Have changing demographics, increased life expectancy and findings about gender similarities and differences, altered portrayals of older people in American feature films during the past 65 years? We identified 3,038 films made between 1929 and 1995 in which actors and actresses, nominated at least once during their lifetimes for an Oscar award, appeared when aged 60 years or older. Academy Award nominees were selected because they offered a sample of ‘notable’ performers and an accessible database. We selected an eight per cent random sample for a content analysis of their roles. Throughout this period, men were more likely to be depicted as vigorous, employed and involved in same-gender friendships and adventure (whether as hero or villain). Women remained either peripheral to the action or were portrayed as rich dowagers, wives/mothers, or lonely spinsters. Despite changing gender roles in later life since the 1930s and despite social and economic changes for older Americans (earlier retirement age and better health are but two examples), their film roles have remained remarkably static in age and gender stereotyping. In feature films, the mask of ageing differs by gender. Male masks veil inactivity and physical changes, while female masks reveal ageist and sexist stereotypes.

The paper argues for the importance of recognising carework as a form of bodywork. It discusses why this central dimension has been neglected in accounts of carework, pointing to the ways in which community care has traditionally been analysed, the resistance of social gerontology to an overly bodily emphasis, and the conceptual dominance of the debate on care. Drawing on a study of the provision of help with bathing and washing for older people at home, it explores the body dimension of the activity, looking at how careworkers negotiate nakedness and touch, manage dirt and disgust, balance intimacy and distance. Finally, the paper draws together some of the key themes of this bodywork: its designation as ‘dirty work’, its hidden, silenced character, the low occupational esteem in which it is held and its gendered nature.

This qualitative study examines meanings and experiences of ageism for older Australians. While the concept is widely applied in academic social analysis, the term is not understood or used by many of the informants. They talk freely, however, about negative experiences in ‘being seen as old’ and ‘being treated as old’. Active ageing is viewed as a positive way of presenting and interpreting oneself as separate from the ‘old’ group. Informants recognise that older people as a group experience negative treatment in terms of poor access to transport and housing, low incomes, forced retirement and inadequate nursing home care. While few have experienced overt or brutal ageism, interaction in everyday life involves some negative treatment, occasional positive ‘sageism’, and others ‘keeping watch’ for one's vulnerabilities. Health professionals are a major source of ageist treatment. Some older people limit their lives by accommodating ageism, while others actively negotiate new images of ageing for themselves and those who will be old in the future.

This, the first edition of Volume 20 of Ageing and Society, coincides with the start of a new decade, a new century and a new millennium. It is fascinating to observe how different organisations, groups and societies are reacting to the passing of this symbolic benchmark. The urge to reminisce and reflect is apparent on many fronts: centenarians reviewing the century; survivors of the great wars dwelling on their troubled memories; a series of generations each swopping stories about their particular cultural revolutions; and, of course, gerontologists and colleagues in the ageing enterprise, faced with the evident needs of later life set in the wider context of an ongoing demographic panic.

For our part, we, the editorial team, are – as ever – engaged in the continuing tasks of receiving, reviewing and editing a stream of stimulating articles from all parts of the world and from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. This is a highly rewarding occupation: from our privileged position we know that social gerontology is the focus of many exciting theoretical and empirical developments.

The routines of editing the journal are dominated by a two-monthly rolling production cycle that is lodged within the more leisurely annual cycle. Fixed-length temporal cycles, of course, characterise many aspects of the experience of ageing. Occasionally things change, however, and this also applies to the journal. Regular readers will notice that, with this issue, the review section has changed in content with the appearance of ‘Ageing Updates’. This section will bring together the best features of the Abstracts, Progress Reports, Symposia and Review Articles of past volumes. Ageing Updates will review particular themes, areas of interest and current issues, and may include contrasting perspectives from different contributors. Each Ageing Update will be up to 2,000 words in length. Submissions should be sent to the Review Editors who will referee them in the first instance. If you would like to contribute please contact the Review Editors.

The first Ageing Update – to start the new millennium – is written by Sarah Harper. She reviews the current gerontological scene in Britain. Based on her work for the Nuffield Foundation, Sarah reviews the themes of the last decade, discusses the changing research agendas, and identifies issues for future research.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed to the Abstracts section, producing high quality reviews over the first 19 volumes of the journal.

This paper examines the culture and narratives occurring in a purpose-built retirement community. It is argued that in order to understand the effects that such a community can have on wellbeing, it is necessary to analyse the interaction of a variety of interweaving narratives used to sustain a secure micro-cultural base. These narratives include formal representations, daily life as experienced by tenants and imaginative associations within community culture. Retirement communities for older people have been represented as containing the positive features of both residential care and neighbourhood life. They have also been criticised as promoting exclusivity and negative attitudes to outsiders. Tenants reported experiences of a high level of interdependence and peer support. They saw the community as a positive alternative to nursing homes, continued residence in their local neighbourhoods and reliance on family support. It was found that this retirement community was perceived to have a positive effect on wellbeing which was attributed to peer culture and was sustained by imaginative narratives of miracle and progress. However, certain groups were excluded from this dominant reading.

Using the 1994 Canadian General Social Survey, this study examines the economic effects of retiring because of poor health. When men and women who have retired for reasons of poor health are compared to those who have retired for other reasons, the health retirees are disadvantaged on measures of their health, on human capital variables, in terms of their work history, and ultimately, in their retirement income whether personal or household. The men who retired because of ill health were less likely to receive income from a private pension or from interest and dividends. Almost half of the men reported that their financial situation was worse since their retirement. The women retirees suffered from the same disadvantages as the men although their incomes in retirement were much lower. In the multivariate analyses, health had a significant and negative effect on men's household and personal incomes but there was no effect on the incomes of women. For them, any effect that poor health might have had on household income was offset by factors associated with marriage, and the women's own socio-demographic characteristics. The findings suggest reason for policy-makers to be cautious when contemplating blanket reductions in disability/invalidity and pension rates.

Familial relationships are popularly and sociologically viewed as crucial to the social support of elderly people, and of these the relationships between adult children and their parents are generally regarded as the most important (Finch and Mason 1993). But could these expectations be part of a cultural myth? In actuality, does the distinction between parenthood and childlessness make much difference to social support in old age? The present paper addresses this question. Using data from Liverpool, it compares the support networks of older people in three categories: parents (nearly always married); those who married but remained childless; and those who did not marry and remained childless. Its principal finding is that childlessness has a negative impact on support network strength only for single men and for married women. This suggests that youthful investment in a lasting marriage incurs high social opportunity costs for women in old age, unless offset by the survival of children. The findings have implications for the evaluation of social policies that are based on the expectation that individual female family members, in the context of a male-breadwinner family, will provide ‘caring’ for dependent persons. Such provision of care may incur diminished receipt of care for some women in old age.

This paper traces the emergence and evolution of the concept of ageism with respect to employment matters in the UK, and challenges some features of the emerging concept as defective and undermining of efforts to eradicate age discrimination in employment. Also revealed is some loosening in recent years of the association of the term ‘ageism’ with older employees. This latter observation informed the focus of our empirical work, which examined the views of 460 Business Studies students concerning age and employment. A significant proportion had experienced ageism directly in employment, and a large majority favoured the introduction of legislative protection against age discrimination, with blanket coverage irrespective of age. Though negative stereotypes regarding older workers were by no means uncommon among the sample, little firm evidence emerged of intergenerational tensions or resentment towards older people. The concluding section considers the policy implications of our findings, including the relative merits of weighting policy responses towards older employees. It is argued that initiatives restricted in this way, and further constrained by commercial imperatives and macro-economic objectives, are likely to prove divisive and self-defeating as a means of combating ageism.

In this paper, we examine the descriptions given by women of the deaths of their husbands. Almost all the women gave elaborate narratives of the events that led up to their husband's death and of the death itself. These show that they identified earlier events as contributory factors in their husband's death and in the emotional impact upon them. They also show the detail with which these women recall their actions during this difficult time. The length of these accounts often contrasts with the remainder of the interview, where there are much shorter conversational turns. It is suggested that the events are shaped into narrative form because they are frequently mentally rehearsed. Two reasons for this are proposed. First, remembering these events is a goal in itself. Preserving the memory of these events is important both for the widows themselves and as a demonstration of respect for their husbands. Second, the narrative shape, and the attendant fluency, may be the result of relating the events on many occasions to other people. Elsewhere in the interviews, the widows speak of the need to recount these events, and talk about them, as a means of coping and surviving. This paper presents some of these ‘death narratives’ and discusses the implications of the research.

This paper focuses on the subjective experience of extreme old age for 12 people scoring high and low respectively, on wellbeing measures. The purpose was to illustrate and expand upon the quantitatively derived findings from a previous study of nonagenarians living in Stockholm, using a qualitative approach inspired by grounded theory. The results suggest that outlook on life, social and emotional ties, engagement with the outside world and physical capability are important contributors to subjectively experienced wellbeing in this age group.

It has been argued that without some system in which future generations of users are able to pay for their care the cost of services for an increasingly large group of older people will be borne by a declining base of economically active younger people. Is the answer a user pays approach to the financing of aged care, as promoted by recent changes to aged care financing? This paper reviews this concept and its recent history in Australia. On the basis of a brief review of alternative funding systems, it also considers the potential of public and private insurance schemes to increase funding by potential service users and underwrite the long-term viability of funding for aged care services.

Over the last fifty years, the pattern of family life in Turkey has been seriously affected by migration. Despite this, there remains a high degree of solidarity typified by transfers of income, material goods and cultural mores between and within family generations. This article is based on the life histories of fifteen migrant families living in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. In-depth interviews were used to collect information about at least three generations in each family. Information was collected about occupational, educational and migration histories, property ownership, care of dependents, and parent-child relations covering three generations.

The contribution made by informal carers to the provision of care in the community in the UK is formally acknowledged in the 1995 Carers (Recognition and Services) Act. This legislation has focused attention, once again, on the relationship between formal services and those providing informal care. The Act has re-created a lack of clarity about the position carers hold in the carer dyad. Findings are presented here from an exploratory study about the experience of dementia. This seeks to examine the realities of caring for a relative with dementia in the context of three particular aspects of the caring activities which relate to role ambiguity: the needs of carers, their relationship with formal services and their position as being experienced and skilled in the care of their relatives.

Whilst there is increasing acceptance that social inequalities have implications for mental health, there is minimal acknowledgement of their effects on the development and treatment of mental ill health in older people. This paper focuses on older women, as they are the majority sufferers of mental illness in later life, and are particularly vulnerable to the cumulative effects of lifelong and age-related inequalities. The authors, who draw upon literature from the fields of gerontology and mental health, argue that for effective care to be developed, older women's mental ill health needs to be seen within the context of their past and present experience of social inequalities. Evidence particularly relates to socio-economic disadvantages as well as to the consequences of discrimination. It is argued that psychological vulnerability is further compounded by the gendered effects of social policy, and by a care system which constructs mental health needs as unrelated to oppression, and dislocated from their economic, social and historical roots. Finally, the authors outline the key components of a care and service system which takes account of social inequalities, and which accords centrality to the experiences, views and opinions of older women with mental health problems.

There is growing recognition of the need for outcome measures which reflect the aims of services for people with dementia. The development and application of existing outcome measures has often marginalised people with dementia. ‘Experts’ and carers have been viewed as primary sources when identifying relevant outcomes or domains of quality of life, and proxy respondents have often been responsible for rating outcomes on the resulting measures. This paper reports a small consultation with people with dementia and their carers to identify the desired outcomes of community care. While there was considerable overlap in the outcomes identified by people with dementia and their carers, a number of limitations of relying solely on carers as proxy respondents were identified. A key outcome, which has been relatively neglected in previous work, was maximising a sense of autonomy. A range of outcomes related to the ways in which services are delivered were also identified. Future evaluative studies should encompass both quality-of-life outcomes and service-process outcomes (the impacts of the ways in which services are delivered) in addition to other outcome measures relevant to the aims and objectives of the service.

The purpose of this paper is to present a descriptive account and analysis of ethnographic research which focuses on gossip as an important social interaction between older people in sheltered housing. Analysis reveals that gossip plays a prominent role in the daily life of older people in the schemes studied, reinforcing social norms and values that assume great significance in a close-knit, predominantly female environment. Conclusions are drawn that while gossip may serve a useful social purpose in sheltered housing, it may also have important and paradoxical consequences for the individual. In particular, gossip is understood to be a form of interaction that encourages the individual to strike a balance between their personal and social needs in this communal setting.

Some 50 years after the creation of the welfare state and at the start of the new millennium, this paper considers the current and future status of older people in Britain. It argues that as the population ages, the situation of older people is becoming an increasingly important element in social policy debates. The first half of the paper critically reviews developments over the last five decades, emphasising the salience of accommodation issues during this period. In the light of recent initiatives such as ‘Better Government for Older People’, the second half of the paper outlines a policy agenda for the early years of the 21st century. We argue unequivocally for an integrated social policy which addresses the broad needs of an ageing society as opposed to narrow age-based interests, or the interests of specific problematised or stigmatised groups. The creation and delivery of such an integrated policy for tomorrow's Britain rests, we contend, on three crucial dimensions: an explicitly articulated value base; a consideration of the educational, technological and spatial aspects of policy; and harmonisation of action at both local and national levels.

This study examines the environmental and psychosocial determinants of depression in older adults. Based on Lawton's environmental docility thesis, the question is posed: is the strong association between functional limitations and depressive symptomatology affected when environmental conditions, objective and subjective efficacy, and docile or proactive behaviour are taken into account. Data were used from LASA (the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam), a national survey of the population between 55 and 85 years of age, stratified by age and sex. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed on the data of 2,981 respondents. Empirical support was found for the extended Lawton model, including both environmental, efficacy and behavioural factors. In particular, living in a more urbanised area, not being able to perform heavy household tasks, having a low self-efficacy, not feeling safe, receiving help from others and having few social contacts within the neighbourhood, increase depressive symptoms in general but, in particular, when combined with lower functional status. It is concluded that both being able and feeling able to influence one's environment increases proactive behaviour and decreases depressive symptomatology in older adults with low functional status.

This paper examines four specific themes relating to older carers' experience: care-giving in the context of particular roles and relationships embedded in biographical histories; care in the context of dementia; care involving skilled or complex health care-tasks; and care of an intimate/personal nature. In each case, we look at the nature of support provided by health care professionals. Analysis of the data suggests several conclusions. Older carers are carrying out a range of tasks including complex health care tasks, many of which were once part of a nurse's remit and role. Nurses approach older carers as a unique but not homogeneous group and acknowledge many of their distinct needs as well as their right to choice concerning the extent of their involvement in care-giving. However, this approach conceals several implicit assumptions and expectations about the role of older carers. In particular, professionals' emphasis on older people's individual choice jars with the latter's own experience of reciprocity existing within the context of lifetime relationships. The paper suggests that modifications have to be made in professionals' approach if older people are to be presented with choice and support in the care-giving they perform.

Recent research in Northern Ireland examining the needs and circumstances of informal carers has highlighted the personal and financial costs of caring. In this paper it is argued that these studies have taken no account of the particular expectations and attitudes towards informal care that exist within farm families. In these families there is a strong expectation that care for older relatives will take place almost entirely within the family. The reputation of the farm family within the local community is strongly dependent on their treatment of the older generation. Help from the state and the voluntary sector is extremely limited. Rather than being described as burdensome and difficult, these family arrangements are described as beneficial for everyone involved. It is argued that expectations and attitudes towards care within farm families are significantly different from those in non-farm families and policy makers and practitioners must take account of this in the context of care in the community.