Planning a trip to several cities, going out to dinner with friends, going to the gym and having a schedule full of social, recreational and cultural activities is associated with young people, brimming with energy. However, for several decades, have a full life plan and, above all, carrying it out is happening more and more frequently in people over the age of 60because there is a new paradigm around this age group.
When Liliana turned 50, a countdown began. As a prisoner waiting for his release, he began to count the years that he would continue working until he retired at 60. The goal was from that moment on. do everything he liked and that for his family and his work he had postponed.
Lidia, at 62 years old, assures that life span extended and this extension gives you the chance to enjoy. He did not plan what he would do the day he retired, his only goal was to have no schedules, no agenda, no pressure and live in freedom. He changed his style, he left his gray hair and the hairdresser is no longer a must. He modified his diet and every morning he crosses with his mat to the woods of Palermo to do yoga with a group, the same one with which he plans to visit India.
Some figures about the population
The world population is aging. According to the World Bank, in 2019, for the first time in history, the number of people over the age of 65 worldwide exceeded the total number of children under five. The statistics portal Statista reveals: “The number of people over the age of 65 in the world has been increasing in recent years and this trend is expected to continue upwards in the coming decades.
The data of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of the Argentine Republic (INDEC) confirm this trend. According to the 2010 census data, in the country the number of inhabitants between 60 and 69 was 7.26% of the population. According to the 2022 census it is 7.94% and a value of 8.41% is projected for 2033. Therefore, Argentina does not escape the world trend, society will be increasingly long-lived and it is already noticeable how those who comb gray hair are preparing to plan this stage of life.
The gray hair revolution
Adriana, 67, always knew that the day she hung up the stethoscope would start the best. She divorced her at age 42 and her nursing allowed her to support her household finances. In each 24-hour watch that she performed she felt that they were the final stages of her sacrifice. She told her children that the day she received the notification from the IPS, a new stage would begin. She usually takes a neighbor’s blood pressure out of solidarity, but since she retired she doesn’t have time. She toured Argentina, she went to Brazil with her friends, she has a subscription to a gym and every weekend there is a plan. She is a grandmother, but she does not take care of her grandchildren, her activities cannot be postponed.
Luisa Acrich de Gutmann, professor of Evolutionary Psychology II Adulthood and Old Age at the University of Palermo states: “As life expectancy increases, it changes the whole life cycle”. It clarifies that a greater life expectancy means that projects can be postponed and more time is available for their concretion and development, impacting on the elderly that when they retire, they have twenty, thirty or more years to go.
Since the middle of the 20th century, greater longevity began to be noticed. At first it was called the ‘Grey Revolution’ and in world assemblies on aging guidelines were given to further study this phenomenon, positive of course, but for which we were not prepared in any way due to the social, health, affective, labor, bonding, economic This is what Virginia Viguera, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, explains, who continued to work as editor of a magazine when she retired.
For Eugenio Semino, Defender of the Third Age of the City of Buenos Aires, today biology and the world offer the possibility of living at least 20 or 25 more years after retirement age, with a full and quality life. Therefore, the issue of age behaviors called “elderly age” is ruled out. But this old denomination is not uprooted and unfortunately in our society, the old criterion of old age responds to the fact that it is still considered as a stage where active life ends. And the “passive” that is left out of social roles.
Getting old meeting goals
The aging paradigm was mutating. According to Acrich there are important milestones in this regard. In the 50s, the creation of geriatrics and gerontology associations as a differentiated field, the first complete life cycle models from birth to old age and, in the 70s, the first sociological theories that reflect on the aging.
Currently, the retirement age in Argentina, with some exceptions, is 60 years for women and 65 for men, and it is viewed as an opportunity to do what has been postponed, fulfill pending dreams, and carry out new activities. Viguera explains that after the age of 60 people want to remain active, they no longer retire from life and feel that they have the physical and intellectual conditions to continue enjoying themselves.
In France, workers repudiate the reform promoted by President Emmanuel Macron who tries to postpone the retirement age. The protests are led by young people who refuse to stay longer within a labor system, because they want to spend their time on what they consider a priority, enjoy and carry out projects before their abilities are affected.
Florencia Bravo Almonacid, sociologist, director of the Permanent Education Program for Older Adults (PEPAM) of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences of the National University of La Plata, states that there is a change in the social representations of the elderly.
A few decades ago, the imaginaries revolved around a dependent old age, focused only on the role of grandparents. And although these representations about old age currently persist, there are new images regarding other ways of passing age, “healthy active old age is already seen in advertisements, carrying out different types of activities -says the researcher-. There are different ways to go through this stage and there is a range in which all of them can be possible, according to the interests of each person, there is no single way to go through this stage”.
Silvia, 68, retired at 61 and soon became a widow. The trips that she had planned with her husband were made with a friend, she reformulated some goals, she frequently travels to Bariloche to visit her grandchildren, she even decided to dabble in the use of sex toys. She defends that sexuality does not retire.
For Gutmann, an expert in Gerontology, there are isolated attempts to prepare for retirement with good results, but they are not widespread and to the extent that society is becoming aware of the extension of life expectancy, there are more and more people who plan their withdrawal. According to the Ombudsman Eugenio Semino, it is urgent to talk about aging, there is a lack of protection for health and education for aging. For every door that is closed on one activity, an enormous number is opened for others.
Life expectancy is increasing and gradually the desire to fulfill those activities that were postponed, to make those trips that were planned and to complete the pending subjects is increasing.
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