Adolescent Interview ( Age 20 )

I believe maturity is not dependent on a person’s age because humans are affected by different situations, are different genders and are raised differently.

Humans are born already aging. There is know way to stop the process of getting older. As people age it is important that services and rescores are set up to

Modern society view’s aging as a form of sickness and the elderly as persons who are closer to dying and death. This is what is often portrayed in our mass and social media. When considering issues of aging sociologists have found that more positive characteristics are often said for persons under sixty five years than for over sixty five years.

Aging and being old was dominated by negative characteristics and conditions such as illness, depression, and isolation for a long time (Eibach, Mock, & Courtney, 2010). At first glance the terms “success” and “aging” seem to be in conflict to each other. When asking people about aging, their answers have many facets that are also found in psychological definitions: successful aging is seen as health, maturity and personal growth, self-acceptance, happiness, generativity, coping, and acceptance of age-related limitations. In the psychological sense successful aging is also often seen as the absence of age-associated characteristics (Strawbridge, Wallhagen, & Cohen, 2002). It seems that successful aging means is not aging.

I do not believe that age has anything to do with maturity. I believe that the experiences someone has makes them mature;in addition, I also believe that what a person has been through has a lot to do with it.

1. In her speech, Jane Fonda spoke about aging and the effect that it can have on a person. Fonda talked about “Life’s Third act” or the last three decades of a person’s life. Fonda explained that the advances in medicine and technology enabled the human race to live longer than before (Fonda, 2012). According to Fonda, humans are living on average, thirty years longer than past generations. The human life span has been extended and humans are spending a great deal of their lives in older age (Fonda, 2012). Fonda explains that we should not accept aging as a decline to our mental and physical capacity. According to her, our spirits do not age but mature over time which explains why people over the age of fifty are generally happier, less

For this interview I choose to interview my daughter who is five, a good friend who is thirty three, my mom who is 52, and my grandma who is 74. I thought all of the interviews went well, and I had fun doing them. While I was doing the interview I did notice a few patterns that took place. The first pattern that I noticed is that the first two age groups said that they felt great being their age, and the last two age groups said that it felt good to be their age but they would feel better if they didn’t have aches and pains. The second pattern that I noticed was the two middle age groups were bummed that they had to work full time, but the age group from thirty-five to sixty-five was happy that they would be done working full time soon. I also noticed one more pattern between the middle age groups, and that was that they both hated their teens and they would never want to relive that age again.

The aging of society has not significantly changed our perceptions of the elderly. Ageism is widespread in Western societies (Dionigi, et al, 2011). Older adults are seen as boring, grumpy irritable, weak, debilitated, mournful, and most significantly cognitively. These stereotypes which are negative can be allowed by the aged themselves negative self-stereotyping (Dionigi, et al, 2011) and are as well found among specialized caregivers (e.g., Cowan, Fitzpatrick, Roberts, & While,2004). The image in relation to which older adults are more ineffectual than younger adults is predominantly dominant. Nevertheless, in a variety of domains, older adults are inclined to have analogous performances and at times even do better than younger

Getting old and aging are things that have become difficult points for many and despite

As aging is a stage of development that cannot prevented, the question of “can one’s aging be more successful than another?” is posed my many. Researchers continually consider the differences between aging successfully, and aging unsuccessfully. As researchers work to complete their studies, many find a reoccurring basis of successful aging. A basis of successful aging can be set including: physical health disease free, chronic illness free, mental health disease free, among many others. The only problem with this basis is the difference from person to person in terms of what makes aging successful. As individuals age, their mental state is a large predictor of how the person will age. A positive mental state about aging, will have a more positive effect on a person’s aging process. Many factors may influence the positivity of aging, such as negative aging stereotypes and discrimination because of older age. These negative aging stereotypes include but are not limited to: older adults are not as smart, older adults are angry all the time, older adults are bad drivers, older adults are isolated and never socialize. In adult aging and development, having a positive outlook on aging will lead to better mental and physical aging.

Adolescents try to figure out who they are in order to form a basic identity that they will build on throughout their life; whereas, older adults acquire a lifetime of self-knowledge, which leads to a more secure and complex understanding of themselves than at earlier ages.

Knowing and having an understanding of what ageing stands for, remains an important step, growing-up or growing older and ageism are theories about older individuals. Ageism includes preconceptions that elderly are categorized for their age and perceived as weak, and incapable of performing tasks and needy of others (Quadagno, 2014). Another view about elderly individuals is the way they are looked down on by the younger society, i.e. elderly are not as intelligent as their younger competitive working force. People fear what they do not know and do not understand. Age transpires as something that must be lived through in order to understand what ageing means; looking back on one’s life and seeing accomplishments made,

Like most people in American society and culture, when I hear the term aging it is almost always thought of negatively. Americans have become obsessed with finding ways to live a longer and healthier life and when one of those people here the term ‘aging’ it is viewed as a detriment to their thought of living longer. It is often a scary thought because people assume that the best years of their life are behind them. I personally do not feel physically as old as I do mentally. I am weary, however, as life goes on that my body will eventually catch up to my mind. I hope however that I can be healthy all around at an older age because I would hate to be ill and not be able to enjoy life at its greatest potential. I believe that most people, including myself, have the perception that aging limits your mobility. People often assume that the once you get to a certain age you will be limited to where you can live and must be forced into a retirement home. This perception more than likely is false, and perhaps coming from individuals that have seen loved ones not being cared for and have taken a similar path. This perception most likely comes from observation of adults telling younger ones by word of mouth however untrue it may be.

The first question about how I perceive the aging process is a tough one. Over the last year I have watched my Aunts, who I always saw as ageless, start to have dementia and other aging issues. This has been a hard thing to confront, as they always seemed immortal! To hear my mother and her sister’s talk about nursing care, health issues and selling properties just feels strange. These women are the strongest women I have ever known, and to see them weaken is tough. At family gatherings my cousins and I talk about how the family dynamic is changing – parents aging and a few have past, children moving on, and we suddenly realize that we are aging as well! How did that happen!

Is this quote ever true! We all want to live forever, but we want to do it with the gusto of a teenager. It is truly a shame that our most energetic years are wasted on our ignorance. But, they are. All we can do is keep ourselves as healthy as possible. The good news is that in this day and age, it is easier than ever to do. We know more about maintaining good health, and we have more medicine and machines to maintain good health than ever before, and we should be making our health a priority - as much as living a long and healthy life is.