old age

From ancient to modern times in Europe, conceptions of the life cycle that recognized discrete "ages of man" counted old age as one of the stages of life. Ancient philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) separated life into three stages, and the model of life stages was endowed with additional spiritual meaning in the Middle Ages. By the early modern period, numerous schemes existed to define the steps, ages, or stages of life. Thus, the concept of old age carried with it a relatively coherent set of expectations and experiences including social and cultural signals as well as numerical thresholds of old age. Within these broad socially constructed markers of old age, however, lay a wide variety of experiences determined by social class, gender, and individual life experiences.

Definitions of Old Age