The Social Context of Eldercare: critical and community perspectives

Dr. Gemma M. Carney (QUB)

Dr. Lynn Johnston (Linking Generations, NI)

• Human life expectancy has increased by over 30 years in the last century.

• Proportion of the global population aged over 65 will reach 22% by 2050.

• Scientists have scrambled to understand the implications of ageing.

• Search of web of science June 23, 2015 for ageing population *impact: – 36,813 results, primarily focused on documenting

decline and demise across four broad areas: • the pathology of ageing (biomedical); • the cost of pensions and healthcare (economics); • the danger of a gerontocracy (politics); • the inevitability of loneliness and social isolation

(sociology).

• Thomas Cole (1992: xx):

‘Our culture is not much interested in why we grow old, how we ought to grow old, or what it means to grow old. Like other aspects of our biological and social existence, aging has been brought under the dominion of scientific management, which is primarily interested in how we age in order to explain and control the aging process.’

• What fuels fears of a ‘demographic time bomb’?– Pace of population ageing– Intensification of causative factors

• Life expectancy• Fertility

• Impact of austerity politics following the financial crisis of 2008 (TINA):

‘Suddenly, ‘population ageing’ – often viewed as a mixed blessing by western governments has assumed every more negative connotations.’

(Phillipson, 2013, p. 1)

• Phillipson identifies how ageing is conflated with issues arising as a result of 2008 crisis:

– ‘Rising tide’ of elderly linked to difficulties in reaching fiscal stability;

– Ageing linked to broader crisis for the welfare state and ‘increased emphasis on private (individual) rather than public (collective) provision (Judt, 2010)’ (Phillipson, 2015: 81).

Walker identifies that trend as The New Ageism:

‘Older people are being transferred from the safe political haven of the deserving to the radically more exposed position of being one of the major threats to

Britain’s economic future.’

(Walker, 2012, p. 812)

Contributions of people aged 60+, 2012-2062

Source: COPNI (2014) Appreciating Age: Valuing the positive contributions made by older people in Northern Ireland

• Implications of the current dominant approaches to understanding ageing:

1. Failure to notice or assess the potential of an ageing population (Phillipson, 2015)

2. Failure to consider possible influence of social norms about ageing on scientific and societal perceptions of what ageing means.

• What is the role of ageism in dictating how social policies distribute resources?

• How is biological ageing socially constructed, in a manner which makes low standards in care homes the norm?

• How might macro interpretations of ageing as an epidemic, a time bomb or a ‘care crisis’ be linked to ageism at individual and societal levels?

Critical Gerontology approach: •Begins with the premise that biological ageing, particularly the visible signs of biological ageing, are used to socially construct an inferior status on people as they age (Butler, 1975; Phillipson, 2013).

•Ageism can be internalised, eventually impacting on the capacity of older people to speak for themselves (Spicker, 2000; Brannelly, 2011).

Ageing as Decline is Socially Constructed•Townsend (1957; 1981; 2006) used empirical evidence to demonstrate that much of the dependency of older people is the result of their social status rather than biological decline.

•Gullette (1997) exposed ageing is the United States as a ‘culturally constructed disease.’

•Cohen (1987) The elderly mystique, operates like Friedan’s ‘Feminine Mystique’

The ‘Elderly’ Mystique•Cohen’s (1987) identified the concept of ‘The Elderly Mystique’ as an emerging ‘awareness of obsolescence’ felt most keenly by older people with disabling conditions.

•Argues that ageism, like sexism is politically and culturally embedded.

• Ageism in the social care debate in Britain?– ‘crisis of care in England’– ‘teetering on the brink of collapse’ – Discussion is almost exclusively concerned with cost

of care and impact on adult children of older care recipients.

Ageism in public debate: •Clarke (2006: 271): ‘no profiles of individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease from their own perspective.’•Only the latter stages of a slow, degenerative disease are described, and always in sensationalist, fear inducing language of demise and decline.’ •Clark (2006: 274) notes the absence of a social context for the disease located in ‘language, gender, culture, ethnicity and other components of the social structure and culture.’