The Need for Care

Abstract

It is commonplace to describe the implications of our ageing population in terms of increasing dependency. This has had the twin effects of contributing to the construction of the stereotype of old age as a universal experience of senility and, in turn, attributing the causes of dependency to individual pathology rather than to social and economic factors (Walker, 1980, 1983c; Townsend, 1981a). It has also helped to devalue the social and economic status of older people and dismiss their contribution to family and society. We have noted already that policy makers and practitioners are a major source of this stereotype of old age. Recently their restricted descriptions of old age have turned to alarmist and denigrating warnings about the ‘growing burden of dependency’,‘social disaster’ and ‘rising tide’ (see, for example, Health Advisory Service, 1983). This sort of caricature of old age is at complete odds with the facts of ageing, as we show below. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to distinguish between dependency and disability.