Growing old still gray area in America
By Abigail Trafford
Washington Post
Bob Butler looks back on many years. As a grand marshal of the longevity revolution, he has worked in the trenches of aging to improve the lives of ... oops! That bad O-word. As in old people. But Butler isn't afraid of it. A quarter of a century ago, he posed the O-question in his book: "Why Survive? Being Old in America."
No one wants to think about it. Why survive if you're just going to be old? Butler's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, which focused attention on the demographic explosion of aging, is now being reissued with a new preface. The question he raised still needs to be answered.
Butler, 76, founding director of the National Institute on Aging and president of the International Longevity Center in New York, is a survivalist. He believes in the richness of a long life. As he writes in the new preface: "We survive because we must, because it is inevitable, and because it is possible to enjoy life and its pleasures, and at the same time, make contributions to our fellow human beings."
But there's a persistent disconnect between the new reality of aging well and the lingering stereotypes of ageism, a term he coined in 1968 as chairman of the Washington Advisory Committee on Aging.
In popular culture, people don't get old. They get botox. Or they don't get seen — at least not on the covers of magazines whose advertisers want to target the 18-to-49-year-old crowd. They may not even get heard. Butler points to news reports that an executive at a leading Chicago talk radio station told producers to screen out calls from people who sounded older than 54. Forget about "Will you still need me when I'm 64?" Will you even listen to me when I'm 54?
Prejudice against the elderly is, well, old. Butler witnessed it in medical training during the 1950s, when older patients were referred to by derogatory terms like "Gomer," for "get out of my emergency room." The resentment comes because older patients tend to have multiple problems and are more time-consuming to treat. He saw the prejudice flare up when he was living in Washington and people protested special housing for the elderly in their neighborhood.
The term ageism is "an obvious jump from racism and sexism," says Butler. "The big difference is that when we practice ageism, we're cutting our own tires."
The prejudice is "a combination of denial and outright dread," says Butler. "It's never going to go totally away." The proximity of death can be a scary thing.
But growing old — reaching 50 and living for another three or four decades — does not need to be so scary. Major health gains have been achieved since "Why Survive?" was published. When Butler was admitting people to nursing homes in the late 1950s, "we were admitting people, on average, at age 65," he says. "Today it's 81."
That's a huge difference in a relatively short period. "People have less disability. They are more active," says Butler. In a biological sense, people don't begin to be old until they are in their 80s or 90s.
And the lives of the elderly have gotten better. Overall poverty rates have been reduced. Legislation has created the National Institute on Aging, to protect older Americans in the workplace and to improve nursing-home quality.
Yet stereotypes persist. Who were the butt of jokes in the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida? All those supposedly befuddled old folks who couldn't figure out how to vote, says Butler. "The last prejudice that's permitted is toward older people. You don't make fun of the disabled. You don't make fun of blacks or women. Thank goodness!" continues Butler. "I'm afraid ageism is alive and well."
Lawmakers bemoan the burden that baby boomers will put on social programs. The debate focuses on the elderly as a drain on society rather than as a resource.
Butler warns that with a resurgence of ageism, the gains of recent decades in health and productivity may be eroded. As he writes in the preface: "Opportunities for healthcare reforms are being lost, a private pension crisis looms, and an uncertain economy could erode the income base of present and future older Americans. Talk of rationing healthcare by age is in the air, and the greedy geezer image continues to be evoked whenever discussions turn to the high cost of social programs."
But the country is distracted these days. More pressing are the uncertain risks of terrorism than the certain terror of growing old.
But ageism can be compared to a cultural auto-immune disease. The body politic turns on itself. "To attack old age is, ultimately, to attack ourselves," writes Butler.
