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They're loud and proud: make way for the elderly
The present generation of people in their fifties seems to have the money, and the power, to move the goalposts of our perception of ageing.
This year, according to some UN decision, is to be the International Year of Older People. I sometimes wonder who dreams these things up and whether, somewhere in Geneva or New York, there is a lavish suite of offices devoted solely to International Year Designation. The very idea of Years of this and that seems to me irritating and irrelevant. Still, the UN can't always get it wrong. In this case, we are in the middle of extreme and extraordinary change, and it is well worth thinking about Older People. Indeed, we will have to, whether the UN tells us to or not, since older people are forming an ever-increasing proportion of our population and since their needs are getting more and more expensive.
"Older people" is presumably a UN euphemism for old people. Now that our perceptions of ageing are changing so fast, now that people stay healthy for so much longer and now that the loss of youth is hedged about with so much dread, it is hard to say precisely what "old" means. But I suppose we must all agree that it applies to anyone past middle age and even, perhaps, to some still in it; an acquaintance of mine in his late forties went to see his doctor, complaining of aches and pains, loss of energy and general malaise. "Well," said the doctor heartlessly, "you've had three children, and you're losing muscle tone and vision - nature is through with you." He had served his genetic purpose.
Old people are those who fortunately evolve to defy nature. She may be through with some of us, but that does not mean we are through with her. In King Lear, Shakespeare wrote in the same brutal spirit "Age is unnecessary", meaning presumably that aged people have no function. There is a Chinese expression for the old which is even more brutal - "the useless mouths". Now, through science, that perception is being entirely reversed. Old people, staying fit and well for longer and longer, could well have all kinds of functions and find themselves necessary; as a result, "ageism" will begin to wither - indeed, it is just beginning to.
At the same time, the inescapable necessity of biological ageing is beginning to recede. The science of ageing is progressing at an astonishing rate. When I worked on a television documentary about ageing 15 years ago, a leading American gerontologist told me that the entire body of knowledge of gerontology doubled every year. I have believed, ever since, that it is a very good bet that, at some time in the 21st century, all the mysteries of ageing may finally be revealed and with them, perhaps, the mysteries of staying young and well indefinitely.
This isn't entirely wishful thinking on my part. Tom Kirkwood, a leading British gerontologist and president of the British Society for Research into Ageing, is about to publish a book called Time of Our Lives: "A world authority shows why ageing is neither inevitable nor necessary", according to prominent capitals on the cover. This seems to me to be a very optimistic note on which to enter the new century; while I'm all in favour of maturity, I can't see that there's anything to be said in favour of senescence. I also think, or at least I hope, that this sense of change and hope might help to take the stigma out of ageing.
I also think the stigma is now beginning to disappear for economic reasons. Many of the 1960s' pop stars whose anthem was "Hope I die before I get old" didn't die and now are old: like Mick Jagger, many of them are grandparents. The same applies to the large and powerful generation to whom they were singing, who have no intention of standing aside for younger generations if they can possibly avoid it.
Besides, apart from those who kippered their faces with drink and drugs, they don't look old. And, unlike the middle aged of the past, they have the power to avoid being excluded. Indeed, they seem to have the money and the power to move the goalposts of our perception of ageing. For example, magazines that, for so long, were obsessed with extreme youth are gradually beginning to raise the age of glamour. First, thirtysomethings began to be portrayed as young, then features daringly began to suggest that women could sometimes still be gorgeous at 40. Now the magazines are beginning to claim that women can be fascinating in their fifties: surely it is no accident that the 1960s' generation is now fiftysomething.
There's another economic reason for old people to be newly perceived as useful and desirable - there has proved to be no substitute for granny. For a time, people turned to the welfare stare, and to child minders, for the services traditionally offered by granny. But it is slowly beginning to be understood that the kindness of strangers is unreliable, in short supply and extremely expensive. As this newspaper recently pointed out in a leading article, when hospitals were besieged with patients suffering from nothing worse than flu, granny would have told them to stay at home and take some flu medicine; she would probably have nursed them through it, too.
A recent article in the British Medical Journal discussed the role of grandmothers in preventing unnecessary visits to casualty departments; a small study in Britain suggests that grandmothers have a beneficial part to play in supporting mothers and young children, and that, when grandmothers are involved in their care, children are less likely to come to accident and emergency centres with trivial complaints. Mr Kirkwood believes that the menopause is an evolutionary strategy to protect children by preserving the grandmother's childcaring role in the extended family. Come back, granny! We're all very sorry we thought you were obsolete and out of time (as the Rolling Stones song went).
This does not mean that granny (or indeed grandpa) should be paid to come back by the state, as the Government is now suggesting. It is typical of New Labour to take a good old-fashioned idea, claim it as its own, and then turn it into a statist directive. On the same principle, perhaps it should support families by paying husbands (including Cabinet ministers) to stay with their wives. All the same, it is a good idea. I don't know how far it can go. Many grandmas are nightmares. Many more have hotter plans than unpaid childcare. But all this does suggest, and not a moment too soon, a new way of looking at older people.
The Daily Telegraph | Thursday, January 14, 1999
