The Social and Cultural Organization of Aging. Encyclopedia of American Folklore

Ways of thinking about and dividing up the life cycle vary over time and across cultures. Folklore generated in America about this progression articulates and comments upon “stages” of life. Anticipating life’s stages, children recite them in rhymes and songs: “Solomon Grundy, born on Monday/Christened on Tuesday/Married on Wednesday…” or “When I was a baby, a baby, a baby, when I was a baby, this is what I did,” which continues through grandmotherhood and death (Hufford, Hunt, and Zeitlin 1987:18). Reflecting on those stages, elders hone hindsight into aphorism: “If you’re twenty and not a revolutionary, you have no heart. If you’re forty and a revolutionary, you have no mind” or “A fox is smart because he is old, not because he is a fox” or “Snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace.” These fragments hint at multigenerational perspectives on the life cycle, and an underlying ever-present negotiation of the elder’s image and role in society.

Biological and social milestones formally separate and define phases of life. Out of
tradition, history, personal experience and social relationships, communities fashion rites
of passage to signal or precipitate transitions from one stage of life to another: the
christening or bris (circumcision rite), the bar mitzvah or confirmation, the graduation,
the driver’s license, the wedding, the divorce, the baby shower, the retirement banquet,
the funeral and associated rituals. Displaying knowledge about nature and society, such
rites socially redefine the person passing from preschool to school age, childhood to
adolescence, single to married state (and vice versa), career to retirement, life to death.
The notion of the milestone implies gradual progression, or “development,” toward a
goal. Around experiences common to each stage of life people create and master
expressive forms that social scientists have related to “developmental” tasks. Through
such cultural practices as jumping rope, children develop physical coordination, social
skills, and cognitive proficiency. Children riddling come to terms with cultural categories
and learn that the conceptual frames holding reality in place are manipulable.
Adolescents on the threshold of greater social responsibility dramatize their concerns in
frightening stories about baby-sitting and dating, or through humor about sexuality.
Adults in what psychologist Eric Erikson terms their “generative” phase engage again
with the early stages of life, but this time from the perspective of parents, teachers, or
supervisors, shaping out of symbolic repertoires new realms of lore and custom: bedtime
rituals, occupational rites of initiation, narratives of birth and delivery, and ways of
celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays. Throughout this period of life, as
physical abilities peak and decline, proflciency with symbolic resources like proverb,
narrative, and ritual is apt to increase.
The transition from the social roles and experiences generally associated with mid-life
to those associated with old age does not happen automatically or abruptly. Though
distinguished by certain kinds of events—the retirement banquet, the birth of
grandchildren, the fiftieth high school reunion, the golden jubilee—old age is
experienced by many as “one of the great unrealizables,” in the words of Simone de
Beauvoir. However, the accumulation of experiences common to old age, such as loss of
loved ones and diminishing physical abilities, are also linked with cultural practices
distinctive to that stage in life, including reminiscing and the rendering of long memories
into tangible form.
Reminiscing, a logical practice for those with the longest memories, was until recent
decades discouraged in the elderly, because it seemed to betoken a desire to disengage
from the present and dwell in the past. However, research since the 1960s suggests that:
(1) reviewing one’s memories is essential to a major developmental task in later years:
life integration (Butler 1968); and (2) folklore is a resource used by elders to give
meaning to their lives (Bronner 1984; Hufford, Hunt, and Zeitlin 1987; Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett 1989a, 1989b; Mullen 1992). In addition to recasting our perceptions of culture
created by elders, this insight has tremendous implications for the practice of folklore,
which has traditionally relied on the memories of elderly informants.

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