The 'enlightened' view of aging: victorian morality in a new key.

Abstract

Ojver the last decade, America has witnessed a formidable effort to eliminate negative stereotypes of and prejudice toward older people. Academic gerontologists, humanists, health professionals, social workers, organized elders, and others have attempted to debunk myths of old age and to substitute positive images of aging for negative ones. This movement, which attempts both to redress the social conditions of old age and to reform cultural sensibilities toward aging, has relied heavily on the loose notion of ageismconceived as the systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against older people, analogous to racism and sexism. In some academic, professional, and government circles, the attack on ageism has so quickly achieved the status of an enlightened prejudice that its limitations have gone unnoticed. Not the least of these limitations is that we know