Age and Identity 2

Age and Identity 2

1. Youth

   • Youth is socially constructed as a period od transition from childhood to adulthood and a time of rebellion/resistance.
   • HAMAR TRIBE (CS) - childhood ends one day and then adulthood begins the next through an initiation ceremony.
   • Margaret Mead 1928 (CS)
     • argues that 'storm and stress' associated with youth is culturally specific and not found in all cultures. However her findings and methodology have been challenged.

2. Hockey and James 1993 - Growing Up and Growing Old (CS)

   • They say that children are seen to lack the status of personhood and are excluded from the public, adult world, largely confined to 'specialist places' for children such as schools, nurseries and families.
     • Children are seen as the opposite to adults - dependent, innocent, vulnerable and needing care and control.
   • Link old age and childhood, argue that they are socially constructed in a similar way, having lost their 'personhood' status. The elderly are also seen as helpless/vulnerable, dependent and needing care. They use the concept 'INFANTILISATION' to describe this.
   • When doing research in a retirement home they report clients were treated as children. They weren't allowed to keep their own money, were given 'pocket money' and had their privacy taken away.
     • They were assumed to be quite innocent and not sexually active. Such practices will create a self-fulfilling prophecy but Hockey & James argued that it mainly wasn't based on medical needs.

3. AGE IDENTITY IS NOT IMPORTANT (Youth)

   • Youth culture is just a media creation (postmodernism).
   • Most youths are conformist, conservative, share their parents values and generally get on well with them (CS - Davis -1990)
     • Young people are not a united, easily identifiable social group as they differ according to class, gender and ethnicity.
   • Some groups of young people resist the norm or rebel against their low status. They may form youth subcultures (C).

4. AGE IDENTITY IS IMPORTANT (Youth)

   • Youth is a period that is defined by growing up, rebelling, fun and excitement. During this age young people are learning and negotiating the path into adulthood.
   • Young people are all part of the same culture; at the same transitional stage in their life (CS - Abrams - 1959).
   • Youth is a time for experimenting with new styles, fashions and shopping at the 'supermarket of styles' (CS - Polemus)

5. AGE IDENTITY IS NOT IMPORTANT (Middle Age)

   • Postmodernists point out there is now much more choice about middle-aged identity; opportunities to stay looking 'youthful' in a consumer circumscribe choices related to this stage of life (CS - Hunt - 2005).
   • There are different class & gender differences in the way people identify with middle age. Eg: middle-aged women may be more likely to see this life phase as about changed compared to men (Bradley - CS).
     • Individuals are identified as being middle-aged by people in younger age groups. Most children will consider their parents middle-aged simply though their status as parents. In this sense, middle-aged is more of a label given by others rather than a souece of self-identity.

6. AGE IDENTITY IS IMPORTANT (Middle Age)

   • The majority of middle-aged individuals interviewed accept the significance of signs of bodily ageing, alterations in the family structure and changes in the state of career as all indicating the onset of middle age. Of greatest importance is the awareness of a position bridging two generations - that of their parents and children (CS - Neugarten).

7. AGE IDENTITY IS IMPORTANT (Old Age)

   • The concept of old age is challenged by people who feel it has become a negative label (C) of which to stigmatise (C) the old.
   • Many older people continue to drive, lead active social lives and seek to use their later years to do things they couldn't do in their youth eg: travel.

8. AGE IDENTITY ISN'T IMPORTANT (Old Age)

   • Old age is a homogenous category and is associated with a number of cultural characteristics, such as dependency and loneliness (CS - Victor - 2005).