Ending Midlife Bias

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy S. Jecker
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Mandatory Retirement ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Pediatric Bioethics

We live at a time when human lifespans have increased like never before. As average lifespans stretch to new lengths, how does this impact the values we hold most dear? Do these values change over the course of our ever-increasing lifespans? Ending Midlife Bias argues that at different life stages, different values emerge as central. During early life, caring and trust matter more, given human vulnerability and dependency. By early adulthood, growing independence provides a reason to value autonomy more. Later in life, heightened risk for chronic disease and disability warrants focusing on maintaining capabilities and keeping dignity intact. Part I (Chapters 1–5) sets forth a conceptual framework that captures these shifting life stage values. Chapter 1 argues against the privileging of midlife values (midlife bias) and explains why population aging lends urgency to identifying values for later life. Chapters 2 and 3 introduce dignity as a central concern for older adults and argue that respecting dignity requires supporting central human capabilities. Chapter 4 explores the metaphor of life as a story, which serves as a corrective for midlife bias by keeping attention on the whole of life. Chapter 5 sets forth principles for age group justice. Part II (Chapters 6–12) turns to practical concerns, including geriatric and pediatric bioethics (Chapter 6); caregiving by family members, migrant workers, and robots (Chapters 7 and 8); ageism in clinical trials, healthcare allocation, and mandatory retirement (Chapter 9); and ethics at the end-of-life (Chapter 10). The closing chapters explore the future of population aging (Chapter 11) and make a pitch for life stage sensitive moral theory (Chapter 12).

scholarly journals The role of dietary calcium in bone health

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 851-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Bone Mineral ◽  
Bone Health ◽  
Bone Development ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Mineral Density ◽  
Bone Mineral Status ◽  
Usual Diet

Approximately 99% of body Ca is found in bone, where it serves a key structural role as a component of hydroxyapatite. Dietary requirements for Ca are determined by the needs for bone development and maintenance, which vary throughout the life stage, with greater needs during the periods of rapid growth in childhood and adolescence, during pregnancy and lactation, and in later life. There is considerable disagreement between expert groups on the daily Ca intake levels that should be recommended, reflecting the uncertainty in the data for establishing Ca requirements. Inadequate dietary Ca in early life impairs bone development, and Ca supplementation of the usual diet for periods of ≤3 years has been shown to enhance bone mineral status in children and adolescents. However, it is unclear whether this benefit is long term, leading to the optimisation of peak bone mass in early adulthood. In later years inadequate dietary Ca accelerates bone loss and may contribute to osteoporosis. Ca supplementation of the usual diet in post-menopausal women and older men has been shown to reduce the rate of loss of bone mineral density at a number of sites over periods of 1–2 years. However, the extent to which this outcome reduces fracture risk needs to be determined. Even allowing for disagreements on recommended intakes, evidence indicates that dietary Ca intake is inadequate for maintenance of bone health in a substantial proportion of some population groups, particularly adolescent girls and older women.

The Coming of Age of Old Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 325-334
Author(s):  
Nancy S. Jecker
Keyword(s):  
Family Caregiving ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Mandatory Retirement ◽  
Rational Suicide ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Subject Selection ◽  
Life Saving

Chapter 12 takes stock of the book’s central arguments and findings about the life stage relativity of values; midlife bias; human dignity; age group justice principles of capability sufficiency, relational equality, and reparations; narrative identity values of integrity, fairness, and prudence; geriatric and pediatric bioethics; ageism; fair subject selection; age-based rationing of life-saving medical care; mandatory retirement; duties to the dying, newly dead, and long gone; rational suicide; meeting the need for long-term care through family caregiving, migrant caregivers, and robotic caregivers (carebots); designing AI and sociable robots for older adults; duties to future people; and the prospects for future population aging. To remain relevant in aged societies, moral philosophers must tackle these concerns, end midlife bias, and contribute an account of the moral life that makes sense to people at each stage of life.

Values Across the Lifespan

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Nancy S. Jecker
Keyword(s):  
Young Adulthood ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Focal Value ◽  
Infancy And Childhood ◽  
The Face

Chapter 1 introduces the chief claim and main argument of the book, which we call the life stage relativity of values. This is the claim that different values matter more at different stages of our lives. During early life, caring, trust, and nurturing ought to figure prominently, due to the vulnerabilities and needs that characterize infancy and childhood. By young adulthood, the capacity to develop greater physical and emotional independence makes autonomy a focal value. During later life, we face heightened risk for chronic disease and disability, which makes maintaining capabilities central, and, in the face of loss, keeping dignity intact. Chapter 1 raises the concern that moral theories reflect life stage bias, in particular, midlife bias. Midlife bias consists of applying the values central during midlife to all life stages. Countering it requires addressing empirical, conceptual, and psychological naïveté and situating values within the context of life stages.

Gerontology

Sociology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Lanford ◽  
Jill Quadagno ◽  
Sunshine Rote
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Status Change ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Life Course

Social gerontology is a subfield of gerontology. It is concerned mainly with the social, rather than the biological, aspects of aging. However, social gerontologists do study how biological processes influence the social conditions of aging. Societal aging is one of the most important social trends of this century. It affects the major political, social, and economic institutions as well as the nature of interpersonal and familial relationships. Key issues concern how population aging influences retirement patterns, income security, health care, and politics, and how these trends, in turn, affect the policy options available. Social gerontologists recognize, however, that old age is just one life stage and that the quality of later life is determined by events, opportunities, and decisions made earlier in life. Thus, many studies in this field adopt a framework that emphasizes the life course as a way to make sense of long-term trends and to explain differences among groups on the basis of race, gender, class, and ethnic origin. The life course perspective also provides a roadmap for thinking about how health, social relationships, and socioeconomic status change over time and across life stages.

What Matters for Individuals in Later Life?

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-57
Author(s):  
Nancy S. Jecker
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Medical Progress ◽  
Relational Values ◽  
As Species ◽  
Species Integrity ◽  
Sub Saharan

Chapter 2 introduces the idea of dignity as species integrity. For human beings, respecting dignity requires making reasonable efforts to support human capabilities at a basic floor level. Human capabilities include the central kinds of things we can do and be as human beings, including capacities for a life narrative; health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; relating to nature; play; and participating in the environment. Contrary to what “healthy aging” advocates claim, medical progress will not eliminate threats to these human capabilities. Chapter 2 compares dignity as species integrity with sub-Saharan African conceptions of Ubuntu, the Nguni word for “humanness.” Ubuntu prizes relational values and human capacities for harmonious relationship. The chapter concludes that to have global traction, capability lists must be balanced, life stage informed, and provisional.

‘And all my children?’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Scott
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Modern Period

Beginning with an exploration of the role of the child in the cultural imagination, Chapter 1 establishes the formative and revealing ways in which societies identify themselves in relation to how they treat their children. Focusing on Shakespeare and the early modern period, Chapter 1 sets out to determine the emotional, symbolic, and political registers through which children are depicted and discussed. Attending to the different life stages and representations of the child on stage, this chapter sets out the terms of the book’s enquiry: what role do children play in Shakespeare’s plays; how do we recognize them as such—age, status, parental dynamic—and what are the effects of their presence? This chapter focuses on how the early moderns understood the child, as a symbolic figure, a life stage, a form of obligation, a profound bond, and an image of servitude.

scholarly journals VITAL INVOLVEMENT: A SOURCE OF REALISTIC OPTIMISM FOR OLDER ADULTHOOD

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S407-S408
Author(s):  
Helen Q Kivnick
Keyword(s):  
Psychosocial Development ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Older Adulthood ◽  
Environmental Engagement ◽  
The World ◽  
Psychosocial Model

Abstract Vital Involvement (VI) was initially proposed (Erikson et al., 1986) as one of three principles around which lifelong healthy psychosocial development takes place. As more recently elaborated, VI has come to describe a person’s meaningful, reciprocal engagement with the world outside the integrating “self.” It is through VI that the person engages in healthy psychosocial development throughout life, including balancing Older Adulthood’s focal tension between Integrity and Despair. This life stage is widely associated with the physical, cognitive, and social losses, and societal constraints that give rise to later-life despair. However, VI functions as a lifelong psychosocial model for the meaningful environmental engagement that supports later life’s wisdom and integrity. Notably few films present an integrated view of older adulthood’s losses along with opportunities. But those few can be a source of optimism to elders for whom VI may not be intuitive, but who can learn its practice.

scholarly journals Leisure time physical activity throughout adulthood is associated with lower medicare costs: evidence from the linked NIH-AARP diet and health study cohort

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. e001038
Author(s):  
Diarmuid Coughlan ◽  
Pedro F Saint-Maurice ◽  
Susan A Carlson ◽  
Janet Fulton ◽  
Charles E Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Healthcare Costs ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Leisure Time Physical Activity ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Health Study ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Physical Activity Levels ◽  
Medicare Costs

BackgroundThere is limited information about the association between long-term leisure time physical activity (LTPA) participation and healthcare costs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between LTPA over adulthood with later life healthcare costs in the USA.MethodsUsing Medicare claims data (between 1999 and 2008) linked to the National Institutes of Health-American Association of Retired Persons (NIH-AARP) Diet and Health Study, we examined associations between nine trajectories of physical activity participation throughout adulthood with Medicare costs.ResultsCompared with adults who were consistently inactive from adolescence into middle age, average annual healthcare costs were significantly lower for maintainers, adults who maintained moderate (–US$1350 (95% CI: –US$2009 to –US$690) or −15.9% (95% CI: −23.6% to −8.1%)) or high physical activity levels (–US$1200 (95% CI: –US$1777 to –US$622) or −14.1% (95% CI: −20.9% to −7.3%)) and increasers, adults who increased physical activity levels in early adulthood (–US$1874 (95% CI: US$2691 to –US$1057) or −22.0% (95% CI: −31.6% to −12.4%)) or in middle age (–US$824 (95% CI: –US$1580 to –US$69 or −9.7% (95% CI −18.6% to −0.8%)). For the four trajectories where physical activity decreased, the only significant difference was for adults who increased physical activity levels during early adulthood with a decline in middle age (–US$861 (95% CI:–US$1678 to –US$45) or −10.1% (95% CI: −19.7% to −0.5%)).ConclusionOur analyses suggest the healthcare cost burden in later life could be reduced through promotion efforts supporting physical activity participation throughout adulthood.

scholarly journals Social Participation Across Midlife and Later Life: Evidence From the Silent Generation

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 408-408
Author(s):  
Eric Vogelsang
Keyword(s):  
Social Participation ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Silent Generation ◽  
School Activities ◽  
Wisconsin Longitudinal Study ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Exercise Activity ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Made In

Abstract Despite the well-established benefits of social participation for individuals and communities, little is known about how it varies throughout the life course. Drawing upon data collected between 1957 and 2011 by the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (22,023 observations from a cohort of 6,627), this study provides four valuable results. One, I find evidence of five distinct social participation trajectories between the ages of 35 and 71; the majority of which demonstrate social disengagement over time. Two, these participation declines are primarily attributable to changes in meeting friends and group exercise activity. Three, the most pronounced activity differences separating those in more favorable and unfavorable participation trajectories are cultural event attendance and voluntary group membership. Lastly, I identify particular high school activities that are associated with social participation decades later. In total, these results highlight heterogeneity among different types of social activities, and underscore the possible consequences of membership decisions made in early adulthood.

The protective role of trait anxiety: a longitudinal cohort study

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. E. LEE ◽  
M. E. J. WADSWORTH ◽  
M. HOTOPF
Keyword(s):  
Cohort Study ◽  
Trait Anxiety ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Protective Role ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Birth Cohort Study ◽  
Fatal Accidents

Background. Most research has indicated that neuroticism (or trait anxiety) is associated with only negative outcomes. Such a common, heritable and variable trait is expected to have beneficial as well as detrimental effects. We tested the hypothesis that trait anxiety in childhood reduces the risk of dying from accidental causes in early adult life.Method. A longitudinal, population-based, birth cohort study of 4070 men and women born in the UK in 1946. Trait anxiety as judged by teachers when the participants were 13 and 15 years old, and the neuroticism scale of a Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) when the participants were 16 years old. Outcomes were deaths, deaths from accidents, non-fatal accidents, and non-fatal accidents requiring medical intervention.Results. Adolescents with low trait anxiety had higher rates of accident mortality to age 25 [low anxiety at 13, hazard ratio (HR) 5·9, low anxiety at 15, HR 1·8]. Low trait anxiety in adolescence was associated with decreased non-accidental mortality after age 25 (low anxiety at 13, HR 0; low anxiety at 15, HR 0·7; low neuroticism at 16, HR 0·7).Conclusions. High trait anxiety measured in adolescence is associated with reduced accidents and accidental death in early adulthood but higher rates of non-accidental mortality in later life.

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