Essay on Two Ageing Theories and Examples

As defined by Crossman (Disengagement Theory n.d.) “Disengagement theory states that in every society, the elderly undergo a process of adjustment in which they leave important public roles and narrow their social world to family and friends”. Thus, the

The disengagement theory expresses that as a person ages, it is normal to withdraw from society and social relationships. A positive point of view is that the elderly receive some sort of freedom because as they withdraw from society, they have enough things to deal with, that they are not expected or pushed to conform to social norms. This allows them to decide for themselves, and live life how they want with no pressure from society. Like there is a positive, there is a negative. Since the elderly are ageing more and more every day, they have more of an expectancy to die earlier, which causes them to experience mental and

The disengagement theory was discovered and evaluated by Gumming and Henry in 1961. They concluded that the disengagement theory is a way of defining how a person portrays their behaviour within their old age through the process of ageing. Gumming and Henry both said that every individual who comes to the age of 60, will start to disengage themselves from others and mostly they will disengage themselves from

Theories are a series of interconnected proposals. Theories are an effort to describe, explain, predict, and finally control a period of events. We are able to base our experiments and select the contenders for the experiments off of our theories. We are able to test our theories by how well the cumulated data describes, relates to and predicts reality. Theories act as patterns for interpreting specific data that we may refer back to. These patterns ensure we stay on topic and are able to obtain the proper results needed to verify our theories.

During the aging process, the elderly may take different approaches to aging and may apply to different theories of aging such as the disengagement theory and the activity theory. All elderly individuals will deal with aging in different ways, they may wish to stay active or they may wish to disengage themselves due to depression or they may be unable to deal with the processes of becoming older. Both of these theories of aging have completely different thoughts and views of the aging process.

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

A theory is a set of systematic informed hunches about the way things work. A good theory goes beyond accepted wisdom and offers explanations and speculations about phenomena. Additionally, a good theory consists of a system of concepts which means that the theorist were able to make connections among his ideas. A theory tends to shape our perception of reality and behaviour and guides us through unknown areas.

A theory is an explanation of why or how things are related to each other (Bohm & Vogel, 2011). Additionally, a theory is defined as a plausible or scientifically acceptable principle, or a body of principles, offered to explain phenomena (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2017). Furthermore, crime theories examine and attempt to identify relationships among humans, criminal behavior, and specific factors such as biological factors, psychological factors, sociological factors, and economic factors (Bohm & Vogel, 2011). Since we have defined a theory, let us further discuss how theories are created beginning with the components of a theory.

Social aging is referring to the changes in individual’s roles and relationship in the society as they age. There are many different theories concerning sociological aging. Social theories on aging examine the relationship between individual experiences and social institutions e.g., aging and retirement; aging and institutional care; aging and government policy etc (Barkan 2012). All have limitations, and some can be considered more than others when attempting to understand social changes in aging. Also individuals move through life surrounded by social support system. Some theories of aging such as, role theory, activity theory, modernization, etc. consist of different ways older adults transition through life such as, networks of relatives, friends, and organization that help provide emotional support and help in managing activities in daily living.

The biological theory of aging is connecting the process that caused organism to develop by a process of evolution. It is belonging to the essential nature of aging such as decreases body function like lung capacity or loss of brain cells. These could lead people to become lower in physical function including putting the person’s life at dangerous illness and makes easier to death. The error theory is the cause of aging in the normal function of the body which is staying over time. Moreover, these biological and error theories are related both two main categories and those theories might interact with each other in complicate way. Because programmed and error theories had been proposed to describe the process of aging, but none of them appears

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.

Aging! We all do it every day, but have you ever thought how it is going to affect the rest of your life or more importantly your career? Aging isn’t something that we get to choose if we participate in, however working is, and aging may affect that choice. Right now, I want you to think about the age of sixty-five. What words pop into your head when you think of someone sixty-five? I’d imagine some of the words you thought of were retired, old, fragile, slow, as well as many others. Those words right there all help to explain the many concerns that one’s employer may have when hiring someone that is of the older population. When we think of the older population in the work force we don’t necessarily think of positive things, instead we think of things. When we think of this population in the workforce we generally think of lower production rates and higher costs. These can create issues among the older population, as employers must consider all the possibilities when hiring someone. We know that more people in the older population are continuing to try to continue their careers, but why? How hard is it for them to continue? What changes have made it easier? How are the younger and middle aged populations perceiving them in the work place? This are only some of the many question surrounding the increase of aged workers.

A theory is primarily meant to explain or predict an event, behaviour or outcome. Proponents of a theory look for evidence to support the theory. This evidence should be independently observed and consistent after repeated observations. Some theories are speculative or ideas or guesses floated to encourage researchers to undertake the observations required to prove or disprove the theory. The question often debated is what comes

Also spelled as ageing, this is generally the process of becoming old. It is the in a way the opposite of immortality. In a broader aspect, it may occur to single cells in an organism also called cellular senescence or the population of a species, known as population ageing. This process primarily affects human beings and fungi. In humans, it signifies the accumulation of various changes which occur over time. The changes include physical, social and psychological changes.

Aging causes structural and functional changes in brain. As aging population has become a burden, it is essential to study aging brain aiming to maintain cognitive integrity. Previous studies indicated that young blood improves the function of stem cells in organs including brain by heterochronic parabiosis model. However, data is lacking whether regeneration or beyond occurs by this model. The authors Villeda et al., hypothesized that aged animal exposed to young blood can counteract aging process and rejuvenate brain cognitive function. Therefore, the authors conducted research to examine within molecular, structural, functional, and cognitive aspects.