Abstract
Carney and Nash have written Critical Questions for Ageing Societies as a textbook for an aging studies or social gerontology course in which they provide responses to their students’ questions. They provide essential critical content about aging and aging policies from comparative international perspectives that are useful for social work students, educators, direct practice and policy practitioners, and researchers. They introduce seminal work in core areas of gerontology, provide updates from current publications, and include examples of effects of policies on older people and their families. Readers learn about gerontological perspectives such as feminist and cultural studies that broaden knowledge for critical thought in social workers and others. Each chapter is grounded in theory related to the chapter theme. Relevant to interests of readers of Affilia, Chapter 6 includes feminist theories of gender and aging; and feminist perspectives related to experiences of older women and men are included in additional chapters.
Carney and Nash (2020, p. 8) believe that gender discrimination shapes all aspects of aging throughout the life course, and they examine different aging experiences for men and women that are produced by intersectionality of age and gender. Using a feminist framework (2020, p. 81), they explore challenges for men in later adulthood and ways that policies affect older women. Questions that the authors address include: Aren't gender differences neutralised by age? All old people are pretty much the same, aren't they? Will I need care when I am old?
The authors begin by explaining demographic transition, a phenomenon that results from changes in fertility, mortality, and migration, and identify implications of demographic transition for welfare states. They apply critical questioning to the commonplace concept of an aging population as a “demographic time bomb” that will result in under-funded pensions (p. 3). According to the authors’ critical analysis, predictions are problematic because they do not allow for policy change, and actuarial assumptions applied to a large group foster the mistaken assumption that older people as a group are a dependent burden (p. 4). Carney and Nash note that the coronavirus-2019 pandemic has highlighted the importance of attention to age and health profiles in expenditures of public funds. The transition to an older population necessitates rethinking the tenets of the welfare state, and the authors present important concepts for policy reconsideration.
Although some older adults need little informal or formal assistance until the end of life, social workers who develop and provide services for older adults and their families must address challenges of caregiving for and by many older persons from biopsychosocial perspectives. Carney and Nash address essential policy issues related to care in old age. They believe that this issue is related to human rights, women's rights, and justice issues inherent in division of unpaid work within families “forcing us to think critically about whether who provides care to older adults is a personal issue for individuals to resolve or a broad-based political problem requiring a policy response” (p. 52).
Responding to neoliberal emphasis on independence and autonomy, the authors argue that everyone needs care at some point during life. They highlight that “Lloyd (2012, p. 4) counters the neoliberal obsession with risk and personal agency by adopting a ‘feminist ethic of care approach’; this ‘rejects the characterisation of humans as essentially self-sufficient instead working on the basis that ‘in order to achieve independence and autonomy human beings must first be cared for’” (p. 52). At times, professional practice requires assisting older persons who have rejected care in any form in the past to consider the reality that acceptance of at least a modicum of care may become essential for maintaining functional independence and autonomy.
The authors value many contributions from medical gerontology, but they express concern about a narrowness of focus in medical gerontology that they consider problematic for critical gerontology. Carney and Nash (p. 53) suggest that many problems of older adults may be related more to issues of race and gender rather than illness. Consistent with social work's focus on social justice, the authors agree with Estes and Phillipson (2002) that “many of the ‘problems’ of older people, such as cognitive impairment or depression, are identified as having medical causes when, in fact, they could well be the result of poverty, inadequate housing, social isolation, or any number of other deficiencies in policy provision” (p. 53).
Carney and Nash are unrelenting in criticism of writers and policymakers who adhere to the neoliberal ideology that the authors consider to be “marketisation and commodification of every aspect of our lives, from our social media data to our education and healthcare. The antidote to…instability was presented [in neoliberal ideology] as the free market” (Carney & Nash, 2020, p. 5). In contrast, the authors support the need for social welfare systems and restructuring to meet the needs of older people and caregivers.
Carney and Nash (p. 4) conclude that critical gerontologists, including readers of this book, must address the role of language in perpetuating myths and stereotypes. They highlight the importance of awareness about “structures which confine older people to homogeneous categories, but also the processes that maintain and support these structures” (Carney & Nash, 2020, p. 4). They conclude that with knowledge from this book, readers acquire more accurate, specific, and egalitarian language to tackle ageism and to describe older people and their experiences of a long life (p. 149).
