Learning to Be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging

by Margaret Cruikshank

What does it mean to grow old in America today? Is 'successful aging' our responsibility? What will happen if we fail to 'grow old gracefully'? Especially for women, the onus on the aging population in the United States is growing rather than diminishing. Gender, race, and sexual orientation have been reinterpreted as socially constructed phenomena, yet aging is still seen through physically constructed lenses. This book helps put aging in a new light, neither romanticizing nor demonizing it. Feminist scholar Margaret Cruikshank looks at a variety of different forces affecting the progress of aging, including fears and taboos, multicultural traditions, and the medicalization and politicization of natural processes. Through it all, we learn a better way to inhabit our age whatever it is.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Sociology

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2002

About the author

Margaret Cruikshank is an American lesbian feminist and academic. Cruikshank began teaching in 1968 and was one of the first American academics to be out during a time when gay rights was just a fledgling idea. Her research and educational work focuses on awareness and acceptance of lesbian academia and the exclusion of lesbian literature and criticism from traditional literature studies and women's studies. Her work has been published in Gay Community News , Radical Teacher , the Journal of Homosexuality and The Advocate .

Cruikshank lives in a small fishing village on the eastern coast of Maine. After teaching English, gay/lesbian studies and women’s studies for many years, she retired from the University of Maine in 2011. She continues as a faculty associate at The Maine Center on Aging. In 1997 she donated a selection of her archives to the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives in West Hollywood. She is a recipient of two Fulbright senior specialist awards, one for the University of Victoria's Centre on Aging (2007) and a forthcoming one at the University of Graz in Austria.

Reviews

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Assez décue...

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot to think about (critically) and appreciated how well researched and the informative footnotes.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 - The author gave me great amounts to think about, especially with regards to attitudes toward aging.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scholarly work. That was a very pleasant surprise. I wish I could find a more modern version of the same thing.

[Ellyn Lem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a lot of books on aging and am working on writing my own, but I would say Margaret Cruikshank's is the best that there is. Atul Gawande's On Being Mortal was powerful for me in that he pulled forth a lot of evidence on how important it is to involve older people in active discussions on the choices they want to make and not assume what is "best" for them. That point was driven home clearly and persuasively, but Cruikshank's book has a wider scope. While she uses a feminist lens to examine various facets of aging, her approach can best be wrapped up in a term that she introduces later in the book, "critical gerontology," which "not only questions conventional ways of thinking about age but also the discipline of gerontology itself" by advocating for bringing the humanities together with economics and social sciences to better understand our society's often misguided sensibility surrounding age. Among the countless insights I took from this book was how our culture's infatuation with "self-reliance" negatively impacts older people who feel they are not living up to the myth of individualism if they need help. She also supplies a healthy does of skepticism to slogans like "successful aging" as they ignore barriers many face that impede this lofty goal and put emphasis on the individual rather than social structures to do all the heavy lifting. I could go on and on, but I will end on one particular gem that is from the second to last chapter: "Each human who reaches eighty is a model of regeneration and adaptation." This statement is followed by quote from Andrew Weil, asking us to think of "wrinkles and white hair as "banners of survivorship."

[Mrnica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rarely do I feel like I learn *so* much from a book as I did from this book. I strongly recommend this book to women and anyone with an interest in social justice. It was eye-opening, inspiring, and caused me to reflect heavily on my views of aging. The author does a great job of discussing aging from multiple disciplines: gerontology, feminism, intersectionality, and more. Additionally, she provides solutions and alternative ways to think about our agings selves and the the old. As a future old woman of color, this book reminded me that I have something to look forward to, and that even now, I can find ways to resist the many unhealthy forces that accompany of the cultural aging process in the US.

[Sharon Raphael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only feminist book on aging and old women that is theoretical, relevant , and recent. She mentions OLOC, Old Lesbians Organizing for Change and though I do not necessarily agree with all her points as she takes issue with the idea of OLD being an identity, the book is well worth using and reading before our conference in Cleveland 2010. Margaret Cruikshank is one of OLOC's keynote speakers at the OLOC Gathering, July 2010. WWW.OLOC.org.

[Kate Belt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read. Countercultural gerontology. Politics. Medicare. Pharmaceutical companies & overmedication. I learned much about what I thought I already knew. Updated from 2003 version - academic but written in a style to appeal to all.

[Kristi Marshae · Rating 4 out of 5]

both depressing & enlightening. for anyone who fears aging, or finds themselves struggling with prejudices of their own in regards to it, this is informative & sound research.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Already well reported in previous reviews... An aside to Bookstore Managers: it is pertinent for all of us and should not just be relegated to the your Lesbian shelf.

[Cel Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for women over 60.