ABSTRACT
In this concluding chapter, we refresh the composite portrait of the older American and global citizen developed in the book and describe the conditions of suffering faced by older persons in this twenty-first century: regressive social and economic policy, destabilizing climate systems, impoverished environments, and cultural resistance to goals of social protection, social justice, and sustainable social solidarity. We identify key policy reform goals, including public health priorities for health systems and for modifying the social and economic determinants of health—especially in the domain of education and, in particular, education for women and girls. Finally, we imagine a refashioned social order in which it is possible for all older persons to live, age and die well; that is, in a Maternal Cosmos that affords opportunities for the mitigation of pain and suffering, the enjoyment of nurture, care and life’s fecundities, and the pursuit of flourishing, agency, and generativity through emancipatory social practices.
