Ageism Against Elderly

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Ageism 1 Running head: AGEISM: STEROTYPING & DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE ELDERLY Ageism: Western Culture Stereotyping & Discrimination Against the Elderly Andrew Wiertel Hilbert College Human Services Senior Seminar Professor Sisti December 1, 2010 Ageism 2 Ageism and age discrimination could affect anyone throughout their life, from children to senior citizens. However, I wish to focus on stereotyping and discrimination against the elderly. I grew up visiting and caring for my elderly grandfathers in Nursing Homes. I also worked in an adult residence home while in high school. My…show more content…
According to Administration on Aging, the older population persons 65 years or older numbered 39.6 million in 2009 represented 12.9% of the U.S. population, about one in every eight Americans. Marshall and Altpeter (2005) have acknowledged by 2005, with the ageing of the baby boomers, the number of older adults ages 65 and older will triple, and the proportion of the 85 plus age group will increase to about five percent of the total population. The fastest growing age group in the United States is the elderly. So what is ageism? Dr. Robert Butler, a renowned gerontologist and the first director of the National Institute on Aging in the USA, originally defined ageism in 1969 as stereotyping and discrimination against people because they are old (McGuire, Klein, & Chen 2008). According to Grant (1996), ageism has been described as thinking or believing in a negative Ageism…show more content…
Ageism has been described as the third great “ism”, following racism and sexism (McGuire et al., 2008). Palmore (2005) notes that ageism is a social disease much like racism and sexism. However, researchers have devoted comparatively little attention to prejudice on age, a search for “racism” yielded over 3,000 documents, which search on “sexism” yielded 1,400 documents, and search for “ageism” produces only 294 documents (Nelson, 2005). Unlike racism and sexism, ageism has the potential to target everyone if they live long enough (McGuire et al., 2008). Ageism, however, is different from other “isms” for two reasons. First, aging is not constant, it is ever changing and secondly, no one is exempt from at some point achieving the status of becoming

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