ABSTRACT
Library shelves all over the Western world are heavily weighted with books that take up questions of the ‘problems’ of age and what should be done about it. Standing in front of these shelves can be not only intimidating but also a little bit disheartening. Row upon row of handbooks on age and ageing written for nurses, social workers, gerontologists, psychologists, sociologists and families going back decades. Books by and for researchers, academics, bureaucrats, practitioners and the general public. National surveys and outcomes research line up beside personal accounts, analyses of political and economic implications rest against organizational strategies for providing effi cient services, assessments of the effects of health system restructuring crowd out guides intended to assist families to cope with their care ‘burden’. This ‘problem’—becoming old and what to do about thathas clearly, and for some time, preoccupied many. Surely by now everything critical, instructional or refl ective has already been said. And yet it has not because, evidently, we still struggle with the question of how we want this to proceed, this caring for frail older adults in our societies.
