"Late Adulthood"

Read through the policy issues related to late adulthood described in your textbook.

Take a moment to really think about one day facing such aspects in your own life.

What issues really move you now? What policies do you feel strongly about for those who are currently in late adulthood? What social problems make you angry?

Which ones make you fearful of facing when you reach this stage of life?

What issues are of the least concern? What could you do personally now, as a young person, to make an impact on the lives of elderly people? Remember, it will be you some day.

Late adulthood is the longest span of all the developmental stages of life. This stage is a time for life review, of looking back at what one has, and has not, accomplished throughout the years. When I reach late adulthood I hope to be walking side by side through life with my husband, watching each other grow old.  There are many in the stage of late adulthood that do not live a reality quite as rosy as I picture that of my future to be. There are elderly who are hungry, homeless, sick-and unable to obtain good health care. It is shameful that in America we do not value, and thus do not properly provide for the elderly. How did this come to pass? What is wrong with our society, that we allow this to continue?  It is obvious this is a problem that needs to be addressed; the question then is by whom?

As for what I could personally do now to make an impact on the lives of elderly people, realistically not much. At this point in my life I am committed to my own family and I don’t have much time to fight for better treatment for the elderly. What I can do is treat the elderly kindly and with respect when I encounter them. I can teach my children to do the same, and hopefully make an impression on other people as well, encouraging them to do likewise. The things I am personally fearful of facing in old age are Alzheimer’s disease, and widowhood. It is frightening to think of having only a tenuous grasp of reality, and even more frightening to think of facing that prospect on my own.