Old Age

Exactly when 'old age' begins is not easy to determine. Traditionally, the age of retirement was closely linked to the definition of old age; now that people are living longer, the age at which people retire from work is itself changing, and the cut-off point commonly used to define 'old age' has been moving steadily upward. Among the significant challenges the aged have to cope with are retirement, widowhood, illness, and death within the family. The image of old age is also changing in important ways — there are now people who have crossed seventy years of age or more and remain quite active, energetic, and creative; such individuals are competent, and are therefore genuinely valued by society in many walks of life, including in politics, literature, business, art and science, so the older stereotype of old age as an inevitably incapacitating and frightening phase of life is gradually changing.

Of course, how a person actually experiences old age also depends on their socio-economic conditions, the availability of healthcare, other people's attitudes, the expectations of society, and the support systems actually available to them. Broadly, work tends to be the most important concern during the early adult years, family then becomes the most important concern, and beyond that, health becomes the most important issue in a person's life; successful ageing, for much of adult life, turns out to depend a great deal on how effective a person is at work, how loving their family relationships are, how good their friendships are, how healthy they are, and how cognitively fit they remain.

Retirement from active vocational life is a significant transition. Some people experience retirement as a negative change — they see it as a separation from an important source of satisfaction and self-esteem. Others view it instead as a welcome shift in life, offering more time to pursue their own interests. Older adults who show openness to new experiences, and who continue to strive and remain achievement-oriented, tend to prefer staying busy, and appear to adjust better to this life transition. Older adults also need to adjust to changes in their family structure and to new roles, such as grandparenting, that have to be learnt. Children are usually busy with their own careers and families, and may go on to set up independent homes of their own; older adults may then come to depend on their children for financial support, and to help them overcome the loneliness that can follow once their children have moved out — a loneliness that can, in some people, trigger feelings of hopelessness and depression.

In old age, feelings of loss of energy, together with a dwindling of health and of financial assets, can lead to feelings of insecurity and dependency; the elderly often tend to look to others to lean on and to care for them. Indian culture has traditionally favoured a dependency relationship in which elderly parents are cared for by their children, since old age is understood to genuinely need caring for — in fact, parents in most oriental cultures raise their children with the fond hope that their children will, in turn, care for them in their own old age. It remains important to give elderly people a real sense of security and belonging — a feeling that people genuinely care for them, especially in times of crisis — and to remember that all of us will eventually grow old ourselves one day. …