Interview And Analysis : Tina Hildebrand

Ingrid is a social worker, wife, and a mother who lives in a two story colonial home with her husband and two daughters, aged 8 and 15 years old. She was active in the school of her children, serving on committees and volunteering to read in the classroom. She attended to church habitually, though her husband did not accompany her. Her interests included swimming, snorkeling, and hiking. Not only was she close to her immediate family, but also maintained frequent contact with her college friends living throughout the country. As well, Ingrid requires moderate assistance with most of her basic activities of daily living (BADL).

work, hobbies and relationships. At this stage old people are disengaging from the responsibility and livelihood that they were previously experiencing and decide to become inactive, less social and have minimum friendly interactions with others. When people get older they start to live their life in the opposite way to how they lived it when they were younger. When in the disengagement process those people who were usually active and social as they get older they would begin to withdraw from all these positive things in their lives and give up on what was seen as traditional and normal behaviour, this could be anything from going to work or visiting the social club. In the disengagement process any normal and routine thing such as work or visiting friends would reverse and change into something that was completely negative like retiring from work and being anti-social. Cumming said that the amount of social contact that the old people would experience will slowly reduce as they get older and they would chose to become more independent and individual in terms of shutting other out of their lives and resorting to doing nothing active or meaningful in their lives with this they have a less concern with what others expect from them. He also said that disengagement was a natural process that comes with aging which is appropriate and healthy for older people to withdraw from the people around

Today I spoke with a very outspoken neighbor of mine who was kind enough to participate in my assessment project. Iris L. is her name and she was born in March of 1940, which makes her 76 years old. She has lived in the small town of Archer Lodge, NC since she was born. She has been widowed for over 35 years and has one son who also lives five minutes away. She remains very active within the community but spends a majority of her time with her two grandchildren, ages 9 and 11. She has three sisters who all live within a few minutes of her home. She is active in her church and has lots of community friends that she assist in taking to appointments and says she also enjoys “feeding the shut-ins”. She is retired from a manufacturing job of 35 years but returned to work part-time at Dollar General approximately 8 years ago. She told me “if you don’t keep busy and active, you will go downhill quickly when you retire”.

The disengagement theory explains aging as a result of the individuals retreating and separating from previous community connections owing to age. This is one of the earliest hypotheses put forth, and this theory was initially postulated way back in the 1950s.

Ever since I was a child, my mother always put a huge importance on what it meant by taking care of people, whether that would be my family, friends, or those in need of help. At a young age, I never really understood why she made such a big deal out of the idea of having to take care of people. However, as time went on, I came to a realization that I find most satisfaction in my life when I am able to help those in need of help.

Regardless of age, our greatest influences are those we choose to associate with, and similarly who we look to for support. The support we receive in these scenarios in turn influence our health behavior, psychological condition, and physiologic state (Smith, 2014). By definition, the term social engagement applies to both formal (i.e. going to church) and informal (i.e. watching television) relationships and gathering, and references some sort of participation. Seeing that people today nearly spend one-third of their lifespan in old age, it is important that they remain active for as long as they are able to. However, under the influence of ageism, the elderly become discouraged, and so conform to society’s expectations of them. The disengagement theory is contingent upon these terms insomuch as it justifies their doing so. But, just as the discrimination and stereotyping of individuals on the basis of age is condemned and criticized, so too is Cumming’s theory. Yet, one question still remains. Why is it that not all elderly people meet this

Hope you have a wonderful day! This is Tina Kou, and I just had the interview with you in the morning.

On Tuesday, February 13th, I had the honor of attending a lecture by Margot Parr from Angela Hospice. Margot spoke about her background, decisions she made in her life, and how she found satisfaction in what she is doing now. Margot and her family came to America in the 1950’s from the Netherlands. She didn’t grow up rich, and her family struggled to make ends meet. I found this interesting because she’s a very successful woman that didn’t come from money. It shows that anyone can do what they want, if they work hard enough. Margot started working at the age of 13, which nowadays sounds crazy. At the age of 13, teens are still thinking about friends and what’s “cool.” At the age of 17, Margot joined the army for 3 years as a paramedic during the Vietnam War. When Margot came back home, she became a police officer, but still felt she wasn’t making a difference in people’s lives.

My blood runs deep through the hills of Southeastern Missouri and around the swollen bends of the Mississippi river. We are proud of our heritage, whose roots extend across the flat lands of the Midwest. Beneath the plump belly and peppered hair of my father resides a man who was brought up on a farm. His father cultivated the rich land and raised livestock. He was also successful in his endeavors of climbing the corporate ladder at McDonnell Douglas, which is where my father is employed today. My mother, whose swollen feet and tanned skin tell the story of her hard-working nature, grew up in a strict household in Alton, Illinois. By being around a skilled housekeeper throughout childhood, my mother has learned the art of balancing motherhood and employment as a nurse and being exceptionally good at both. Her big heart and unbreakable compassion has carried her for over thirty years as a nurse who has emotionally and physically changed the lives of others.

7Cumming and Henry (1961) defined the term disengagement to refer to a process whereby people respond to aging by gradually withdrawing from the various roles and social relationships they occupied in middle age. (Zastrow,

While still in high school I worked at a local Subway in my home town of Howard City, Michigan. I worked there for two years, and at the latter part of my first year I obtained a “regular”. Each Wednesday this middle aged man would come in and order the exact same thing, and we would casually chat back and forth. It has now been three years since the day that I met my “regular”, and our relationship has been maintained strictly by our mutual love for the nursing field. For the sake of this paper, I will call this man by the pseudonym of Peter. Peter has become a sort of mentor to me, guiding me in the right direction as I make my way through my nursing major. Besides his knowledge of nursing and the health field, I recently realized just how little I knew about Peter and his past, and decided to choose him for my life history paper. I asked Peter if he would like to be my interviewee and he quickly accepted. Through his interview, I learned more about Peter’s life than I had ever thought imaginable, and now I get to share it with you!

Disengagement theory is the first formal theory of aging. It was first proposed in 1961 by Elaine Cumming and William Hendry. They both were researchers from the University of Chicago. The two developed their theory in their book Growing Old: The Process of Disengagement. In the book they criticized the implicit theory that people can adjust, be satisfied, and happy in old age. They can also be physically involved and remain active throughout their lives. “Cumming and Henry argued that normal aging involves a natural and inevitable mutual and inevitable mutual withdrawal or disengagement, resulting in decreasing interaction between an aging person and others in the social system he belongs to.” Because of the inevitability of death, the society and the individual mutually server their ties in advance so that the death of the individual will not be disruptive to the social system. The disengagement theory results in decreasing interaction between aging person and social system.

Disengagement, continuity, and age stratification theories provide some insight as to why we become more sedentary as we age: disengagement theory is known as elders withdrawing socially as part of the natural aging process, continuity is based on ones level of activity in their middle aged years and is carried into their later years, and age stratification theory is when society expects the elders to behave in particular way, and don’t offer as many social roles for the elderly (Novak 331).

Old age dependency is not considered to be an automatic decline of an individual, but rather is regarded as a direct consequence of social conditions. In accordance with this dependency is seen as social contingences. Social consequences leading to dependency are mainly due to reinforcement, neglect or punishment in response to desire of independence. This contradicts Seligman’s (1975) model, which perceives dependency as a loss.

Growing up in Ottawa as the youngest of four siblings, with her closest sibling being six years older than her, Jennifer spent a lot of her time with primary and secondary care givers. She learned ideas and values about motherhood from her own mother, her grandmother, her siblings and other neighbourhood moms. The majority