Functionalism

Functionalists believe that any conflict and inequalities between age groups are inevitable and are just a
result of new generations adjusting to the norms and values of society.

Purpose of different life phases

Parsons (1902-79) was the most prominent American functionalist in the mid 20 th
century. Parsons argued that the difference in roles associated with different age
groups, including the inequality between age groups, was essential to the smooth
functioning of society.

Adolescence is a time of transition from childhood to adulthood, a time of transition

into the values of adult society. For the individual adolescence is a time to develop
independence from the parent – Parsons saw this as the bridge from childhood to adulthood. This is
necessary for an individualistic society which requires both social and physical mobility. Also western
society changes quickly, so independence from parents is a pre-condition for change. Therefore, some
generation-gap conflict was normal and functional. However, this age group poses the greatest threat of
anomie in future generations and as a result is subject to more control than other age groups.

Old age can be a problem for western societies, because the norms of achieved status mean there is less
status for those who no longer work. Also the individualism and mobility mean that the elderly are likely to
be more isolated than in simple societies, where old age is associated with the transmission of cultural
values in the socialisation process, eg as role models.

Evaluation
Hockey & James criticise Parsons for underestimating youth subcultures. They claim that these subcultures
are active creations of new values, not just young people adjusting to traditional adult roles. Examples of
these subcultures include dance culture, club culture, alternative lifestyles (what Andy Bennett calls ‘neo-
tribes’, although they are popularly known as hippies).

They also add that age is a social construction, the need to treat different age groups in different ways has
been created by society, not biology.

Functionalism, with its emphasis on consensus and solidarity, always has problems in explaining conflict.
Here they cannot explain the high level of inequality between middle age and youth, and between middle
age and old age. They also cannot explain the conflict that these inequalities represent.

Disengagement theory
Cummings and Henry (1961) have added this this idea claiming that all people will eventually die and
therefore old age is a time when people’s abilities will start to deteriorate. When this happens there is a
need for both the individual and society to change the roles and responsibilities the person carries out. For
example it is important to have retirement age to allow the individual to no longer have to perform a role
they cannot carry out and for the role to now be fulfilled by someone who can.

Evaluation
Some would criticise Cummings and Henry as not all people ‘deteriorate’ at the same time e.g. there are
some who are more than capable at working past 65 and some who are not (you could apply the ‘active
ageing’ concept here.

Marxism
Marxists once again see age inequalities as part of wider class issues. The issue is not which particular age
groups are disadvantaged but which social groups within those age groups are disadvantaged.

Vincent believes that old age is characterised by material deprivation. They are likely to live in poverty and
this is particularly true of women and the working classes as low-pay or part time work throughout their
lives has reduced their chances of a private pension. Vincent has also used the decline in the value of state
pensions as further evidence for this.

However Vincent adds that 21st century fears of generational conflict is a moral panic and an unjustified
fear. He says the problem is one of inequality within generations, not between them – therefore class is the
key factor for inequalities.

Evaluation
- Postmodernists would criticise Marxists as they believe that the differences in inequalities experienced
by different age groups is weakening.

Reserve army of labour

Just as in the case of gender and ethnicity, the young and the old can be used as a reserve army of labour,
coming in at times of economic boom and being pushed out in times of recession. Both the young and the
old are also sources of cheap labour. For both these reasons, age discrimination benefits the ruling class.
Current examples of this can be seen with the zero-hours contracts problems where the young and old are
more likely to only be used when needed. Phillipson claimed that the elderly have increasingly been used
as a reserve army of labour.

Evaluation
- There are laws to protect individuals from age discrimination (such as the Age Discrimination Act) and
therefore companies cannot just fire the young and old without sufficient reasons.

Class Conflict
Campbell argues that the conflict is not one of generation but of class. She refers
to the ‘intergenerational transmission of privilege’ through the transmission of
economic capital that has accentuated the inequalities (middle class parents can pass on
wealth to their children meaning that the young middle class remain at an advantage).
Campbell concludes that right wing policies, not generational conflict, have caused the
problems.

Evaluation
Marxism lacks a coherent explanation of age disadvantage as a separate category. It ignores age as a
separate factor (reductive) and so lacks some of the Weberian insights into generational conflict.

Neo-Marxism

Legitimisation of authority
Gramsci argues that the bourgeoisie are able to continue to exploit due to using certain concessions as false
consciousness which stops them realising they are being exploited. For example the government provides
child benefits, state pensions and a threshold for a minimum wage. This prevents the young and the old
realising the extent of their exploitation in the workplace.

Evaluation
This idea ignores the rise of the ‘grey pound’ – the elderly are an increasing consumer group with economic
power and therefore are not necessarily reliant on the bourgeoisie but rather are an asset for them.
Feminism
Feminists link inequality between age groups to gender inequality.

Childhood
Oakley focuses on the age group of childhood which she compares to the position of women. In the
nineteenth century each had a similar status, e.g. legally prevented from many activities, lacking legal
rights, power and social status. Each was a minority group defined by biology. Like the radical feminist,
Firestone, who argued that children and women were locked together in mutual patriarchal oppression,
Oakley concludes that an understanding of women and children shows:

‘mutual dependence and interdependence and mutual oppression’.

Evaluation
- However the position of women has changed, but the position of children has not. Children cannot
organise themselves the way women have done. Women, too, would have to give up power if children
were to get more. Wyness has criticised Oakley for linking females and children. He points out that
both men and women exercise power over children. He concludes that ‘ultimately, patriarchy is a
system governed by gendered, not age-related, structures’.
- Also functionalists would argue that biological arguments are correctly applied to children, who by
definition are immature, whereas not to women.

Ageing
Gannon claims that gender differences in ageing are presented as biological facts (women living longer etc)
rather than social ones. She emphasises that women are more likely to be in poverty when older because of
the accumulated influences of sexism, patriarchy and poverty.

She illustrates this with a case study on the menopause. Firstly she shows how androcentric society (male-
centred) is. The male body is seen as normal, therefore the menopause is abnormal and is treated as a
disease. There are even therapies like HRT to delay. However, in reality, Gannon argues that the
menopause brings benefits as well as costs. For example, women are freed from the prospect of
childbearing and can concentrate on the next part of their lives.

Gannon argues that the ideology of the menopause in particular, and female ageing in
general, is to maintain patriarchal power. Women over 50 are labelled as less
adequate, because they are no longer fertile. This ideology helps keep older women
out of positions of power in the media and workforce. It also helps to disguise the real
problems of the economic and political oppression of all women and especially older
women.

Itzin has further added to this study claiming that older women feel an immense
pressure to fight signs of ageing through ‘cosmeticisation’ to improve their appearance.

Evaluation
- Gannon’s argument is not supported by the National Inequality Panel which showed female incomes
rising for all age-groups over 25. Gannon also seems to think gender is more important than age, but it
could be that women are over-represented in poverty (through outliving men) is a result of biology
rather than gender.

Weberianism
Age is a status group, so a Weberian analysis would see age conflict resulting from competition between
age cohorts.

Traditional Generational Conflict

Townsend established the traditional view that the elderly suffered disadvantage. As he said ‘society tends
to reward present work; it does not reward old age. Elderly people are discriminated against by economic
and social policies which benefit the young employed and the well-off, thus poverty in old age and the
dependent status of elderly people are related to low resources ... through the life cycle’

Evaluation
- Marxism is better at explaining the complex interaction of other factors, like ethnicity and gender. The
Marxists show how disadvantage is centrally a product of class conflict and all these cohort and
sectional disadvantages fit into a bigger picture. Marxists would therefore argue that the conflict
between age groups is actually one of class conflict.
- However some believe Weberianism is better at showing where disadvantage of age does not follow a
consistent pattern. Where there is a mixed picture of advantage and disadvantage, the evidence
supports localised status group competition, rather than the reductionist Marxist approach.

Dual labour market theory

A Weberian approach includes conflict in the labour market. Barron & Norris’s dual labour market theory
can also be applied, with the young and old more likely to be marginalised into the secondary labour
market. To support this, McKingsley has shown how retirement is a ‘trigger’ for loss of status.

New Generational Conflict

Willetts, a Conservative Party spokesman, believes that this has completely changed.
Instead of the young dispossessing the old it is now the other way round. His analysis
relates to the new ‘baby-boomers’ generation that is rich at the expense of the younger
generations. He calls this generational conflict. He claims that the ‘baby-boomers’ (the
generation, or age-cohort, born between 1945 and 1965) have a greater share of the
wealth and a greater share of the welfare state than the generations that come after it.
This means there is a conflict between the generations in which later generations will have to pay higher
taxes and work longer, with a lower standard of living and with less social mobility, to pay for the pensions
of the ‘baby-boomers’.

Age Segregation
Willetts also argues that age cohorts are more segregated than ever before, largely due to the decline of
apprenticeships and the rise of university education. The apprenticeship system meant that most young
people learned a trade through working for older, skilled people who they respected. But now they stay
among their own age group with little contact across generations. This trend is reinforced by changes in the
family, with less grandparent contact, due to divorce, single-parent families, etc.

Evaluation
- Willetts’s argument will only stand up if the elderly retain their advantage, but the contemporary crisis
over pensions might lead to a more traditional decline of the economic position of the old.
- According to Postmodernists age as a category has fragmented – it has broken down and is no longer a
key defining influence on a person’s life chances.
Other social action theories
You will not get a direct question on Interactionism as it is not listed on the specification but you can use it
to evaluate other theories.

Interactionism

Social Construction
Interactionists regard social phenomena, like age etc, as the result of an interaction between society and
the individual or group. They focus on labels which are constructed by society but which also impact upon
the individual. Ageing, for interactionists, is not a result of biology or of structures like class or gender.
Instead ageing is a result of the labelling by society. Said’s work on ‘otherness’ has similarities in that the
otherness is created by society, not by the group seen as ‘other’. All this can be summed up in the phrase,
‘age is a social construction’.

Childhood
Hockey & James argue that childhood is the ‘other’ of adulthood. Thus children are seen as innocent,
vulnerable and closer to nature. This allows them to be kept apart from adult society with its emphasis on
autonomy and independence. It also allows adult society to define itself as having different qualities to
childhood.

Old Age
Hockey & James see the elderly in a similar light. Their identity is constructed as inferior, as a ‘second
childhood’. They even suggest that society ‘infantilises’ the elderly, with stereotypes about harmless ‘little
old ladies’. Jenny Hockey did a study of old people’s homes and found that the inmates were treated like
children, for example not being allowed to look after their own money and being given pocket money by
the staff. Thus expectations of dependency created a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby they became
dependent.

Labelling
Victor argues that the elderly are negatively labelled in the media as lonely, dependent and unable to learn
new skills. This leads to discrimination in the workplace with employers believing in these stereotypes. This
leads employers to replace them with younger workers.

Evaluation
This explanation ignores class. It ignores the fact that the richer elderly find it easier to resist such labelling.
This is because they possess power in terms of being able to move to different homes or in the influence of
their young who wish to inherit their wealth.
Postmodernist Explanations of Age Differences

You will not get a direct question on Postmodernism as it is not listed on

the specification but you can use it to evaluate other theories.

Featherstone & Hepworth (1991) argue that with the decline of

industrialisation and the rise of globalisation there has been a
fragmentation of identity. This applies to all CAGE categories. For age
identity it means that the expected identities of the past have broken
down. Age is no longer a chronological concept. There are many
fragmented identities in each of the age groups. Thus age has become a
meaningless concept.

Evidence comes from

- Childhood - Children are becoming more like adults (consumer objects, sexualised identities, fashion-
conscious etc). Childhood is also extending longer as dependency continues into the twenties, not
working, not leaving home etc.
- Middle age - Many middle class people retire early and have an affluent non-working lifestyle.
- Old age - The baby boomers are maintaining a youthful lifestyle, interested in music and self-expression.
Old age is seen as ‘the third age, which is increasingly seen as a positive lifestyle period. There is a
chance to do new things, contribute to charities, take new university courses.

Andrew Blaikie (1999) focuses on the main postmodernist concept, which is the media and consumer
culture. He argues that the fact of an ageing population means that there is for the first time a significant
new market – the grey pound. The advertisers and market researchers are just beginning to recognise the
phenomenon. There are also elderly popular culture celebrities who are role models for a refusal to age.
Examples include Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Elton John and Helen Mirren.

Peter Laslett calls this the third stage in life and it is a time for retirement and personal fulfilment. The third
age comes after the first (childhood and youth - irresponsibility), second (adulthood and responsibility), and
before the fourth (physical decline).