Aging Well in Contemporary Society

Abstract

In the summer of 1983, Robert Butler asked me to join a group of scholars conducting a seminar on “Health, Productivity, and Aging” in Salzburg, Austria. The “fellows” attending were young doctors and officials heading or developing government programs in a number of European and Latin American countries as well as Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United States.... Day after day, when participants broke into discussion groups after each lecture, they only wanted to talk about Alzheimer's, senility,and nursing homes. They vehemently objected to disucssing age in terms of any kind of productivity.... Clearly, they did not want to think about people over sixty-five except as helpless patients, clients of their compassionate care. —Betty Friedan, 1993