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Introduction: Growing Old in America
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13862 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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12 / 1988 |
1,536 Words |
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D. Lydia Bronte
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In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Being Old in America (1975), Dr. Robert Butler sounded a theme that was to become one of the most important issues of the closing years of this century. We are coming to realize that being old, and growing old, affects all of us, whatever our present age. If we are not old now, there is an excellent chance statistically that someday we will be. And long before then we will experience the aging of our parents and grandparents. In our century we have moved from an average life expectancy at birth of 48 in 1900 to one of 74 in 1985. And the hands of the clock are still moving steadily forward; no one can predict when, or if, they will stop.
But along with this gift of added time has come an unexpected development: We do not seem to get physically old at the same chronological ages that we used to. The increase in longevity has been accompanied by a postponement of the aging process that is both mysterious and surprising. As yet, there is no scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Some of the nation's greatest medical experts on aging like Dr. Butler and Dr. John H. Rowe, the new president of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, acknowledge that we can see examples of it all around us, but no studies have yet been designed in this country that could begin to provide explanations for such an astonishing turn of events.
To a large degree the limits of old age have always been a movable feast, determined by the prevailing length of life in a society and by its social and cultural traits. In the nineteenth century, 30 was considered the beginning of old age for a woman, moving up to 40 in the early years of our own century. Men got off a little easier, seeing the onset of old age roughly a decade later than women. By the 1930s, 'old age' had shifted to 60 or 65, and there it has remained in the popular mind ever since.
But as longevity has increased, the threshold of physical old age has progressed to a point later in life. And as with longevity itself, there seems to be no sign of its stopping. How many of us know 65 year olds who could pass for 55, and 75 year olds who look and act 60? They are all around us. Whatever Ronald Reagan's presidential accomplishments, regardless of how you feel about his political beliefs or his style, he's one of the best-looking 77-year-olds most of us can remember. He does not look or act like any previous generation's idea of 77. And there are a great many more like him out there.
It is as if the life course has simply detached itself from the neat, rigid chronological measuring stick that we have been accustomed to use since the 1930s. Like a rubber band grasped by giant unseen hands, the life course has stretched--while our ideas of life's timetables have not.
But if a 70 or a 77 year old is not really old or elderly, then who is? We seem to be moving toward a definition of old age based on functioning, rather than chronology. If a person can ride a horse and run a country, then "elderly' isn't quite the right adjective to describe him. On the other hand, the process of physical aging is highly individual; there are also occasional 65 year olds who fit the definition of "frail elderly." Pure chronology just doesn't count as much as it once did.
The definition for both "elderly" and "old age" has simply moved up the scale, now poised
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