Understand key theories of aging, particularly those that focus on how society shapes the social roles of older adults and that emphasize aspects of age stratification.
Some of the earliest theories of aging emphasized individual adaptation to changing social roles as a person grows older. Later theories focused on how society shapes the social roles of older adults, often in inequitable ways, and emphasized various aspects of age stratification. The most recent theories emphasize micro-macro links and focus on how persons ages 65+ actively create their lives within specific institutional and historical contexts (Bengston et al., 2005) (see Table 12.1).
The earliest theories of aging reflected the functionalist approach that was dominant in sociology during the 1950s and 1960s. These early theories often assumed that aging brings with it physical and psychological decline and that changing social roles should take into account this decline (Hendricks, 1992). Functionalist theories, in particular, emphasized how individuals adjusted to changing social roles as they aged and how the roles older adults fulfilled were useful to society.
Talcott Parsons (1960), one of the most influential functionalist theorists of the 1950s, argued that U.S. society needs to find roles for older persons that are compatible with their advanced age. He expressed concern that the United States, with its emphasis on youth and its denial of death, had failed to provide roles that adequately drew on the potential wisdom and maturity of its older citizens. This failure could lead to older people becoming discouraged and alienated from society. To achieve a “healthy maturity,” Parsons (1960) argued, older adults need to adjust psychologically to their changed circumstances, while society needs to redefine the social roles of the older population.
Parsons’s ideas set the stage for the development of disengagement theory, which asserts that it is functional for society to relieve people of their traditional roles when they become old, thereby freeing up those roles for other, younger persons (Cumming & Henry, 1961; Estes et al., 1992). According to this perspective, given the increasing frailty, illness, and dependency of older persons, it becomes increasingly dysfunctional for them to occupy roles they are no longer capable of adequately fulfilling. Older adults should therefore retire from their jobs, pull back from civic life, and eventually withdraw from their other activities and relationships. Disengagement is assumed to be functional for society because it opens up roles formerly filled by the older adults for younger people, who presumably will carry them out with fresh energy and new skills. Disengagement also is assumed to be functional for older adults because it enables them to abandon potentially taxing social roles and instead invest their energies in more private introspective activities as they prepare for their eventual demise.
Although there is some empirical support and ample anecdotal evidence for the validity of disengagement theory, the idea that old people should completely disengage from the larger society presumes that old age necessarily involves frailty and dependence. This is an incorrect assumption; one in five older adults lives disease-free (Schafer & Ferraro, 2012), and 7 percent of deaths in old age occur suddenly, meaning the older person had no illness prior to death (Lunney et al., 2003). Recent studies suggest that selective disengagement from some roles—rather than complete disengagement from all roles—can be healthy if the older adult chooses which roles to drop and which to maintain. For example, most retirees report quite high levels of life satisfaction; however, the happiest retirees are those in good health, with strong social ties, adequate financial resources, and engagement in other productive activities, such as volunteering or part-time work (Atchley, 2000; Barnes & Parry, 2004).
Scholars also have found that older adults may limit the number of social relationships they maintain, often dropping those relationships that are not a source of great joy or support. Socioemotional selectivity theory states that older adults selectively choose to maintain fewer, but higher-quality, relationships as they age and experience declines in health. Casual, less rewarding ties may lapse, while only the most meaningful relationships are maintained (Carstensen et al., 1999).
Given this strong evidence that disengagement from all social roles is rare, and such disengagement does not ease the aging process, the very assumptions of disengagement theory have been challenged, often by some of the theory’s original proponents (Cumming, 1963, 1975; Hendricks, 1992; Henry, 1965; Hochschild, 1975; Maddox, 1965, 1970). These challenges gave rise to another functionalist theory of aging, which drew conclusions quite opposite to those of disengagement theory: activity theory.
According to activity theory, people who are busy and engaged, leading fulfilling and productive lives, can be functional for society. The guiding assumption is that an active individual is much more likely to remain healthy, alert, and socially useful. In this view, people should remain engaged in their work and other social roles as long as they are capable of doing so. If a time comes when a particular role becomes too difficult or taxing, then other roles can be sought—for example, volunteer work in the community.
Activity theory is supported by research showing that continued activity well into old age—whether it’s volunteer work, paid employment, hobbies, or visits with friends and family—is associated with enhanced mental and physical health (Birren & Bengston, 1988; Rowe & Kahn, 1987; Schaie, 1983). Yet critics observe that not all activities are equally valuable, giving rise to the development of continuity theory. This theory specifies that older adults’ well-being is enhanced when they participate in activities that are consistent with their personality, preferences, and activities earlier in life (Atchley, 1989). For instance, a retired elementary school teacher may find volunteering at a local elementary school to be much more satisfying than taking bus trips to Atlantic City or playing bingo at a local community center.
Critics of functionalist theories of aging argue that these theories emphasize the need for older persons to adapt to existing conditions, by either disengaging from socially useful roles or actively pursuing them, but that they do not question whether the circumstances older adults face are just. In response to this criticism, another group of theorists arose—those growing out of the social-conflict tradition (Hendricks, 1992).
Life course theorists reject what they regard as the one-sided emphases of both functionalism and conflict theories, where older adults are viewed either as merely adapting to the larger society (functionalism) or as victims of the stratification system (social conflict). Rather, life course theorists view older persons as playing an active role in determining their own physical and mental well-being, yet recognize the constraints imposed by social structural factors.
According to the life course perspective, the aging process is shaped by historical time and place; factors such as wars, economic shifts, the development of new technologies, and the emergence of infectious diseases like Covid-19 shape how people age. Yet this perspective also emphasizes agency, whereby individuals make choices that reflect both the opportunities and the constraints facing them. The most important theme of the life course perspective is that aging is a lifelong process; relationships, events, and experiences of early life have consequences for later life.
Mounting research shows that our physical and mental health in later life is closely linked to the advantages and disadvantages we faced early in life, dating back as far as childhood and infancy. People who begin life in a position of social advantage generally are better positioned to acquire additional resources than those who begin life at the bottom of the stratification system. Those born into well-off families enjoy richer economic resources, better health, and more educational opportunities in early life—all of which set the stage for rewarding jobs, good health, and emotional well-being in later life.
Those with adversities earlier in life, like Alice Garvin, who we introduced earlier in this chapter, often are denied access to the opportunities that ensure a happy and healthy old age. Researchers have found that childhood and adolescent experiences—including parental death (Slavich et al., 2011), parental divorce (Auersperg et al., 2019), child-abuse victimization (Slopen et al., 2010), poverty (Nelson et al., 2020), and living in an unsafe neighborhood (Jivraj et al., 2020)—have harmful implications for health among older adults. Given the persistence of systemic racism in the United States, Black older adults have been exposed to a greater number of early life adversities that have long-term implications for their health, including the early deaths of family members, incarceration, violence, homelessness, and dangerous or disadvantageous work experiences (Bailey et al., 2017; Dumont et al., 2013). Often, these early adversities put young people at risk of poor health behaviors, economic strains, marital troubles, and other difficulties in young adulthood that may contribute to lifelong health problems (Carr, 2019). In other words, adversities in early life give rise to various challenges in adulthood, which accumulate to make the aging process very difficult for the disadvantaged.
CONCEPT CHECKS
Social Conflict
Unlike their predecessors, who emphasized the ways older adults could be integrated into society, the second generation of theorists focused on sources of social conflict between retirement-age persons and the larger society (Hendricks, 1992). Like other theorists who were studying social conflict in U.S. society during the 1970s and early 1980s, these theorists stressed the ways in which the larger social structure helped shape the opportunities available to older adults; unequal opportunities were seen as creating the potential for conflict.
According to this view, many of the problems of aging—such as poverty, poor health, or inadequate health care—are systematically produced by the routine operation of social institutions. A capitalist society, the reasoning goes, favors those who are most economically powerful. While some older people certainly have “made it” and are set for life, many have not—and these people must fight to get even a meager share of society’s scarce resources.
Conflict theories of aging flourished during the 1980s, when a shrinking job base and cutbacks in federal spending threatened to pit different social groups against each other in the competition for scarce resources. Older persons were seen as competing with the young for increasingly scarce jobs and dwindling federal dollars. Conflict theorists further pointed out that even among older adults, those who fared worst were women, Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, and lower-income persons (Atchley, 2000; Estes, 2011; Hendricks, 1992; Hendricks & Hendricks, 1986).
As we will see later in this chapter, the concerns articulated by conflict theorists persist today. For example, while poverty rates among older adults have plummeted over the past 60 years, with less than 10 percent of older adults now living in poverty, this figure is as high as 40 percent among unmarried Black and Hispanic older women (Carr, 2019). Persistent race gaps in life expectancy, where Black men and women die at significantly younger ages than their White counterparts, reflect lifelong exposures to stressors associated with systemic racism like discrimination, as well as obstacles to receiving timely and high-quality health care (Forde et al., 2019).