Age may be just a number, but it’s one loaded with a lot of preconceptions.
Older citizens may experience negative or patronizing reactions in the workplace, at the grocery store or in their doctor’s office.
And an extreme form of ageism is being played out right now on the national stage, where accusations of “cognitive decline” are regularly bandied about — without the benefit of medical expertise.
You can tune into opinion programming and hear blatantly derisive and insulting references to age — most notably about President Biden, whose halting debate performance against former President Trump led to his withdrawal as the presumed Democratic nominee in the upcoming election.
But predictably, Trump is getting a taste of his own put-downs about age now that he’s moved up in line to be the oldest presidential candidate at 78.
Some of the media commentary can be downright mean: Has the word “diapers” ever, ever come up before in the context of a political race? It has now — still usually from partisans or media trolls. But it’s out there. Has our society really become that coarse, or that numb to disrespectful chatter?
Or does that brand of comment spring from a dread about the prospect of aging in any way that isn’t in-your-face robust?
Jokes have a place on “Saturday Night Live,” a show that’s been skewering presidents since Gerald Ford. But when did society’s everyday discussion about being “too old” become such a convenient dismissal?
The Last Acceptable ‘Ism’
Amid this zeitgeist, the Longevity Project, lead content partner of the Stanford Center on Longevity, decided to explore ageism in a timely series of live talks that are available to catch up on by going to its website.
Age — with an “ism” at the end — is alive and well. And the series offers some advice about confronting it and about placing the issue in a larger context.
“How Ageism Affects Our Lives” was the kickoff program, first aired Sept. 26. More programs are following, culminating in a Century Summit.
Members of the first panel were Janine Vanderburg, Dr. Sonja Rosen and Kyrié Carpenter.
Vanderburg is the CEO of Encore Roadmap, and before that the founder and director of Changing the Narrative, the leading anti-ageism campaign in the U.S.
Sonia Rosen is a board-certified academic theoretician, a professor of medicine and serves as the chief of Geriatrics for Cedars-Sinai, California.
Carpenter is the co-founder of Old School, a hub for equity and ageism and awareness, and author of the book “Healing Dementia.”
Prejudice Goes Both Ways
Noting that ageism is often referred to as “the last acceptable ism,” moderator Ken Stern, founder and chair of the Longevity Project, started off by asking Vanderburg to define ageism — and the role it plays in society.
Here are some excerpts from the discussion:
“The World Health Organization kind of came up with a definition that people have adopted, and it’s stereotyping, right? How we feel and how we act toward people based on their age, but I think what’s more useful is to think about it kind of in a context,” Vanderburg said.
“So if I have a stereotype that older people don’t want to learn new things and they don’t want to use tech, right, we’re digitally incompetent, that can carry into a prejudice against hiring older workers.”
But ageism can also be directed at younger generations, she added. “When we’re defining it, it’s important to kind of look both ways,” she said, and to also think about how it’s playing out.
Carpenter spoke about the benefits of interacting with people of all ages:
“I did my practicum working with people living with dementia. I was faced with people who were older and living with cognitive change, and they didn’t match up to the stereotypes I held,” she said. “And when I got curious about why the people I was meeting didn’t match what I imagined they would be, I realized it was a lot of ageism with a healthy dose of ableism thrown in there.”
In addition, “I noticed that those stereotypes had stopped me from connecting with people outside of my own age,” Carpenter said. But then “because I was having really rich interactions with people I was interacting with, I saw the benefit in my own life of having mixed age relationships and then also realizing how it does go both ways.”
Adding being female to the equation, and you have another factor leading to prejudice.
‘Too Sexy, Too Fertile’
Carpenter recounted a “dear friend” who posed this interesting — and frustrating — axiom for women: “As far as women go in the workforce, first we’re too sexy, then we’re too fertile, then we aren’t sexy or fertile enough. So, there’s no right age to be a woman in the workforce,” Carpenter said.
For Carpenter, being dismissed for her young age — she is now in her late 30s — was compounded by her gender, she said. But as she added another decade, at least her youth is becoming less of an ageist issue, she wryly added.
The Healthcare Factor
The intersection of aging and healthcare was addressed by Dr. Rosen, who said ageism is a “critically important social determinant of health.”
“Social isolation and loneliness, financial insecurity, transportation insecurity, housing insecurity, all of these individual social determinants of health directly impact older person’s health,” she said. “Ageism is as important and . . . interwoven with all of these social determinants of health.”
Rosen emphasized how important it is to listen to the older patient amid medical decisions. Well-meaning family or other caregivers must include “their loved one in that decision making process, which really is a critical part of efforts in combating ageism.”
And Vanderburg related her own interaction with her doctor when discussing an assessment for cataract surgery in one eye:
“I get a checklist that says, ‘Why do you want to see?’ And on the checklist are shopping, playing, golf, playing sport, a bunch of things that have nothing to do with my rather active life of speaking, writing, working and all the things that I do. . . . Why is there an assumption that in a practice geared to people aged 65 and older that working is kind of not an option?”
Role in the Workforce
Working in a traditional setting or in an “encore” career is a reality for many retirement people — either by necessity or choice.
In a recent Goldman Sachs annual survey of financial planning and retirement savings outcomes, 59% of retired respondents without a financial plan had less than $100,000 in retirement savings, but only 16% of those with a financial plan had that little in savings.
However, 55% of retired respondents who had a financial plan had more than $500,000, while 21% of those without a financial plan had saved that much.
So retirement planning is a big concern, and the Stanford Center on Longevity considers it one of its “pillars” in addressing aging issues.
Getting Older Globally
The center and its lead partner the Longevity Project take such issues head on. Its stated mission is to “Promote Transformation in Support of Longer Life,” according to its website.
The organization notes that life expectancy has increased from about 47 years at the beginning of the 20th century in the United States to more than 78 years today. “By some estimates, half of the children born today in the developed world will live for 100 years,” the center says.
And the challenges to living longer are discussed in the organization’s four “pillars,” as mentioned above. In addition to financial security, lifelong health, lifelong learning and caregiving are areas for exploration and support in a broader national — and global — conversation.
“Our goal is to cultivate a new awareness of the longevity challenge and support change so that people around the world can live healthy, secure and fulfilled lives,” according to the center.
Pat McDaniel is a New Jersey-based journalist. Contact her at pmcd5353@gmail.com
