Greek and Roman ideas were influential in shaping how we think today about aging and the life course. One of the greatest Greek tragedies is the three-part Oedipus cycle, the last play written when its author, Sophocles, was nearly 90 years old. In this story, Oedipus becomes king because he solves the famous riddle of the Sphinx: “What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the afternoon?” The answer is the human being at successive life stages: infancy (crawling on four legs), adulthood (walking on two), and old age (using a cane, a third leg, to support the other two). The Greek medical writer Hippocrates described four stages of life, or ages, corresponding to the four seasons of the year. Similar ideas were put forward by the Roman physician Galen and by the astronomer Ptolemy. Ptolemy developed an idea of seven stages of life, which had great influence during the Middle Ages.
During the Middle Ages, Christian civilization balanced the image of multiple stages with the metaphor of life as a journey or spiritual pilgrimage. From that standpoint, no single stage of life would be viewed as superior to another. Just as the natural life cycle was oriented by the recurrent cycle of the seasons, so the individual soul would be oriented toward the hope of an afterlife (Burrows, 1986). The human life course as both cycle and journey was thereby endowed with transcendent meaning and wholeness (Cole, 1992).
With the coming of the Reformation and the Renaissance, ideas about the life course changed into forms we recognize as modern. Writing in this epoch, Shakespeare expressed the traditional idea of the “Seven Ages of Man”:
All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
(As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7)
To Shakespeare, the periods of life were merely roles acted out on the stage of society, and the role losses of old age appeared as the final act of the play. Thus, a theatrical metaphor replaced the ideal of a cosmic cycle or a spiritual journey.
At the dawn of modern times, a generation after Shakespeare, drawings and engravings began to depict the stages of life in a new way. The traditional image of a completed circle became an image of a rising and falling staircase, where midlife occupied the peak of power. That image promoted the idea of life as a “career,” in which individuals could exercise control over later life through, for example, extended education, good health care, and capital accumulated through savings during earlier stages.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the stages of life began to be demarcated in ways we recognize today. Childhood became a period of life in its own right, separate from adulthood and old age (Aries, 1962). By the 20th century, as the practice of retirement became well established, old age became a distinct phase as well. Some sociologists argue that such stages reflect patterns of socialization tied to dominant institutions such as the school or workplace (Dannefer, 1984; Kohli, 2007); in other words, retirement exists as a separate phase of life partly because society needs to make way in the workplace for younger workers.
Today, a person will spend, on average, at least one fourth or even one third of adulthood in retirement (Kohli, 1987). Partly as a consequence, distinctions are made between the young-old (ages 65–74), the old-old (ages 75–84), and now the oldest-old (ages 85 and over). Demarcating a stage of life following the working years is more important to us than ever, yet we have simultaneously become less certain about what it means to grow older or to “act your age” at any point in life. Issues around the potential for new forms of self-expression and contributions to society in later life are discussed later in this book.
The Life Course and Aging
The study of aging as a historical phenomenon reveals a variety of views about the stages of life, about when old age begins, and about what it involves (Troyansky, 2015). When we read about aging in the Bible or in works by such writers as Shakespeare and Cicero, we might imagine that “old age” is a fixed stage of life, always part of the natural pattern of things, such as birth and death. But now, in the first part of the 21st century, it has become clear that human aging is far more ambiguous than might have been imagined in earlier epochs. We can most fruitfully understand old age not as a separate period of life, but as part of the total human life course from birth to death.
Increasingly, aging is seen from this life course perspective (Bernardia, Huininkb, & Settersten, 2019; Dannefer & Phillipson, 2010; Markson & Hollis-Sawyer, 2000; Mortimer & Shanahan, 2003). In other words, we look at old age as one phase of the entire course of life and the result of influences that came from earlier periods. We distinguish here between the span of a lifetime, which is the total number of years we live, and the course of life, which refers to the meaningful patterns seen in the passing of time. Gerontology is enriched and broadened by the life course perspective. Instead of merely describing the limited characteristics of old age, which are tied primarily to biophysical changes, we shift the framework to include all phases of life, from childhood, adolescence, and adulthood right up through the last period of old age. We also view the complex interaction of age, social status, cohort effects, and history; the contexts in which aging occurs; and the timing of events and transitions in individuals’ lives (Elder & Johnson, 2003; Riley & Riley, 1994). Longitudinal research, which follows individuals over long periods of time, is a key methodological design to reinforce the life course perspective because such an approach allows researchers to view developmental changes as they unfold over time within the same people.
The life course perspective insists that, to make sense of old age, we need to understand the entire life history. As people move through the life course, they are socialized to act in ways appropriate to successive social roles: student, parent, worker, retiree, and so on. But these structural factors only set boundaries; the meaning and experience of aging vary significantly by culture and are influenced by powerful factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. There is also room for individual variety and freedom of choice as human beings interpret age-related roles in distinctive ways.
Life Transitions
A life course perspective recognizes markers of the passage through life: important normative life events or transition points, such as graduation from school, first job, marriage, and retirement. In some respects, life transitions have become more predictable than was true earlier in history. For example, today people commonly die in old age, whereas in an earlier era, death was not unusual at any time of life. Thus, an event such as the death of a spouse or a parent is now a more predictable marker of later adulthood than it once was.
At the same time, however, certain transitions are less often tied to a particular age or stage of life than they might have been in earlier times. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s, college students were expected to graduate at the age of about 21. But today’s college students graduate at any age from the early 20s to the 30s and beyond, and news photos of a gray-haired grandparent wearing a cap and gown are no longer uncommon. Graduation may occur at any point in the adult life course. Whatever the age or circumstance of the graduate, however, the transition still marks a major role change.
Special events that mark the transition from one role to another—such as a bar mitzvah, confirmation, graduation ceremony, or wedding—are known as rites of passage (Van Gennep, 1960). These rituals reinforce shared norms about the meaning of major life events. Some traditional rites of passage, such as the sequestration of adolescents prior to induction into adult society, are no longer commonly observed in our society. However, we continue to observe a great many, including markers of old-age transitions such as retirement parties, 50th wedding anniversaries, and funerals.