Why Helping The Aged Is Not About Them And Us

The other day I showed my children a picture of a woman aged 100 waterskiing. As a 56-year-old, beginning the countdown to my free bus pass, I found this image of superannuated athleticism positively inspirational. They found it rather repulsive.

The point is that we were all making age-based judgments. Before 1855 and the introduction of compulsory civil registration of births in Scotland, many people were vague about their age, not out of shame or embarrassment, but simple ignorance. In fact, prior to the introduction of the old-age pension in 1908, there was little to be gained from knowing one’s date of birth.

Today, birthdays are magic portals for everything from starting school and sitting one’s driving test to the state retirement pension and a free television licence. After we pass 60, birthdays also act to disqualify us from a range of functions and entitlements.

This week Tory MSP David McLetchie launched a campaign to reform the absurd and senseless disqualification of over-65s from jury service. Good luck to him. Auntie Doris might prefer to be off on a jolly to Oban with her pals from the bridge club

than sweating over some culpable homicide verdict in the jury room at the High Court, but in an ageing society there needs to be a balance between rights and responsibilities across all age groups.

There are plenty of other instances of age-based discrimination. Why must someone be 66 or less to volunteer as a blood donor? Why do women over 70 no longer qualify for regular mammograms, even though the risk of breast cancer is just as serious for septuagenarians as for younger women?

Most serious of all, and to the chagrin of campaigning organisations, why can employers still oblige someone to retire at 65, despite recent legislation against ageism?

Besides, laws don’t change attitudes. As John McNicol of the London School of Economics and author of Age Discrimination puts it: “Age distinctions, age stratifications, age judgments and age-appropriate behaviours’ are subtly woven into our patterns of thinking, as a way of making sense of the world.”

This is reflected in our language: act your age, mutton dressed as lamb, at my time of life, you’re too old for that, and so on. Lonely hearts ads usually stipulate an age-range, and when Joan Collins teamed up with a man 30 years her junior, blanket media coverage reflected a sense that she was deemed to have broken some unwritten rule.

Of all the “-isms”, ageism remains uniquely acceptable. Long after we have dispensed with notions that women cannot work in heavy industry, or landlords are entitled to include “No blacks or Irish” in classified ads – or public buildings can be inaccessible to someone in a wheelchair – the over-65s continue to be treated like second-class citizens. They are characterised as inflexible, cranky, unproductive, ugly and sexless.

“Humorous” birthday cards poke fun at impotence, or, paradoxically, at older men with excessive libidos. Almost worse is the pseudo anti-ageism that depicts old people as “beautiful” or supercharged in some way, like my centenarian waterskier. This treatment reduces them to the status of characters in a Victorian freak show and implies that their peers are irredeemably sunk in ugliness and decrepitude.

Meanwhile, watching television you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only things that turn on our senior citizens are Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow. Older presenters, especially women, are firmly pushed towards the exits, so that young, glamorous, unlined ones can take their places. Goodbye Moira Stuart, farewell Anna Ford.

No wonder older people get depressed. Discrimination can combine with other factors to produce feelings of hopelessness and despair that can develop into depressive illness. The government’s recent inquiry into mental health and wellbeing in later life estimates 2.4 million older people in Britain suffer from depression, a figure likely to rise to 3.1m within 15 years.

But if older people seek help from health or social services, they often get second-class treatment. When a friend’s elderly relative attempted to unburden himself to his young GP, the latter’s cheery parting shot was: “Age doesn’t come alone, you know.” We hear a lot about young men and suicide but, in fact, it is people over 65 who have both the highest suicide rates of all age groups and are the most “successful” at taking their own lives.

Why are ageing societies seen as in decline? McNicol suggests the answer is a combination of ignorance and fear. A highly mobile society leaves many older people living alone and far away from their children and grandchildren. Yet a number of successful schemes in Scotland that put children and old people together and encourage them to question each other about their lives and experiences, is probably the closest thing to a magic bullet to cure ageism.

Children who do have access to their grandparents often form a special bond, turning to them for advice, rather than their parents. Without such contact, it is too easy for older people to find young ones rude and threatening – and for youngsters to dismiss the elderly as boring and censorious.

Underlying ageism is a deep-rooted irrational fear about our mortality. The prospect of flabby flesh and drooping shoulders, of decay and death, fills us with terror. Of course, it is also a handy cop out because if we regard the elderly as a race apart, it justifies our acceptance of differential treatment for them. For example, too many of Scotland’s senior citizens are living in residential care homes and eating food we would never accept for ourselves or our children.

Instead, increasing numbers of us support the $57bn anti-ageing industry, lifting our faces and buttocks, Botoxing our wrinkles and smothering ourselves with absurdly expensive moisturisers and unguents. Magazines devote themselves to the knifestyles of the rich in a way that simply swaps ageism for “look-ism”.

It’s time to fight back. I have no doubt this will happen. By dint of sheer numbers, we babyboomers have called the shots ever since we were bouncing in our Silver Cross prams and we aren’t planning to go all meek and mild on you when we pass 65.

But first we need better infrastructure. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has 33 million members and is the most powerful lobby in the US. We have dedicated, articulate charities in Age Concern and Help the Aged but while they have a turnover of around £140m in England, north of the Border the equivalent is barely £3m. Yet because of Scotland’s low birthrate, our population is ageing faster than nearly anywhere in the world.

Just before the Holyrood elections, Jack McConnell’s administration produced an impressive strategy document called All Our Futures – Planning for a Scotland with an Ageing Population. It proposed a national forum on ageing, a big expansion of volunteering opportunities for older people and more “care and repair” services to allow more older people to stay at home.

Its launch was overshadowed by the elections and, worryingly, of all the parties, the SNP had the least to say about older people.

The new Scottish government has said it will implement All Our Futures but has yet to come forward with detailed proposals.

Like ageing itself, I fear this will be a long game.