Growing Up and Growing Old : Ageing and Dependency in the Life Course

In this book Jenny Hockey and Allison James analyze critically how fundamental concepts of dependency and independence are perpetuated by the structured nature of the individual's life course in western cultures: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.

Exploring the ways in which adulthood is advantages at the expense of dependent childhood and old age, they demonstrate the power - and the limits - of social constructions of ageing. Ranging across disciplinary boundaries, the authors clarify the expression of metaphors of dependency in differing contexts - the body, the family, work and leisure.

Central issues analyzed include: the role of metaphors of childhood in shaping a particular conception of dependency; how ideas about personhood, individualism, gender and the life course are embedded within the social contexts and cultures; the effective marginalization of the elderly through which human beings create and manage the idea and the experience of dependency. This book challenges the stigmatizing role which stereotypes can play in the lives of particular groups of people.