ABSTRACT
Gerontologists and specialists in geriatrics have expressed reservations about fixing the onset of old age on a purely chronological basis. Their reasons are manifold. The process of ageing is a gradual one. There is no one biological event after which the person becomes old. Nor is it an even process: the organs and systems in our bodies do not all age at the same rate. Individuals also differ from one another both physically and mentally. In view of all this, Robert Butler (who coined the term ‘ageism’ to describe age-based discrimination) concluded that the idea of chronological ageing is a myth, because the advancing years intensify the individual differences more than making a broad similarity.1 The geriatric consultant Marian Rabinowitz maintains that every elderly person has six ages: chronological, biological, cognitive, emotional, social and functional.2 It has also been argued that in different economic, social, ethnic and cultural contexts, a man or a woman being 60 or 70 signifies different things, even in the same historical period. Hence the chronological age is only a marker showing where the individual stands in relation to time; or else, it serves as a convenient device for placing individuals in their social space. But the significance of age is a contingent, rather than an independent variable. One specialist in memory noted the relative and subjective nature of determining the onset of old age. In a discussion about the increasing likelihood of degenerative diseases of the memory among the old, he was asked, ‘What age are we talking about?’ He answered, smiling, ‘An old person is one who is 15 years older than you.’3
