The Shady Side of Fifty : Age and Old Age in Late Victorian Canada and the United States

A breakthrough study of age and old age in North America - both as a concept and as lived experience. Concerns about aging, old age security, and intergenerational relations existed long before youth culture and falling fertility became such popular media topics. Lisa Dillon uses an examination of the censuses of Canada and the U.S. to break new ground by integrating statistical analyses of the historical data with a discourse analysis of ideas about age and old age. In The Shady Side of Fifty she explores the psychological, social, and economic dimensions of aging during a period of socio-economic and demographic change that mirrors the present day. Dillon uses the census as both a qualitative document and a source of quantitative data and also draws on diaries and letters to show how subtle shifts in the living arrangements of the elderly, decreasing intergenerational interdependence, and the advent of retirement and the empty nest changed the trajectory of old age during 1870-1901. The Shady Side of Fifty analyses these social shifts to reveal two different kinds of age anxiety: facing a new decade and dealing with extreme old age. "Concerns about aging, old age security, and intergenerational relations existed long before youth culture and failing fertility became popular media topics. In The Shady Side of Fifty Lisa Dillon explores the psychological, social, and economic dimensions of aging from 1870 to 1901, a period of socio-economic and demographic change that mirrors our own. She breaks new ground by integrating statistical analyses of historical data from Canadian and U.S. censuses with a discourse analysis of ideas about age and old age." "In addition to using the census as both a qualitative document and a source of quantitative data, Dillon draws on diaries and letters to show how subtle shifts in the living arrangements of the elderly, decreasing intergenerational interdependence, and the advent of retirement and the empty nest changed the trajectory of old age. She analyses these social shifts to reveal two distinct kinds of age anxiety: facing a new decade and dealing with extreme old age." --Résumé de l'éditeur Contents Tables and Figures Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 The Organization of Age: Age and Old Age in the Canadian and US Censuses, 1870–1901 3 The Expression of Age: Age(Mis)reporting in the Canadian and US Censuses 4 Ambiguity and Discontinuity in the Lives of Elderly Women 5 Thresholds of Old Age among Men 6 Grandmothers and Grandfathers 7 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y