Aging and Elderly

Aging and Elderly

Introduction

Aging is the accumulation of changes in a particular person over the period of time. Aging, in fact, is a multidimensional process which includes the elements of physical, psychological and social change. As a matter of fact, some of the dimensions of aging grow while others decline with the passage of time. In practical terms, age of a person is measured chronologically. However, in social terms, is relates to how a person should behave or act. Globally, aging population is considered as one of the potential problems because they impose considerable burden over societal well being. According to the functionalist perspective, this chunk of the population is perceived to disengage from the vital functions of society, mainly due to their perception of dying in future (Christensen et. al., 2009).

From a holistic point of view, the problem of aging has given birth to many of the social problems. The problems are widespread, however, in this paper the major focus would be over four of them. There problems are related to health, physical or verbal abuse, economic welfare, and finally the loneliness. As a matter of fact, each of these problems falls under the broad category of social sciences. Hence, with this, it can be inferred that aging of populations does pile up the overall stock of social problems, and it is necessary for government and other not-for-profit organizations to take necessary actions to curb this social menace.

Discussion

Aging, as a matter of fact, is one of the most important parts of human societies which mainly reflect the biological changes which appear over the period of time. However, with such changes, there also appears certain cultural and societal change, which does greatly contributes towards the overall shift in society. Practically, there is a fine line between the biological aging and social aging. The former relates to the human physical age, while the latter relates to the cultural expectation as one grows. Both of these are the related to one thing, but having different perspectives. However, in terms of social aging there are many views of sociologist, each one tries to explain this social issue from a different perspective. For instance, some use functionalism as the base point, while for other structuralism or any other makes the real different. No matter what the perspective is, this issue does fall under the category of social problem.

Within this particular population, often division is made. The basis of these divisions is by and large, the age bracket within which they fall. For instance, 65-74 years age people are classified as young old, 75-84 as middle old, and 85+ years as the oldest. There are certain contradictions with this kind of classification. As we know, the chronological age has nothing to do with the functional age of a person, hence classifying on this basis would be something like living in dooms paradise. In addition to that, there are different causes of the enhanced increase of overall age of the ...