Aging, Meaning, and Well-Being: Musings of a Cultural Historian

Abstract

The social integration and well-being of old people depends in part on a culturally viable ideal of old age. Growing out of widely shared images and social values, an ideal old age legitimates norms and roles appropriate to the last stage of life. This article discusses the “late Calvinist” and “civilized” models of old age that flourished in Protestant, middle-class America between 1800 and 1920. It argues that the growing cultural dominance of science and the accelerating pace of capitalist productivity undercut the essential vision underlying these models: the view of life as a spiritual journey. The result has been a serious weakening of social meaning in aging and old age.