Understanding Third and Fourth Age Subjectivity from Mass Observation Responses

Abstract

In outlining the related history and methodologies of MO and the U3A, the previous chapter discussed the relationship between the third and fourth ages. It was seen that the fourth age featured differently in the respective accounts of the third age offered by Third Age Trust cofounders, Peter Laslett and Michael Young. However, Young’s argument that the concept should simply be dropped has not borne fruit, and the fourth age has continued to be used in the sense it was defined by Laslett as ‘an era of final dependence, decrepitude and death’ (4). In a 2011 newspaper article commenting on the consequences of this dual terminology, Anne Karpf contrasted the recent publication of a Gold Age Power List with, first, findings from the Care Quality Commission, that older patients were regularly left dehydrated and undernourished in hospital, and, second, research by Age Concern that most over-65s with disabilities were receiving inadequate care. Furthermore, she complained that such a division obscured the possibility of considering life in the round across its whole span:

’Productive ageing’ or ‘successful ageing’ — now common concepts — supposedly result from the exercise of willpower and choice; but they presume the existence of ‘unproductive’ and ‘unsuccessful’ ageing. Old age today, it seems, only befalls those too powerless, poor or stupid to do something about it — the un-Botoxed masses. We’re (almost) all Dorian Grays now, tasking the fourth agers with doing our ageing for us: they are old so that we don’t have to be. [ … ].

Obviously I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t sustain vital, creative and sexual lives for as long as possible, but the idea that old age can be arrested and mastered has made ageing more frightening and harder to bear. It prevents us from seeing the arc and span of human life in all its stages. It stops us from understanding that ageing, while undoubtedly a challenging stage of life (but then adolescence is hardly a bagatelle), can be a rich part of human experience (Npag).