Growing Up and Growing Old: Ageing and Dependency in the Life Course (Life Course Studies series) Book

Childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age: Jenny Hockey and Allison James explore how this conventional structuring of the life course reflects and perpetuates fundamental concepts of dependency and interdependence. They demonstrate the power - and the limits - of social constructions of growing up and growing old.Ranging across disciplinary boundaries, the book analyzes metaphors of dependency in differing contexts - the body, the family, work and leisure. Central issues include: the role of metaphors of childhood in shaping the experience of ageing in many Western cultures; the effective marginalization of elderly people through infantilization; how ideas about personhood, individualism, gender and the life course are embedded within social contexts and cultures; and the cognitive structures through which human beings create and manage the idea and the experience of dependency.Combining robustly critical analysis with breadth of interdisciplinary sweep, Growing Up and Growing Old challenges the stigmatizing role that stereotypes can play in the lives of particular groups of people. It will be invaluable to students of sociology and anthropology and all those interested in dependency, childhood, ageing and the life course.Read More