Framing old age in social gerontology

• In Event: Aging and the Life Course Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 14: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Aging

Abstract

Sociology overlaps with gerontology in a field called social gerontology. This small study measures the extent to which social gerontologists indirectly maintain an association between older age and stigmatized conditions. Many social gerontologists may do this in the framing of our professional work, despite our intent to reduce that stigma in social life. We sample recent publications in two flagship journals of social gerontology. Directed content analysis tracks patterns in four dimensions of older age: the homogenization of older age, the depiction of older age as posing a growing set of challenges to policymakers and caregivers, older age as shaped by ageism, and linking of older age to medicine and health in research that does not focus on those directly. Content analysis reveals significant gaps between the ideals set forth by the Reframing Aging Initiative and the framing of much contemporary social gerontology. Most articles treat older age as a largely homogenous experience; nearly half treat older age as a set of growing problems, very few discuss ageism, and one article in six links either medicine or health to the problems of older age even though it does not study those. Though the research that gerontologists pursue may be impeccable and their reports important, the framing of these findings in our journals nevertheless departs from recent guidelines that are meant to reduce the stigma attached to older age. We find that much contemporary social gerontology links older age to stigmatizing qualities in our claims about the importance of our professional work.

Authors

• Neal King, Virginia Tech

• Toni Calasanti, Virginia Tech