Centre for Policy on Ageing



"We're not old!" — older women's negotiation of aging and oldness
Author(s)	Laura C Hurd
Journal title	Journal of Aging Studies, vol 13, no 4, 1999
Pages	pp 419-440
Keywords	Older women ; Personality ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Participant observation ; Canada.
Annotation	This article is based on participant observation research at a seniors' centre in central Canada, in which the writer sought to acquire an understanding of how older people define, interpret, and negotiate their realities and identities. Through activity and group membership, the centre members - most of whom are single, older women aged 50 to 90 - seek to distance themselves from the category of "old" and the accompanying ageist stereotypes. Striving to establish and preserve their precarious membership in the "not old", centre members struggle to reconcile their belief and experience of older adulthood as a time of activity, health and happiness with their ever-present fear of declining health and the realities of widowhood and the loss of youthful attractiveness. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-000120220 A
Classmark	BD: DK: TOB: 3DB: 7S
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.