This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

6.2 Perspectives on Aging



LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. 
   State the assumptions of disengagement, activity, and conflict theories of aging.
   
2. 
   Critically assess these three theories.
   

Recall that social aging refers to changes in people’s roles and relationships in a society as they age. Social gerontologists have tried to explain how and why the aging process in the United States and other societies occurs. Their various explanations, summarized in Table 6.1 "Theory Snapshot", help us understand patterns of social aging. They fall roughly into either the functionalist, social interactionist, or conflict approaches discussed in Chapter 1 "Understanding Social Problems".

Table 6.1 Theory Snapshot