Aging Society as Agents of Social Change

“You are only as old as you feel”. Everyone at some time in life has heard this saying. People are more and more resisting the idea of aging. In Betty Friedan’s book, The Fountain of Age (1993), she suggests that a new stage in life is emerging from this trendy resistance of growing old. Many people have tried to put a label on the trend. It has been called the “third-age”, “encore years”, and even referred to as the “second missionary journey”. This time of life that is being referenced is the period of late adulthood. Psychologists, such as Erik Erikson, have referred to this stage in life as a period of new identity. Throughout life, each new experience, each gain or loss, requires a reassessment of one’s identity. The idea of who am I, is often challenged in old age. (Berger, 2008). The days of being able to socially define who we are, by what we do have passed and now it is time to begin that “second missionary journey”. Different from the psychological perspective of aging and this life course, sociologists focus in on ideas of how changes in culture and times have brought about this new “third age”. Their explanations are based mainly on the concepts of generations, such as the “baby boomers” of the twentieth century. Through this distinct concept, the new stage of late adulthood can be better explored and further explained. The areas of who these people are, what they do, and what drives them to do it are of most interest to those not experiencing the same changes. Late adulthood is no longer a site of poverty in the cycle of life, but instead is a chance to redefine oneself as an agent of social change.

The groups of people who make up the new, emerging stage in life are not simply any man or woman in the...

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