The crisis of aging kicks in early
We need more studies linking ageist attitudes with self-directed ageism and its consequences in younger generations
Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Post-Doctoral Fellow at King’s College London
Didn’t I recently mention the Russian writers? It turned out that I befriended them again. While enjoying Crime and Punishment sitting in the garden a couple of days ago, I unexpectedly stepped into a sentence that made me smile. It’s 1866 when Dostoevsky, pressed by debts, is feverishly dictating this novel to Anna Snitkina, the stenographer who, in a handful of months, will become his second wife. In the middle of Raskolnikov’s ordeal, the author gives out a beauty suggestion while describing the protagonist’s mother:
Although Anna Pul'chèrija Aleksàndrovna was already forty-three years old, her face still retained traces of the ancient beauty and, in addition to that, she seemed much younger than her age, which almost always happens to women who have kept till maturity the limpidity of mind, the freshness of the impressions and the honest, pure flame of the heart. We will say, by the way, that keeping these things is the only way to not lose one's beauty in old age anyway.
Probably because I’m a bookworm, I’ve never been too concerned with my looks. But where the cultural norms really made a dent was with my measuring up on the invisible scale of achievements. It didn’t cross my mind that this was the result of an ageist mentality. My exchange with Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Post-Doctoral Fellow at King’s College London, introduced me to this hypothesis. Up until now, I took the unwritten rules about the milestones in a person’s life as a diktat of our hyper-achieving society. The fact that the goals are anchored to a specific age should have made me think. It did not.
Instinctually, I challenged the norms when I could, dotting my career with sabbaticals. Nonetheless I felt I was chasing my peers who appeared to have found their road faster, easier and with - apparently - more determination than I did. Conformity has never been my forte, but being an outsider is never 100 percent comfortable. Now that I am aware of these early signs of self-inflicted ageism, I wonder if there are some forms of analogous societal pressure in growing older. Up to now, I’ve noticed just the opposite. One of the elements that struck me when I began to reflect upon aging and ageism was the sudden silence in the media. With the exception of beauty and some rare finance companies, advertising campaigns deserted me around my forties. It felt like being an outcast, but now I’m beginning to see the other side of the coin. Aging is a socially unattended land where we have the chance to cultivate “wants” instead of obeying subtle “dos.”
Tell us a bit about yourself.
In my 20s, I was fortunate and privileged enough to travel the world, working a few weeks or months here or there. I started a career in international humanitarian work after having completed a law degree and a Masters in Human Rights but my mind was not set on this as a lifelong path. I felt the world was open to me. When I was 28 years old, I became a mother for the first time. Sure, this changed a lot about my life but I still felt that I had all opportunities as I was still “young.”
This alleged freedom stopped with my 30th birthday. The age milestone lead me to believe that from now on I was to be in a hurry to make up my mind how I want to be earning my money for the rest of my working life, if and when to grow my family and how to settle down in a home. I felt “almost too old” for many things. This feeling put me on a different career path. I started my PhD in Gerontology aged 31, researching human rights in care homes for older people. I am now a Post-Doctoral Fellow at King’s College London, and have found my passion in studying the sociology around aging and helping younger people think about ageism and self-directed ageism in particular.
Why do you think we lose that zest for trying new things and how does this relate to ageism?
I think sometimes we might get stuck in our daily routines, trying to juggle multiple responsibilities. There simply might not be the time to try something new. But ageism can also play a role in trying out - or not trying out - new things. This little voice of ‘I am too old for this’ might be responsible. From my experience, it is really worth ignoring this voice. My earliest career wish was to be a journalist and I never really let go of it.
When I was 33, I decided that I should explore journalism and signed up for a course. The little voice in my head told me that I was too old by now to embark on another path, seemingly unrelated to my PhD. It did take some internal convincing to try something new again. I indeed was by far the oldest student in the group and at times it felt odd, but I am grateful that I tried something new.
You told me that the age of 30 was a turning point. What happened in particular?
At age 30, I made myself a victim of self-directed ageism. Engrained stereotyping of what it means to “not be young” any longer caught up with me. I went through something that I would describe as a first “crisis of aging.”
How did this crisis unfold?
It was a feeling of panic that creeped up on me often. It made me question everything I was doing at that point. I put myself under a lot of pressure to make decisions that should last for the rest of my life. It was not a great state of mind to be in.
Did this feeling build up over time or do you remember an incident that, around your thirties, led you to this realization?
I remember many times when I was a teenager or in my twenties, when I thought to myself “I am still young, I can still do this or that or I can decide later.” I also remember older adults talking to me and saying, “I myself am way too old to do this or that, but you are young, you can do anything.” These thought patterns caught up with me. Somehow I had arranged age brackets in my head, which I defined as ‘young’ and ‘not young’ and 30 was starting to be ‘not young’ any longer. The feeling built up from around age 28, leading up to my 30th birthday.
How did self-directed ageism manifest itself?
I felt that I was running out of time to set in stone what I wanted to do with my life. I imagined an hourglass nearly finished. In my head, one door after another would be shutting in front of me, soon too old to put myself on a new path. I felt that I needed to be “mature,” “all set,” “responsible,” and “successful” at this age. I also considered myself as not having achieved enough aged 30. I had not built a multi-million dollar company, led a world-wide movement of any sort, written any great books or climbed the career ladder to the top. Somehow I had internalized the media stories of very young people, who achieved these things and felt that I had failed by not doing anything as remotely comparable myself by 30. The self-directed ageism here was that I believed anything achieved after 30 was not worth as much. Looking back, this was irrational.
How would you define self-directed ageism? Does it happen at any age or in particular in certain phases of our life?
Self-directed ageism can be defined as age stereotypes that people hold against themselves based on their age and which they have internalized over their lifespan. These stereotypes can be linked to generally ageist attitudes and manifest themselves in our own self-image. Stereotypes can be negative or positive. When I said that I felt I needed to be ‘mature’, ‘all set’, ‘responsible’ and so on now aged 30 plus, I was holding both negative and positive ageist stereotypes.
I would call it “internalized age expectations.” In my head, I was telling myself that people aged 30 plus were supposed to have all these ‘positive’ attributes, whereas people aged below 30 are not always mature, responsible etc. It’s a two-sided sword. People may not even be aware of these internalized stereotypes. It often takes some mental effort to identify them. Self-directed ageism is not particularly age-bound itself. There is a lot of literature out there suggesting that it happens at various phases in life.
Why do you think self-directed ageism happened to you?
I realized that the root-causes for this were ageist attitudes that I had internalized unconsciously. Research has shown that I am not alone with such struggles. Ageist attitudes – here defined as thought patterns, prejudices and ideals towards aging and older age - are harmful to our health and wellbeing at any age and they seem to follow us throughout our lives. Academics are somewhat undecided when ageist attitudes first show up in children and teenagers, some say they materialize in children as young as four years old. These attitudes and ‘age expectations’ had surely been planted in my head from early childhood, through books, movies, advertisements and people – in short through socializing, learning and existing. I even remember some ageist books and movies from my childhood.
How is this experience impacting on your life?
I had to admit to myself that I was unaware of my own ageist attitudes. I also realized that these limit me as a person and may impact the way I treat others. The “crisis” therefore pushed me into reflecting on why I felt this way and to be self-critical. Today I am very conscious about my own attitudes and the self-directed ageism I may be dealing with. I am mindful about the books, movies and TV shows my child watches and I talk to my daughter about aging in a certain way. This experience has set me on a good path that I am comfortable with fortunately.
What have you learned from this experience?
I hear and see expressions of ageist attitudes on a daily basis now. I am petrified by the perceptions and opinions I come across on growing older. For example, some recent studies in the UK on ageism in society found that many people believe that all “older” people suffer from loneliness, lack creativity and are frail and asexual. Older couples, who walk around town hand in hand, are often seen as being “cute.” Not only might such perceptions lead to older people feeling victimized, but I also wonder about the future of the people who hold such perceptions on aging. How can we age happily and confidently if we believe that growing older necessarily means becoming lonely, frail and cute?
Similarly I recently came across a newspaper article titled “So Gen Z-ers hate millennials now? A handy guide to the generation wars” discussing views of people younger than 25, so called “Gen Z-ers,” towards 30-40-year-olds, “the Millennials.” Accordingly, many Gen-Zers consider 40-year-olds “gross.” How will they feel in 15 - 20 years, when they are about to be 40? On a forum for women in their 20s discussing motherhood I engaged with, several participants found women above 35 “too old” and incompetent to become mothers. What happens to these women if, by the time they are 35, their possible dreams of motherhood have not come true yet?
How common do you think this feeling is amongst the younger generations? Do you have any data?
We know from several surveys and studies that ageism is the most prevalent type of discrimination found in our society. A study from the United Kingdom published in 2018 showed that people aged 18-34 had some of the most negative attitudes towards aging. Even though the story I am telling you here is very personal to me and to my background, I have seen similar and worse crisis in people my age and in people younger and older and with all sorts of different backgrounds. We all socialize, learn and exist in some way or another and it seems that at some point in our lives, ageist attitudes and age expectations catch up with us as they shape our self-perceptions. I think we need more studies linking ageist attitudes with self-directed ageism and its consequences in younger generations.
I know you wish for more than intergenerational solidarity. Can you tell us more about it?
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has shone a light on the deeply engrained ageist attitudes in the media, government, and in society in general of many Western societies. We have seen a generational split between “us” – the young ones – versus them – “the older, vulnerable and sick ones” and some terrifying consequences of this, like possible age-based allocation of medical resources. We have also seen intergenerational solidarity through this pandemic, with “the young” supporting “the old” and vice versa. There is no doubt that ageism in all its forms must be combatted, with the experiences of “older people” at the centre of this endeavor. However, intergenerational solidarity is not enough.
What else would we need?
We need an intergenerational movement to tackle ageist attitudes in all age groups and in all its forms, with intergenerational solidarity but one important part of it. First of all, I think we need a movement to make younger generations aware of their own ageist attitudes and how this impacts on their lives now. We further need to build a bridge between the generations to highlight our common humanity, especially in the light of pressing issues. For example, in the climate change movement spearheaded by younger people, older people are often seen as the perpetrators and those responsible for the climate crisis. Similarly, older British people are often blamed for Brexit, the UK’s exit from the European Union. Some hold the view that Brexit will be disadvantaging younger people and that older voters are responsible for it. This us-against-them mentality is not helpful to combat ageism. If we could explore common grounds through intergenerational debates without blaming and shaming, this could be helpful.
What would an intergenerational movement look like?
It could be rooted in intergenerational solidarity with older people who are suffering from ageism as well as in the realization that our attitudes and perceptions of aging shape us now and the future we hold. The aim must be to become conscious about harmful attitudes around aging and how they influence the way we see and perhaps treat ourselves and others. This will help to shape our own present and future, as well as the present and future of the children and adults around us. Challenging ourselves and the sources of such attitudes and perceptions, becomes a necessary mechanism in this movement. We see a lot of work done around this at the moment in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. We should use this as a platform for other campaigns around ageism, in which people of all ages come together.
Do you think that informing the younger generation about the existence and the dangers of self-directed ageism would be a more effective campaign than the good-sentiment types we see around?
I think informing and educating younger generations on the dangers of self-directed ageism is a hugely important task and I have not really come across any action that tries to do this. Labels of whole generations, like the Baby Boomers, Millennials and Gen Z, for example, are powerful sources of ageist attitudes. We could start here to help younger people understand how their minds are already being geared towards possible self-directed ageism sooner or later in their lives and how this also limits them. At the same time I also think projects that bring together children, teenagers and younger people with older people, maybe in intergenerational kindergarten or housing projects, are equally as important. Furthermore, we must identify and not tolerate openly ageist attitudes in the media.
