In 2018 I spoke to the International Centre on Aging for the first time. I was excited about what they were doing and the possibility of being part of it. In a very succinct way, the blog was born and in January 2019 the first post, on The New Old Age, was published. One of the cross-cutting ideas of Aging in Society is to put an end to negative beliefs about this stage, an increasingly longer stage of our lives, which needs to be redefined and reconceptualised. The aim will be to be able to give visibility to a new - or renewed - experience of old age, fighting against both our own and social ageism. And I point to one's own ageism or "self-ageism" because it is often we ourselves who "self-discriminate". We do so when we assume that it is our age that conditions us and prevents us from doing certain things, that limits us. We use "self-ageism" when we use our age as a barrier to starting new adventures or enjoying certain experiences. Or as an excuse not to do so.
Old age can be full of new positive experiences, like all other stages of life, and older people have a lot to offer society. Just like everyone else, whatever their age. These statements are not part of a false positivism, nor do they echo a "let's always be happy" culture, but I do want them to be a wake-up call to approach this stage of life in a fuller way. And also, always, to claim that we are more than what we produce. Even when we no longer produce (produce as understood by those who prioritise the sphere of work over others in life), a person continues to be. What and how will depend on him or her. Moreover, if we claim the right to be happy in old age, maybe, just maybe, we can claim happiness in the other stages of life. Or something close to it.
To come to understand the vital importance of old age and its conquest (in fact, the most important conquest our societies have achieved) we could start by talking about the division of life into stages and the changes that this has brought about. Although, in fact, this has already been done by many authors: Ariés, for example, talks about this differentiation in the life cycle in his book Ages of Life. We could also reflect on how a new interpretation of what childhood means begins or takes place, which is now understood as a stage of learning and in which boys and girls are allowed to be... boys and girls. To enjoy their childhood. To give an example off the top of my head, my grandfather started mowing in the fields when he was 7 years old with his parents and siblings. At the same age, he would take the kids of several gentlemen of the village to the mountain, to the highest peak of the village, so that they could eat greener pastures. One lady told me that she started cleaning in other people's houses at the age of 8, because with her little hands she could reach corners of the kitchen where adult hands could not. Today, fortunately, that would be unthinkable in our country. But let's move on to today's topic: ageing, what it means, and why it is important to differentiate it from old age.
We need to differentiate between individual aging (the increase in the chronological age of people, linked to the increase in life expectancy) and demographic aging. That is to say, the staff of...of society as a whole.
More of us are reaching older ages, which, together with a lower birth rate and less (young) immigration, means that societies are aging. In recent years, the issue of population aging has been politicised, albeit from a negativist point of view, profiling a situation in which those who "live too long" seem to be blamed. I always refer in my lectures to Taro Aso, the Japanese Prime Minister, who said that the elderly should "hurry up and die". Interestingly, Aso, who was in office until he was 80 (last year) does not seem to want to apply that recommendation. Some people bemoan aging when it affects "others", without taking into account that every day that everyone lives is the day that leads to the demographic aging we are talking about. Fortunately.
The fear that is placed on the idea of ageing (a sort of faceless monster coming to eat up the Welfare State and all its services) gives rise to numerous forms of ageism. In my opinion, a tremendous mistake: what is relevant about ageing is that it is the result of the increase in life expectancy, which means not only that old people live longer, but that young people die less.
We can look at it from a more technical point of view: before the beginning of the Demographic Transition, life was short and the population was young. In other words, we lived very short lives. This does not mean that a scythe fell on those who turned 35, no, but that many people died at a very early age, there was a high infant mortality rate and only a small number of people reached an advanced age. That is why we have a very, very small life expectancy. Moreover, people did not reach as advanced ages as they do now. And those who did were rarities, demographic outliers.
The high mortality rate also meant low population growth: many people were born, but, as many also died (in all age groups and for various reasons), well... in a stalemate. This was the case until the Demographic Transition (DT), which was the transition in phases from a society characterised by high mortality and a high birth rate to a society also with slow growth, but now with a better balance, in which mortality was reduced thanks to the control of epidemics (mainly, but also for other reasons). Moreover, over time, the survival of more children born leads to a decrease in the number of children had and thus in family size, until eventually both births and mortality remain low. And that is what will lead to population ageing, although other factors enter into this equation. What we have seen so summarised and which seems so simple may not be so simple, because I have seen the increased life expectancy at older ages referred to in recent years as a demographic transition (as if it were something new) or the assumption that, by saying that life expectancy in Spain in 1900 was 32 years, it meant that people died at that age. No. That idea gives us enough for a couple of science fiction series, but that is not what life expectancy means.
So what is demographic aging? Well, to be more technical we would say that it is a transformation in the age structure of a population. It is, in short, an increase in the proportion of older people in the total population. It does not just refer to how many children are born or how many people are over a certain age; imagine a country in which all its young people migrate, or the opposite, a society that receives a lot of young immigration. That would greatly affect the age transformation of the population. For example, if a lot of young people migrate to our country, the society will be less aged. It is not a question of whether those people who immigrate have more or fewer children: from the moment they arrive there is a rejuvenation of the pyramid. This example helps us to better understand how aging works: fewer children are born, we live longer (we have a longer life expectancy; more people live longer) and we receive comparatively little young immigration. Thus, the age pyramid begins to "weigh" more at the top than at the bottom.
What effect does the fact that we live longer and are less likely to die at a younger age have on the life cycle? This is what I wanted to get at. Well, among other things, that all stages of life can be reconsidered. We noted earlier that in the space of just a few generations, childhood could be rethought and take on a different meaning (this is explained by Ariés rather better than I can). We also know that in recent years we have pushed back the age to which we considered someone to be young, for example, but we can also apply this re-signification to adulthood and its content. For example, the fact that we are living longer means that bringing up children no longer takes up most of our lives; proportionally, and although our children come to eat stew at weekends and take tupperware that they never return, bringing up children takes up less time in our life cycle as a whole. Well, yes; as we at CENIE insist (especially me, who is characterised by my tenacity), old age is also beginning to be approached differently; it is no longer a mere waiting room, but is no longer a stage of hardship, but is simply a part of life that deserves to be experienced and enjoyed.
Old age can be defined from many points of view; for me, old age has a social origin. It would be a stage in which biological, sociological, environmental and psychological aspects intervene, and which refers to both an individual and a population dimension, a reality that is defined by the ageing person and which would be delimited by the interaction between our (own, individual) biography, the social structure and also by history (Lebrusán, 2019). But, above all, old age is a social conquest, a renewed stage, the result of aging and demographic dynamics, which has implications for the population structure, for intergenerational relations and for many other issues within the framework of the Welfare State, but, fundamentally, it has implications for our own life and our way of approaching it.
We need to accept that old age is just another stage of life. Because, until we do so, we will not stop being afraid of it.
