1. Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part VIII Chapter Twenty-Five
Late Adulthood: Psychosocial Development
Theories of Late Adulthood
Coping with Retirement
Friends and Relatives
The Frail Elderly
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield Tattoon, M.A. 1

2. Late Adulthood: Psychosocial Development
• the range of possibilities for life after
age 65 is vast, greater than at any
earlier age
• people in late adulthood take comfort
in:
– family
– pleasure in their daily routines
– current events
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3. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Self Theories
– theories of late adulthood that
emphasize the core self, or the search
to maintain one’s integrity and identity
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4. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Integrity Versus Despair
– the final stage of Erik Erikson’s
developmental sequence, in which older
adults seek to integrate their unique
experience with their vision of
community
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5. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Identity theory
– Erikson’s fifth stage, identity versus role
confusion—each new experience, each
gain or loss, requires a reassessment of
identity
– identity is challenged in old age
– the usual pillars of self-concept crumble
• appearance, health and employment
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6. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Selective Optimization
– this concept is central to self theories—
individuals can set goals, assess their
own abilities, and figure out how to
accomplish what they want to achieve
despite the limitation and declines of
later life
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7. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Stratification Theories
– theories that emphasize that social
forces, particularly those related to a
person’s social stratum or social
category, limit individual choices and
affect the ability to function in late
adulthood as past stratification
continues to limit life in various ways
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8. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Stratification by Age
– as they grow older, people may be
consigned to their own places and
activities
– industrialized nations segregate older
people
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9. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Stratification by Age
– disengagement theory
• the view that aging makes a person’s social
sphere increasingly narrow, resulting in role
relinquishment, withdrawal, and passivity
– activity theory
• the view that elderly people want and need to
remain active in a variety of social spheres—
with relatives, friends, and community groups—
and become withdrawn only unwillingly, as a
result of ageism
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10. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Stratification by Gender
– feminist theory draws attention to
gender separation
– a disproportionate number of the elderly
are female
– everywhere older women are
segregated and as a result poorer than
old men
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11. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Ethnic Discrimination
– critical race theory sees ethnicity and race as
“social construct whose practical utility is
determined by a particular society or social
system”
– long-standing ethnic discrimination and racism
results in stratification, shaping experience
and attitude throughout the life span:
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12. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Better to Be Female, Non-European,
and Old?
– African and Hispanic Americans are
often nurtured and respected within their
families and churches
– Asian and Hispanic elders often outlive
European American contemporaries
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13. Theories of Late Adulthood
• Dynamic Theories
– focus on the transformations of late adulthood and on
how individuals react to such events
– dynamic theories
• theories of psychosocial development that emphasize
change and readjustment rather than either the ongoing
self or the impact of stratification—each person’s life is
seen as an active, ever-changing, largely self-propelled
process, occurring within specific social contexts that
they themselves are constantly changing
– continuity theory
• the theory that each person experiences the changes of
late adulthood and behaves toward others in much the
same way he or she did in earlier periods of life
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14. Coping with Retirement
• Deciding When to Retire
– social scientists and political leaders
have assumed that older adults wanted
employment
– recent sociological and psychological
research has found that most older
adults want to stop working as soon as
they are eligible
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15. Coping with Retirement
• Retirement and Marriage
– research says that it is best for both
spouses to retire together
– neither is satisfied if the other is still
working and making family decisions
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16. Coping with Retirement
• Aging in Place
– refers to a preference of elderly people
to remain in the same home and
community, adjusting but not leaving
when health fades
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17. Coping with Retirement
• Continuing Education
– retirement offers the time and
opportunity to take classes
– 1 out of 4 U.S. adults age 66 and older
were enrolled in continuing education in
2005
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18. Coping with Retirement
• Volunteer Work
– is suitable for elderly people who have
adequate pensions or other sources of
income
– volunteering allows the elderly to gain
status and to find “new meaning…”
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19. Coping with Retirement
• Religious Involvement
– studies show that religious involvement
of all kinds correlates with physical and
emotional health as well as long life
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20. Coping with Retirement
• Political Activism
– the elderly are more politically active
– frequently write to their elected
representatives
– vote in off-year elections
– identify with a political party
– join groups that lobby
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21. Coping with Retirement
• AARP
– a U.S. organization of people aged 50
and older, which advocates for the
elderly—it was originally called the
American Association of Retired Person,
but now only the acronym AARP is
used, to reflect the fact that the
organization’s members do not have to
be retired
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22. Friends and Relatives
– social convoy
• collectively, the family members, friends,
acquaintances, and even strangers who
move through life with an individual
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23. Friends and Relatives
• Long-Term Marriages
– a spouse buffers against the problems
of old age and extends life
– personal happiness increases with the
quality of the marriage or intimate
relationship
– mutual respect
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24. Friends and Relatives
• Losing a Spouse
– widowhood among elderly is common
and problematic—especially the first two
years after death
– women tend to marry older men and live
longer than men
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25. Friends and Relatives
• Relationships with Younger Generations
– older adults live to see two or more
generations of younger family members
– more adults are having one child—many
children will have no aunts, uncles, cousins,
brothers, or sisters
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26. Friends and Relatives
• Adult Children
– engagement and interaction are common
between older adults and their grown children
– intergenerational relationships are affected by
many factors in general
• assistance arises both from need and from the
ability to provide
• personal contact depends mostly on
geographical proximity
• affection is influenced by the pair’s history of
mutual love and respect
• sons feel stronger obligation; daughters feel
stronger affection
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27. Friends and Relatives
• Adult Children
– as parent grow older, every family
needs to adjust to changing conditions
and circumstance renegotiating
relationships
– filial responsibility
• the idea that adult children are obligated
to care for their aging parents
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28. Friends and Relatives
• Grandchildren
– ongoing grandparent-grandchild
relationships usually reveal one of three
approaches to grandparenting
• remote grandparents
• companionate grandparents
• involved grandparents
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29. Friends and Relatives
• Friendship
– quality, not quantity, of friendship is
crucial
– having at least one close confidant acts
as a buffer against many forms of lost
status, poor health and reduced
companionship
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30. The Frail Elderly
• frail elderly
– people over age 65 who are physically
infirm, very ill, or cognitively impaired
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31. The Frail Elderly
• activities of daily life (ADL)
– actions that are important to
independent living, typically consisting
of five tasks of self-care; eating, bathing,
toileting, dressing, and transferring from
a bed to a chair—the inability to perform
any of these tasks is a sign of frailty
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32. The Frail Elderly
• instrumental activities of daily life
(IADL)
– actions that are important to
independent living and that require
some intellectual competence and
forethought—the ability to perform these
tasks is even more critical to self-
sufficiency than ADL ability
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33. The Frail Elderly
• Instrumental Activities of Daily Life (IADL)
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34. Caring for the Frail Elderly
• The Demands of Family Care
– often caregivers of the elderly are themselves
elderly
– caregivers often experience substantial stress
– sometimes caregivers feel fulfilled by their
experiences
– designated caregivers are often chosen less for
practical reason than because of cultural
expectation
– respite care
• an arrangement in which a professional
caregiver relieves a frail elderly person’s usual
family caregiver for a few hours each day or for
an occasional weekend
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35. Caring for the Frail Elderly
• Elder Abuse
– analysis of elder abuse is complicated
because three distinct elements
contribute to the problem:
• the victim
• the abuser
• the setting
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36. Caring for the Frail Elderly
• Long-Term Care
– assistant living
• provides some of the privacy and
independence of living at home, along
with some medical supervision
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