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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Popular views of old age in America, 1900-1950 | | Author(s) | Laura Davidow Hirshbein |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 49, no 11, November 2001 |
| Pages | pp 1555-1560 |
| Keywords | Ageing process ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Communication media ; Histories ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The ageing of the American population has significantly changed medical practice in the 20th century. As is well known, life expectancy began to increase dramatically in the 19th century, and with that an increasing number of older people. This paper offers one way of looking at some the historical changes that have affected the public and the medical profession about old age, by looking at old age through American popular literature and the popular press in the first half of the 20th century. Whereas early in the century, the concept was widely defined, in the third and fourth decades, the idea began to acquire increasing negative connotations, but chronological old age itself did not signal the beginning of old age. By the 1940s, old age became a specifically social and medical problem, and older people a specifically recognised population with a variety of groups around their care. This paper suggests ways in which population conceptions of old age might continue to shift and affect how doctors care for their older patients in the future. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-011210221 A |
| Classmark | BG: TOB: UD: 6A: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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