What’s the proper way to refer to older people? If you are getting up there yourself, how do you like to be addressed?
Maybe you prefer just to be seen as a human being and not defined by your age. Or maybe you are proud of your age and prefer terminology that honors the experience and wisdom you have to offer.
In this video, I share some of my own personal views on the topic. Take a look.
I’m curious what you have to say about these particular terms, too. Please take a moment to share which of these you particularly like or hate in the poll below.
If you answered “None of the above,” feel free to add what terminology you do prefer in the comment section at the bottom of this post.
Of course, we’re not the only ones with some strong feelings on terminology. The excerpt below from Beth Baker’s excellent book on aging in community, With a Little Help from Our Friends, has some further examples.
“In a New York Times “New Old Age” blog, experts were asked what to call this demographic group now that baby boomers are among its younger members. There was little agreement–seniors, elders, the elderly–none seemed quite right. Even the word “aging” itself is so associated with decline that many reject it. (Teddi, seventy-six and a resident of the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, told me she preferred the term “recycled teen.”)
“The culture’s problem is that we split aging into good and bad,” Thomas Cole, director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, explains, “We’re unable to sustain images of growing older that handle the tension between spiritual growth, the good, and physical decline, the bad. In the Hebrew Bible, aging is both a blessing and a curse. But our culture can’t achieve this kind of synthesis.”
A senior cohousing community in Santa Fe even decided to change its name from ElderGrace to Sand River because of the connotation. “The main reason is, we have some men in our community who didn’t want to tell anybody where they lived – they felt it created an image of gray-haired people walking around with walkers,” explained Marty, a resident there. “People asked if it was assisted living. I actually had someone I ran into who came to dinner and she asked if we’d sold the last two units in ‘ElderCare.’ That convinced me.”
In a 2013 piece on NPR headlined “For Elder Midwife, Delivering Babies Never Gets Old,” about a 71-year old practitioner, a huge out-cry erupted over the label “elderly,” including a complaint from the midwife. (As an example of how language evolves, one commenter on a Washington Post blog reminded readers that humorist Stan Freeburg in 1957 rewrote the lyrics to a classic show tune, singing “Elderly Man River,” since the word “old” had been censored.) In fact, journalists are now advised to avoid any descriptor such as “elderly” for fear of offending someone. “Use this word carefully and sparingly,” according to the Associated Press Stylebook.
What are your thoughts on the appropriately terms to use for folks as they age? Feel free to join the conversation in the comments below or in our thread of the Women Living in Community Facebook page.
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