UNIT FOUR

4. Late Adulthood (Old age)

Late adulthood is the closing period in the life span. It is a period when people "move away" from
previous, more desirable periods-or times of "usefulness." As people move away from the earlier
periods of their lives, they often look back on them, usually regretfully, and tend to live in the
present, ignoring the future as much as possible.

Age sixty is usually considered the dividing line between middle and late adulthood. However, it
is recognized that chronological age is a poor criterion to use in marking off the beginning of late
adulthood because there are such marked differences among individuals in the age at which aging
actually begins. Because of better living conditions and better health care, most men and women
today do not show the mental and physical signs of aging until the mid-sixties or even the early
seventies. For that reason, there is a gradual trend toward using sixty-five-the age of retirement in
many businesses-to mark the beginning of late adulthood. The last stage in the life span is
frequently subdivided into early old age, which extends from age sixty to age seventy, and
advanced old age, which begins at seventy and extends to the end of life. People during the sixties
are usually referred to as "elderly" –meaning somewhat old or advanced beyond middle age-and
"old'" after they reach the age of seventy meaning, according to standard dictionaries, advanced
far in years of life and having lost the vigor of youth.

During this stage most individuals lose their jobs because they retire from active service. They
begin to fear about their physical and psychological health. In our society, the elderly are typically
perceived as not so active, deteriorating intellectually, narrow-minded and attaching significance
to religion. Many of the old people lose their spouses and suffer from emotional insecurity.
However, this may not be true of everybody. Many people at the age of sixty or above remain very
healthy and active in life. The life style including exercise, diet, and regular health checkup helps
people to enjoy meaningful and active life.

Aging, however, is also a psychological phenomenon. There are numerous examples of writers,
statesmen, professors and yogis who lead a productive and active life during old age. So it is
important to note that old age can be a much happier and fuller time. Mental or physical decline
does not necessarily have to occur. Persons can remain vigorous, active and dignified until their
eighties or even nineties. This is quite possible if they take adequate care of themselves right from
their middle age years. In fact, the older persons have vast reservoir of knowledge, experience and
wisdom on which the community can draw.

[Link] of old age

Like every other period in the life span, late adulthood is characterized by certain physical and
psychological changes. The effects of these changes determine, to a large extent, whether elderly
men and women will make good or poor personal and social adjustments. The characteristics of
late adulthood, however, are far more likely to lead to poor adjustments than to good and to
unhappiness rather than to happiness. That is why late adulthood is even more dreaded than middle
age.

1. Late adulthood is a Period of Decline

As has been stressed repeatedly, people are never static. Instead, they constantly change. During
the early part of life the changes are evolutional in that they lead to maturity of structure and
functioning. In the latter part of life, by contrast, they are mainly involution, involving a regression
to earlier stages. These changes are the natural accompaniment of what is commonly known as
"aging." They affect physical as well as mental structures and functioning.

The period during late adulthood when physical and mental decline is slow and gradual. The term
"senility" is used to refer to the period during late adulthood when a more or less complete physical
breakdown takes place and when there is mental disorganization. The individual who becomes
eccentric, careless, absentminded, socially withdrawn, and poorly adjusted is usually described as
"senile." Senility may come as early as the fifties, or it may never occur because the individual
dies before deterioration sets in. Decline comes partly from physical and partly from psychological
factors. The physical cause of decline is a change in the body cells due not to a specific disease
but to the aging process. Decline may also have psychological causes. Unfavorable attitudes
toward oneself, other people, work, and life in general can lead to senility, just as changes in the
brain tissue can.
2. Individual Differences in the Effects of Aging
Individual differences in the effects of aging have been recognized for many centuries. Today,
even more than in the past, it is recognized that aging affects different people differently. People
age differently because they have different hereditary endowments, different socioeconomic and
educational backgrounds, and different patterns of living. These differences are apparent among
members of the same sex, but they are even more apparent when men and women are compared
because aging takes place at different rates for the two sexes. Physical aging precedes mental
aging, though sometimes the reverse is true, especially when the individual is concerned about
growing old and let’s go mentally when the first signs of physical aging appear.

3. The Elderly Have a Minority-Group Status

It is a fact that the number of old people are growing, they occupy a minority-group status-a status
that excludes them to some extent from interaction with other groups in the population and which
gives them little or no power. This minority-group status is primarily the result of the unfavorable
social attitudes toward the aged that have been fostered by the, unfavorable stereotypes of them.
This "second-class citizenship" puts the elderly on the defensive and has a marked effect on their
personal and social adjustments. It makes the latter years of life far from "golden" for most people,
and it causes them to be victimized by some members of the majority group.
4. Aging Requires Role Changes
Just as middle-aged people must learn to play new roles, so must the elderly. Today, where
efficiency, strength, speed, and physical attractiveness are highly valued, elderly people are often
regarded as useless. Because they cannot compete with young people in the areas where highly
valued traits are needed, the social attitude toward them is unfavorable.

Furthermore, it is expected that old people will play a decreasingly less active role in social and
community affairs, as well as in the business and professional worlds. As a result, there is a marked
reduction in the number of roles the elderly person is able to play, and there are changes in some
of the remaining roles. While these changes are due in part to the individual's preferences, they are
due mainly to social pressures.

5. Poor Adjustment is Characteristic of Late adulthood

Because of the unfavorable social attitudes toward the elderly that are reflected in the way the
social group treats them, it is not surprising that many elderly people develop unfavorable self-
concepts. These tend to be expressed in maladjusted behavior of different degrees of severity.
Those who have a history of poor adjustments tend to become more maladjusted as age progresses
than those whose earlier personal and social adjustments were more favorable.

Elderly people tend, as a group, to be more subject to maladjustments than those who are younger.
Due to increased loss of status in a society dominated by the young, a desire to protect their
finances for their wives, and a desire to escape partial - helplessness or pain.

6. The Desire for Rejuvenation is Widespread in Late adulthood

The minority-group status accorded to most elderly persons has naturally given rise to a desire to
remain young as long as possible and to rejuvenate when the signs of aging appear. Ancient people
used elixirs or potions, witchcraft and sorcery were used to achieve youth. Today, medicine is
being taken to replace sex hormones. Sex therapy, such as Gerovital, the youth drug is used
popularly.
4.2. Developmental tasks of old age

Late adulthood is a distinct stage of human development characterized by physical decline, social
adjustment, and psychological adaptation to the realities of aging. According to Havighurst’s
developmental task theory, each stage of life is associated with certain tasks that individuals must
accomplish to achieve healthy adjustment and life satisfaction. In old age, these tasks primarily
involve accepting the process of aging, maintaining social and emotional well-being, and finding
meaning in life despite physical or social losses.

1. Adjustment to Decreasing Physical Strength and Health

Older adults often face a gradual decline in physical ability and health. Successful aging involves
accepting these changes, maintaining healthy habits, and adapting one’s lifestyle to preserve
independence and functionality.

2. Adjustment to Retirement and Reduced Income

Leaving the workforce can bring feelings of loss of purpose or social status. A developmental
task of old age is to find new roles, hobbies, or community involvement that provide meaning
and structure to daily life.
3. Adjustment to Death of a Spouse or Close Friends
Loss is a common experience in late adulthood. Individuals must develop coping mechanisms for
grief and loneliness while maintaining social connections and emotional resilience.

4. Establishing Satisfactory Living Arrangements

Older adults often need to adapt their living situations to meet changing needs, such as moving
closer to family, joining community living, or modifying their homes for safety and comfort.

5. Maintaining Social Relationships

Keeping active social ties is crucial for emotional health. Successful older adults engage in
friendships, family interactions, and community participation, which help prevent isolation and
depression.

6. Acceptance of One’s Life and Preparation for Death

A central developmental task in old age is achieving a sense of ego integrity, as described by
Erik Erikson’s final psychosocial stage: Ego Integrity vs. Despair. It involves reflecting on one’s
life with a sense of fulfillment rather than regret, accepting the life lived, and preparing
peacefully for the end of life.

4.3. Major Adjustments in Old age

4.3.1. Adjustments to Physical Changes
The most important and noticeable challenges of old age are physical in nature. As individuals
grow older, physical disabilities and bodily decline gradually increase. Studies show that the
proportion of people experiencing some degree of disability rises sharply after the age of 60. In
very advanced age (85 years and above), approximately 70% of individuals experience some form
of physical or sensory impairment, while about 10% are fully disabled. This demonstrates that
aging is accompanied by a progressive reduction in physical and functional ability.
Research indicates that most body organs show a 0.8% to 1% decline in their functional capacity
each year after the age of 30. Some of this decline is a natural part of aging, while other portions
are caused by disease, stress, nutritional deficiencies, occupational strain, and various
environmental factors. These changes affect both the external appearance and the internal
functioning of the body, as well as sensory and cognitive abilities.
1) External Changes: This refers to the symptoms of growing old that can be seen in an individual.
With many individuals the symptoms of aging can be seen as graying hair, aging skin shift in
posture and appearance of wrinkles and other changes.
Key to Longer and Healthier Life
(a) Eat healthy diet.
(b) Exercise regularly.
(c) Reduce stress level.
(d) Don’t smoke or drink alcohol and other drugs.
(e) Cultivate certain positive qualities.
(f) Engage with activities of social welfare.
(g) Develop spirituality and faith.
2) Internal Changes: These changes refer to the symptoms of growing old that are not visible.
These include changes in the respiratory system, gastrointestinal system, cardiovascular system,
and central nervous system.
3) Changes in Sensory Capacities: With advancing age, there is gradual slowdown in the sensory
abilities. As you know we communicate with the outer world through our senses. Losing in any of
the senses can have profound psychological and social consequences.

4.3.2. Cognitive Functioning in Older Adults

Cognition refers to the process by which information is acquired, stored, and used. During
adulthood and aging various aspects of cognition like memory, learning, attention and speed of
performance get adversely affected. The aged people often report forgetfulness, difficulty in
learning new techniques and acquiring skills. Their concentration and responsiveness to
environmental stimulus decreases. Dementia and Alzimerare important diseases of old age. In
general people become more vulnerable during old age.

Several aspects of cognitive functioning including reaction time, visual-motor, and memory show
evidence of decline with age. Changes in memory are typical signs of aging. The ability to retrieve
newly encountered information seems to drop off. After several hours, days, or weeks, younger
adults can remember word pairs or paragraphs or recognize pictures, better than older people can.
 • Encoding problems-in general older adults seem to be less efficient than younger ones at
encoding new information to make it easier to remember. For example, older people are
less likely to spontaneously arrange material in alphabetical order or create mental
associations. Older adults can improve their encoding skills through training or instruction.
• Storage problems-one plausible explanation for forgetting is that stored material may
deteriorate to the point where retrieval becomes difficult or impossible.
• Retrieval problems-in retrieving learned information from memory, older adults may be
able to answer a multiple-choice question but not an open-ended one. While they have
more trouble recalling items than younger adults, they do about as well in recognizing
items they know. Even then, it takes older people longer than younger ones to search their
memories
Post formal operational thinking-in many areas, older adults perform less well than middle or
young adults. They have been described as performing classification and problem solving tasks in
a more egocentric, idiosyncratic way than younger adults. Older adults have a particular view that
may not make sense to others but that they insist applying since it has worked for them in the past.

4.4 Changes in Mental Abilities and Interest

Mental changes characteristic of old age are found with individual variations. These changes show
a general decline of the various mental processes such as learning, reasoning, creativity, memory,
recall, reminiscing, sense of humor, vocabulary. Mental rigidity is a sign of old age though it is
not universal. Some old people exhibit admirable flexibility and the will to learn new ways. Along
with changes in mental processes, there are changes in personal interests such as interest in self,
interest appearance, interest in clothes and interest in money. Most of the old people become self-
centered. Most of them become more interested in money though there may be some exceptions.
Recreational interests also change due to these physical and mental changes. Common recreational
activities of older people include reading, writing letters, listening to the radio, watching television,
visiting friends and relatives, sewing, embroidering, gardening, travelling, playing cards, going to
the theatre or movies, and taking part in the activities of civic, political or religious organizations.
These changes in interests are very much influenced by the health, economic status, education,
marital status, living condition and interest in sex. Social interests also show a change leading to
disengagements, voluntary and involuntary. The sources of social contact affected by ageing
include personal friendships, friendship clichés and formal groups of clubs. Generally, social
participation declines. However, among elderly people, r e l i g i o u s interests definitely show
a sign of increase. Some common effects o f religious changes during old age are religious
tolerance, religious beliefs and religious observances. One notices more interest in death, about
its reality, its future date, reason, etc. One finds old people worrying whether t h e y will have
a good death o r not.
[Link] of Socio Emotional Development
4.4.1. Erikson’s Ego Integrity versus Despair
Erik Erikson, who took a special interest in this final stage of life, concluded that the primary
psychosocial task of late adulthood (65 and beyond) is to maintain ego integrity (holding on to
one’s sense of wholeness), while avoiding despair (fearing there is too little time to begin a new
life course). Those who succeed at this final task also develop wisdom, which includes accepting
without major regrets the life that one has lived, as well as the inescapability of death. However,
even older adults who achieve a high degree of integrity may feel some despair at this stage as
they contemplate their past. No one makes it through life without wondering if another path may
have been happier and more productive.
4.4.2. Disengagement Theory
Disengagement theory views aging as a process of mutual withdrawal in which older adults
voluntarily slow down by retiring, as expected by society. Proponents of disengagement theory
hold that mutual social withdrawal benefits both individuals and society.
4.4.3. Activity Theory
Activity theory, on the other hand, sees a positive correlation between keeping active and aging
well. The more active older adults are, the more likely they are to be satisfied with their lives.
Greater activity, especially social and productive activity, was related to happiness, better
functioning and a lower mortality rate.
4.4.4. Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory
This theory states that older adults become more selective about their social networks, because
they place a high value on emotional satisfaction; older adults often spend more time with familiar
individuals with whom they have had rewarding relationships. This theory challenges that adults
are in emotional despair because of their social isolation, but rather they choose to only spend time
with close families/friends.
✓ Older adults become more selective in their social networks
 ✓ They spend more time with people with whom they have enjoyable relationships
✓ Studies have found that older adults have smaller social networks than do young adults
✓ Late adults are more likely to pursue emotion-related goals, perhaps because they realize
that they have less time left to live.
✓ They therefore, pursue, emotional satisfaction through relationships
✓ Compared with young adults, older adults have a more even emotional life with fewer
highs and lows
[Link] and Family Adjustments
4.5.1. Vocational adjustments
Retirement is a major transition of late adulthood. The retired person must eventually accept a
more leisurely life, whether desired or not. He or she must also continue to live in a worker’s
world, in which retirees are viewed as spent or devalued. Indeed, the psychological impact of
retirement on older adults can be significant. Many must contend with feelings of depression,
uselessness, and low self-esteem.

People who are in good health, are better educated, have few or no financial worries, have adequate
family and social networks, and are satisfied with life usually look forward to retirement. Retirees
may choose to spend their free time volunteering for charities, traveling, taking classes, or
engaging in hobbies. The least satisfied retirees are those who never planned for retirement have
limited income, have few or no extracurricular activities, and who stay home day after day with
nothing substantial to occupy their time.

Retirement may be voluntary or compulsory, regular or early. For most workers, forced
retirement is a source of much dejection and loss of face. E.B. Hurlock has mentioned the
following conditions affecting adjustment to retirement:

1. Workers who retire voluntarily adjust better than those who are forced to retire, especially if
they want to continue to work.
2. Poor health at the time of retirement facilitates adjustment while good health is likely to militate
against it.
3. Most workers find that tapering off is better than abruptly ending patterns of work and living
established many years earlier.
4. Pre-retirement counseling and planning age adjustment.
5. Workers who develop interests in substitute activities that are meaningful to them and which
provide many to the satisfactions they formerly derived from work will not find adjustment to
retirement as emotionally disturbing as those who fail to develop substitute interests.
6. Social contacts like those provided in many homes for the aged, aid in adjusting to retirement
remaining in their own homes or in the homes of relatives usually cuts retired people of from social
contacts.
7. The less change in the pattern of living retirement necessitates, the better the adjustment will
be.
8. A good economic status which makes it possible to live comfortably and enjoy meaningful
recreations, is essential to good adjustment to retirement
9. A happy marital status aids adjustment to retirement while a frictional one militates against it
10. The more the workers like their work, the poorer their adjustment to retirement. There is
an inverse relationship between work satisfaction and retirement satisfaction.
11. Place of residence affects adjustment to retirement. The more the community offers for
companionship and activities for the elderly, the better they will adjust to retirement.
12. The attitudes of family members towards retirement have a profound effect on worker’s
attitudes. This is especially true of the attitudes of spouses.
Adjustments to changes in family life
Adjustments to changes in family life:-Adjustments to changes in family life in old age include
relationships with spouse, changes in sexual behavior, relationships with children, parental
dependency and relationships with grandchildren. Among the common factors affecting sexual
behavior in old age, the following are the most important, according to E.B. Hurlock:

1. Pattern of earlier sexual behavior: - people who derived enjoyment from sexual behavior and
were sexually active during the earlier years of their marriage continue to be sexually more active
in old age than those who were less active.

2. Compatibility of spouses: - when there is a close bond between husband and wife built on
mutual interests and respect.