Forum: Include diversity and intergenerational understanding when discussing ageing
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The commentary “When Singapore’s Gen Z volunteers say ‘anything but ageing’, we have a problem” (June 19) raises an important concern: The way we talk about ageing influences how younger generations perceive growing old and older people.
If ageing is discussed mainly in terms of burden, costs and dependency, it is understandable that young people may associate later life primarily with decline.
A fuller conversation about ageing requires us to better understand older persons as a heterogeneous population. Some remain physically, mentally, socially and financially healthy well into their 70s and 80s. Others live with chronic illnesses, disabilities, or social and financial challenges.
There are also important differences between normal and pathological ageing. Some physical and physiological changes are natural parts of growing older. However, many other conditions arise from disease processes, cumulative lifestyle factors and life-course influences, rather than being inevitable consequences of ageing itself.
Consequently, people of the same age may have vastly different levels of health, independence and care needs. The variability makes ageing far more complex than stereotypes of either decline or vitality.
What is common, however, is that people are living longer. More people will spend longer periods in later life, more families will care for ageing loved ones, and more people will live long enough to experience chronic illness and age-related vulnerabilities.
The article rightly argues that older adults should not be reduced to dependency ratios or healthcare expenditure. Yet acknowledging the realities of ageing is not the same as ageism.
As life expectancy rises, the age and social gap between younger and older generations may also widen.
Empathy is built through relationships. This is why young people’s exposure to older persons beyond their immediate family lets them understand realities and possibilities beyond their own social circles.
We should also be cautious about interpreting successful ageing simply as a matter of attitude or motivation. Comparisons of active older adults in other societies overlook the unique social, cultural and historical conditions shaping ageing outcomes in Singapore.
People do not age in isolation. They age within families, communities, neighbourhoods, workplaces and policy environments. The physical, social and cultural environments we create throughout life shape how people age. Rather than asking only why some individuals age successfully, we should also ask what conditions let more people age well and how they can be strengthened. This is an area where younger generations can help shape the society that they themselves will one day grow old in.
The goal is therefore not to stop talking about ageing, nor to replace concern with optimism alone. Instead, we need conversations that acknowledge diversity, recognise care needs, build on capabilities and strengthen intergenerational understanding.
Seng Ann Sim
