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Aging and The Life Course
Aging and The Life Course: An Introduction to Social Gerontology, 2/e
Jill Quadagno, Florida State University

Theories of Aging

Chapter Overview

1. Who were the first students of social gerontology, and what did they hope to learn?
Social gerontology originated as a distinct field of study during the Depression. Its first practitioners were developmental psychologists who had traditionally studied growth and maturation. They viewed the basic task of research as documenting the inevitable decline that occurred in old age. Then during the 1940s researchers became interested in "normal" processes of aging. The basic premise underlying this research was that growing old meant surrendering the social relationships and social roles typical of adulthood: thus, retirement, widowhood, the loss of distant goals and plans, and the growing dependence of the elderly on others for support, advice, and management of daily activities.

2. What theories of aging did early gerontologists propose?
Disengage-ment theory was the first formal theory of aging. It was based on the premise that normal aging involved a natural and inevitable withdrawal of the individual from society. Life satisfaction was highest among those who successfully disengaged. Subsequent research found that some people did disengage but that disengagement was neither universal nor inevitable.

Activity theory became an explicit theory of aging in response to disengagement theory, but its core premise-that successful aging was active aging-was implicit in most prior aging research. Activity theory asserts that older people have the same psychological and social needs as younger people and that it is neither normal nor natural for people to disengage.

3. How did later scholars broaden the scope of the study of aging?
Scholars broadened the scope of the study of aging to include how social forces and large-scale societal processes influenced individual aging processes. For example, subculture theorists argued that the aged are likely to form a subculture because they share physical limitations and role losses. Another explicitly social theory of aging is age integration theory, which recognizes that societies use chronological age as a criterion for entrance, exit, or participation.

4. What is the relationship between age and social status, and does it vary from one culture to the next?
Modernization theory attempts to understand the relationship between age and social status. Its basic premise is that older people were revered in the past and in preliterate societies and that their status declines with economic development. Yet historical evidence indicates that a "golden age of aging" never existed, while cross-cultural evidence suggests there is great variation in how older people are treated in preliterate societies.

5. Which theories of aging consider how race, gender, and class affect the social status of the aged?
Political economy theory is concerned with explaining how and why social resources are unequally distributed. A central focus of research stemming from the political economy tradition is on how public policies reproduce existing forms of inequality. Feminist theory also attempts to illuminate the gendered nature of society. Feminists criticize traditional research for creating separate models of aging for men and women, for using "male models" to interpret women's experiences and for failing to recognize how various social welfare programs reproduce gender inequality.