Eisenstadt – Transition from childhood to youth is a universal experience but not all young people experience this in the same way
• Young adulthood


  • Young adulthood - career and family. Most people form relationships, have children and establish their careers at this time, moving into their own home and becoming independent from their parents.
• Middle age


  • Middle age - associated with those in their 40s and 50s.
  • Bradley - middle aged people have a higher status than youth or old age – middle-aged people are running the country and hold power at work and have the most wealth. However, middle age is also seen as a negative time, as ‘youth’ is lost and old age comes closer. It is sometimes associated with negative ideas, such as a ‘mid-life crisis’
• Old age


  ageing bodies represent ugliness and degeneration. Older people have been socialised into this view themselves.

  • Corners study - Participants described the problems of old age for society and the ‘burden’ of the ageing population. Participants were concerned with becoming a ‘burden’ themselves and the dominant stereotype they presented was of later life being a time of ill-health and dependency.
• Hockey and James key study:

  Hockey and James say that children are seen to lack the status of

  personhood, and are separated and excluded from the public, adult world, largely confined to ‘specialist places’ for children such as schools, nurseries and the family.

  They are seen as the opposite of adults – dependent, innocent, vulnerable – and needing care and control.
• Hockey and James


  Hockey and James link old age and childhood, and argue

  that they are socially constructed in a similar way, having lost their ‘personhood’ status. The elderly are also seen as helpless and vulnerable, dependent and needing care. They use the concept ‘infantilisation’ to describe this.
• Changing age identities (Postmodernist view)

  • Featherstone and Hepworth - media images of ageing, which have been a source of negative stereotypes and identities, can also create new identities, and suggest that as the population ages, more positive images may emerge.
• Cummings and Henry - disengament theory

  • claims it is natural and acceptable for older adults to withdraw from society and personal relationships as they age.