Understanding Today's Adults: Articles

"Seniors in our society face prejudice just because they are growing old."

The Real Senior Adult

Nobody grows old by living
          A number of years.
People grow old from lack of purpose.
          Years wrinkle the skin.
Lack of purpose wrinkles the soul.
                    —Author unknown

Harlan Sanders, founder of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation, gave some excellent advice to guide in our study of the senior adult years:

There is these days a whole lot of talk and a whole lot of writing about why adults act certain ways at certain ages. We are told that when we are 35 years old we act one way and that 10 years later we act differently. All of this is just fine; discovering these things is what research is all about. But I hope that our young people who have their careers ahead of them will keep one thing in mind. It's a pretty simple thing, too. Let's not hang a tag on folks at a certain age and pretend that everyone wearing that tag is just like everyone else with the same tag (Harlan Sanders, 1977, "Education and the Preparation for Retirement," Educational Gerontology: An International Journal, 1993, 3).

Such an attitude of discrimination toward seniors is a form of prejudice, namely ageism. Seniors in our society face prejudice just because they are growing old. They are devalued—seen as losers and not winners as the young are.

Why this devaluation of the aged? Myths and stereotypes hinder our perception and understanding of older persons. Consider these false perceptions:

Senility inevitably accompanies old age.
Most old people are isolated from their families.
The majority of old people are in poor health.
Older people are more likely than younger people to be crime victims.
The majority of older people live in poverty.
Older people tend to become more religious as they age.
Older workers are less productive than younger ones.
Old people who retire usually suffer a decline in health and an early death.
Most old people have no interest in, or capacity for, sexual relations.
Most old people end up in nursing homes and other long-term care institutions.

Many adults are driven by new circumstances caused by demographic changes and healthcare advances. As the fabled baby boomers begin to hit 65 in 2010, they will remake our ideas of growing old. Their values will be decidedly different from the oldest-old cohort of today. Hopefully we will see that growing old is a version of growing up, not an accident, but normal.

AdultApplication: Talk with some senior adults in your church about these stereotypes. Ask them for their impressions. Compare their responses with the following quiz.

How do you look at the senior years? Take this test.

This quiz takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Remember when responding to the questions that this quiz does not focus on any specific age range of adults; instead it focuses on adults as they age.Select true or false to indicate your opinion about each statement.

Aging Adults Quiz
True	False
		1.	Vision tends to decline with age.
		2.	Hearing tends to decrease with age.
		3.	Ability to adapt to external temperature changes tends to decline with age.
		4.	Time required to react to a stimulus tends to rise with age.
		5.	Anxiety tends to decrease with age.
		6.	Cautiousness tends to rise with age.
		7.	Performance after reprimand tends to rise with age.
		8.	Risk-taking tends to increase with age.
		9.	Self-concept tends to rise and then decline with age.
		10.	Pace of learning tends to decline with age.
		11.	The need to relate new information to current knowledge tends to decrease with age.
		12.	Ability to learn complex material tends to increase with age.
		13.	Abstract reasoning tends to rise with age.
		14.	Short-term memory tends to rise with age.
		15.	Accumulation of knowledge tends to decline with age.
		16.	The learning process tends to change with age.
		17.	Ability to learn tends to remain stable with age.
		18.	Data collection for decision-making tends to decrease with age.
		19.	Information overload tends to decline with age.
		20.	Time required to make a decision tends to increase with age.
		21.	Conservativeness in decision-making tends to increase with age.
		22.	Review of previously successful solutions for problem solving tends to increase with age.
		23.	Importance of experience in decision-making tends to decline with age.
		24.	Accuracy of work tends to decrease with age.
		25.	Rate of worker output tends to decrease with age.
		26.	Consistency of worker output tends to decline with age.
		27.	Timed performance tends to decline with age.
		28.	Untimed performance tends to remain stable with age.
		29.	Individual differences in performance tend to decrease with age.
		30.	Job turnover tends to decrease with age.
		31.	Worker absenteeism tends to rise with age.
		32.	Worker satisfaction tends to remain stable with age.
		33.	Work performance tends to remain stable with age.
		34.	Chronic health conditions tend to decline with age.
		35.	Short-term health conditions tend to increase with age.
		36.	Recovery time from health conditions and injuries tends to rise with age.
		37.	Severity of work injury tends to decrease with age.
		38.	Frequency of work injury tends to rise with age.
		39.	Risk of work injury tends to decrease with age.
		40.	Total costs of work injury tend to decline with age.

______

Test used by permission from Michael Galbreth, Florida Atlantic University at Boca Raton.

Adult Application: Which answers were the most surprising for you? Why? What do the results of this study say to church ministry with aging adults? What stereotypes of aging persons does this quiz reveal? What positive aspects of aging does this quiz reveal? What do the results of this quiz suggest about your church's ministry with elders?

On Friday, January 16, 1998, NASA announced a return to orbit for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. He asked NASA if he could fly again to conduct space-based research on aging. Thirty-six years earlier, on February 20, 1962, Glenn climbed into his Friendship 7 Mercury capsule and lifted off on an Atlas 6 rocket. His orbital flight lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes, all but 7 minutes being in weightlessness. Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth and an instant hero. The 77-year-old senator from Ohio showed that young people would look at older persons with new appreciation. With his exceptional flight he shattered many myths of aging. He showed that seniors need a vision and a dream for their later years.

Our concepts of aging reflect a lifetime of attitudes, biases, and experiences.

Most seniors have positive views of their aging.
Aging is universal; everyone is aging at the same rate.
Aging is normal; it is not an accident or a cruel trick from the Almighty.
Aging is inevitable.
It is variable; not all people age in the same way. For instance, regular physical exercise, proper diet, regular checkups, and not smoking will pay great dividends as we grow older.

In response, seniors can and do learn anything they choose to learn. They can and do change. In fact, they live in a world of change. More importantly, elders want to be self-directed and are vital human beings.

AdultApplication: How do you look at your own aging? How do you look at older people in your church?

Over time society's attitudes toward the elderly have been shaped into several theories. We will look at two approaches and how they may shape attitudes toward the elderly in our churches.

Disengagement—According to this approach, disengagement by elders is a gradual but inevitable withdrawal from the various roles and responsibilities of middle adulthood. Both society and the elderly withdraw from each other. In churches, elders "retire" from church leadership positions just as they retire from school teaching or working on the assembly line. They say, "I've done all I can do; let some young people take over."

From society's perspective this theory means younger people can't depend on elders any longer because they are not producing anything; and anyway, they are going to die. They are at the dying stage of life, not the living.

This approach is played out in the expression of the 23-year-old aspiring church leader who said, "When I get to that church, the first thing I will do is take out the organ!" The "old," represented by the organ, was deemed to be worthless now that the new was on the scene—represented by him.

This approach also has another dangerous dimension. It becomes prescriptive, not just descriptive. That is, elders will begin to sense that disengaging from life is what they should do; it is their duty toward society and to the church.

AdultApplication: Do you know of any attitudes or activities in your church that represent the disengagement approach to aging?

Activity approach to aging—The activity approach was developed in response to the disengagement approach. The activity approach suggests that we withdraw from some activities in middle age and substitute new activities as we age. So a middle manager of an auto parts firm retires and volunteers with the Retired Service Volunteer Program. Or a landscape architect retires and volunteers to plan and develop a garden near the children's playground at the church.

The thinking goes that persons substitute appropriate social, physical, and mental activities for those they had in middle adulthood. This seems to be the dominant approach behind many government programs, especially at senior centers. It, too, has some shortcomings. For instance, can't a person merely rest during retirement and not clog up their week with activity after activity? For another thing, Christians need to see beyond a person's output or activity and value the person whether or not the person is busy. Being is far more important than doing.

Society has the unfortunate idea that we need to have lots of activities for older church members to "keep granny off the street." I believe this thinking about the preferred patterns of aging got its root in youth activity programming, which was prominent in many areas in the 60s—that is, keep youth, now seniors, busy, busy, busy.

This approach implies that social activity is the essence of life, and we must be active to achieve life satisfaction. Think about the number of persons in long-term care who cannot be active, though they wish they could be. They are hampered by Parkinson's Disease or arthritis and cannot be active. Furthermore, this separation between the active and those unable to be active drives an unnecessary wedge between persons. It can be prejudicial. Society brands elders into two groups: the haves who can be active, and the have-nots who cannot be active.

AdultApplication: Do you know of any attitudes or activities in your church that represent the activity approach to aging?