Elderly Care, Age Discrimination, and Social Breakdown in America
This paper examines the deterioration of traditional family care for the elderly in America, arguing that elder abuse and neglect are symptoms of broader social and cultural breakdown. Drawing on sociological, political, and economic perspectives, the paper traces a pattern of age discrimination beginning around age 50 in the workplace and connects it — through labeling theory — to increasingly severe neglect and abuse as individuals age. The paper reviews theoretical frameworks including ecological, exchange, feminist, and social learning models, evaluates their limitations, and calls for more comprehensive, case-specific research. Comparative examples from Japan and the developing world reinforce the argument that the marginalization of elderly people is a global phenomenon rooted in shifting family structures, economic pressures, and changing cultural values.
- Introduction: The Changing Place of the Elderly in American Life: Historical shift from family care to institutionalization
- The Deterioration of Traditional Family Values in America Regarding Elderly: Data and theory on family caregiving and elder abuse
- Theoretical Frameworks for Understanding Elder Abuse: Critique of ecological and other elder-abuse models
- Age Discrimination, Social Breakdown, and Labeling Theory: Linking workplace age discrimination to elder neglect
- Conclusion: Call for broader research and policy response
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper builds a sustained causal argument — tracing a trajectory from workplace age discrimination at age 50 through social marginalization to end-of-life abuse — giving the essay a coherent analytical spine rather than a list of loosely related observations.
- It draws on a range of sources across disciplines (sociology, law, political science, public health) and uses comparative international examples (Japan, South America, Africa) to situate the American case within a global pattern.
- The paper honestly acknowledges the limitations of existing theoretical models — noting that no single theory is sufficient — which lends intellectual credibility to its call for more nuanced, case-specific research.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates critical synthesis: rather than simply summarizing each source, the writer evaluates competing theoretical frameworks (ecological, exchange, feminist, social learning) against one another and against the empirical data cited, then argues for a more comprehensive approach. This technique — using sources to build and test an argument rather than merely support a thesis — is a hallmark of graduate-level academic writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a historical narrative establishing the shift from extended-family care to institutionalization, then introduces personal and political voices to frame the stakes. The central body is divided between a review of family-caregiving data and a critique of theoretical models for elder abuse. The final substantive section introduces the original contribution: linking age discrimination in the workplace to the later trajectory of elder neglect via labeling theory. The paper ends mid-argument, suggesting it is an excerpt of a longer work.
Introduction: The Changing Place of the Elderly in American Life
In America, especially early in its history, it would not be unusual to walk into a family residence and find extended generations living under the same roof — including first-generation immigrant parents well into their final years, surrounded by family members who shared in their care. Much of this pattern had to do with the expansive country that was to be populated over the following decades and centuries since the arrival of the early colonists.
In the beginning, parents arrived with their families to a wide space of untamed wilderness, and the hardships of that wilderness took their toll. Families stayed together out of necessity — to contend with the challenges presented by the wilderness, to sustain themselves, and to increase their personal land wealth. Large families were commonplace, because it took many people and many hands to clear and work the land: first to achieve self-sufficiency, and then to produce income that would help sustain those large families.
In America today, large families are very much a thing of the long-forgotten past, along with the mule and plow. As technology advanced and untamed space disappeared, the American family shrank in numbers. Today, the meaning of "single-family home" tends to be defined by the exclusion of all but the immediate family. There are no extended families living in single residences — no grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers-in-law, or sisters-in-law, at least not on a permanent, long-term basis. Most noticeably absent is the elderly family member, who today maintains independent living until the time comes to downsize to a smaller and more manageable space reflective of age, agility, and general health.
There has been a radical change in family lifestyle in today's busy world of competing demands. The plight of the elderly has taken a back seat to more immediate family concerns. This has created a void in which the elderly family member often becomes lost to the institutionalized care of strangers, absent the familiar support of extended family. It is not a healthy situation, and it is a social condition that is being experienced in other countries around the world as well.
On the elderly in America, Lillian B. Rubin (2007), in her book 60 and Up, puts it into perspective by quoting a writer from Time, Cathy Booth: "It has become the baby boom generation's latest, and in some ways most agonizing life crisis: what to do when the parents who took care of you can no longer take care of themselves." Rubin cites Booth further, quoting her as describing the plight of American elderly as having "descended into elder-care hell, when my mother, then sixty-nine, was found to have Lou Gehrig's disease" (Rubin, p. 111).
Rubin has chosen Booth as a summation of the plight of the elderly — someone who expresses genuine conscience about the situation of her loved one, and who perhaps felt helpless to make any choice other than one that equated to elder-care hell. There are many elderly who are surrendered in the twilight years leading to their final hours, physically and emotionally abandoned by their families. Something has gone very differently as Americans have evolved to the present — something disturbing that is a comment not just on American society, but on society around the world.
Japan offers a striking parallel. Before World War II, the elderly were held in high esteem, valued for their life experiences, knowledge, and contributions to their families, and they remained a part of family life until they passed on. Today, Japan finds itself in a very different cultural moment, in which the elderly are no longer the valued members of a traditional and culturally inherited family way of life. This stark change in postwar traditional values was summed up in 1972 by a minister of labor, K. Hara, quoted by Takeshi Ishida (1989) in his book Japanese Political Culture: "that if old people had to live in public homes for the elderly, it was their own fault" (p. 33).
The comments cited here offer perspectives from both sides of the social plight of the elderly around the world today — political and emotional family insights. This paper explores the plight of the elderly, focusing on American society as it exists today. It is an issue that receives little attention, because the elderly have weak voices, and commentary on their lives and needs is expressed largely through institutional settings with corporate leadership focused on profit. These corporations have more power and influence than any one American family, but the American families that surrender their loved ones to these institutional settings bear a share of responsibility too — they face tough choices, choices that profoundly impact the lives they have built for themselves with their immediate families.
This essay examines whether the American elderly have, like much else in America today, become disposable in the lives of the American family, and what role government and economics play in the consignment of elderly people to elder-care hell. It also argues that elder care abuse begins much earlier than some studies suggest — at around age 50, with age discrimination — and that elder abuse arises out of social breakdown and labeling theory, manifesting in increasingly intense neglect and abuse as the person ages and experiences the processes of dying.
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