What is meant by age identity?

Age is another way that society is stratified and organised into a hierarchy. However, it is different from other types of identity, because people move through all of the different age stages throughout their lives However, some groups are treated as having less power than others – the young and the elderly. Unlike most other stratification systems, the most powerful group is in the middle However, it has been difficult for these groups to organise themselves politically to fight for more rights – only a few pressure groups are concerned with age.

We know from the study of other cultures, that the way we view age is very much a cultural construct – it’s not just based on biological differences. (this is not to say that sociologists ignore that there are biological differences – it’s just the way these differences are interpreted which is different across cultures. Also the fact of different life expectancies in different areas of the world has an impact on how chronological age is viewed – if life expectancy is 37 in Zimbabwe, and 84 in Britain the age of 38 is going to be seen differently. In the UK we tend to put people in different age brackets, and attribute certain types of behaviour to those groups – we refer to them as “generations”. Childhood Adolescence Young adult Mid-Life Old Age We may feel we share unspoken cultural bonds with people in the same generation

John Vincent “The roles and norms that society allocates to age groups create barriers and opportunities” These barriers and opportunities affect the status, power, wealth and income enjoyed by different age groups in each society. In the UK we tend to make elderly people appear weak and dottled, so we use this stereotype to undermine them, and suggest that they are not capable of certain things, and their opinions are not valued.

Childhood This is regarded as a special, innocent time – children are supposed to be protected by adults. The way children are viewed is very different across different cultures- think about the range of expectations that there have been about children’s behaviour within British history – in the past children seen and not heard, now children have rights etc. All of these expectations come from adults – and the rights that children have been given, have also been given by adults, decided on by adults and are protected by adults (don’t get me started on a rights respecting schools rant)

Adolescence This is pretty much a new invention in the UK – before the 1950’s kids just became adults and started to wear cardigans and flat caps. But in the post war period there was the development of a youth culture which the media helped to spread. New hairstyles, make-up and fashion which distinguished teenagers from adults. Different types of music Young people had far more money than in the past, and advertisers saw an opportunity to increase sales – get these young people to put off becoming “adults” and get them spending money on clothes, magazines and music. Because these differences were considered to be threatening to the way that society had been run, and threatened the power of the middle aged (as teenagers were being portrayed as rebellious) then young people began to be blamed for the moral decline of society – any negative stories about teenagers tended to be exaggerated and sensationalised to make it seem like all teenagers are a threat.

Young Adulthood This is not a clearly defined group – but probably talking about people in their 20’s. This is a fairly recent addition to the recognised generations within our culture. People who have left home, but not yet necessarily completely independent of parents May have a job and a young family, or may have finished university and finding it difficult to find well-paid work in their chosen field.

Mid-Life This, depressingly, would be the period from the mid-30’s to retirement. These tend to be the most economically productive years in life, and so we tend to find that this is the age group which holds the most power and status in society. They tend to be the age group which most business leaders and bosses in general will be in. This is the group which pays most tax, have an investment in society because they have families, homes, jobs etc. They tend to be the group that political parties pay most attention to as they are likely to vote – and also because most politicians are in this age group and so have similar cultural reference points with people of the same age. There are physical signs associated with this age group – grey hair, a bit fatter and more unfit, the menopause There may also be emotional and psychological impact on people who have reached this age group – the cold icy land of death approaches, so buy a sports car.

Old Age All the power and status that you have achieved in mid-life suddenly disappears in old age, and it can happen very arbitrarily by hitting the “retirement age” (65,68 ….) In other societies the elderly may be treated with respect and seen as wise, but in the UK we have a tendency to see power and status as being attached to work, and so if you are retired from work then you have lost your status. We spend so much time at work, so if we no longer work we may lose a lot of our social contact, and this affects our social identity – who we think we are. We see old age as being associated with physical disability and mental slowdown, thus elderly people are often patronised and stereotyped. Old Age can be associated with a rise in loneliness, depression and poverty.

Media impact on age identity How does the media reinforce age as an aspect of identity? Think of examples….