Age brings intelligence, experience, wisdom and beauty. So why are we so scared of it?

Britain is no country for old men. Or old women for that matter. If we think we’re taciturn and uptight about sex, try talking to us about age. Unfortunately, shoving our heads in the sand about the fact that we, our friends, our family and society at large are going to get old isn’t going to work in the long-term. This year it was forecast that a third of all babies born in the past year are expected to reach 100. A recent review from the Workplace Retirement Income Commission warned that millions of people face a “bleak old age” thanks to cracks in the private sector pension provision. And last year, the Health Service Ombudsman raised concerns that nearly a fifth of complaints received about the NHS related to care of the elderly, and a dossier containing stories about the alarmingly poor level of care elderly patients receive was published by campaigners. Add to that the diminishing number of role models – especially women – over a certain age, and you could be forgiven for thinking we live in a world where no-one gets old.

The trouble is that many of us find it impossible to relate to these worrying facts, unable to face the reality that every day we inch ever closer to our own dotage. An old age that we now believe starts at 59, according to a 2012 survey. It seems ‘the elderly’ are ‘them’, not ‘us’, to such an extent that advancing years provide a cloak of invisibility. You might offer an octogenarian a seat on the bus, or let them in front of you in a queue but how often do you engage in an actual conversation with a person you aren’t related to? It’s easy to forget that the man in his late 80s in Waitrose probably fought in World War II, or that the woman struggling to cross the road lived through an age when it was legal to fire a woman when she got married – and may well have campaigned against it. Our older generations experienced the majority of the most tumultuous century in human history and yet at best we infantilise, at worst outright ignore them. Pity instead of respect. A 1998 study showed that we use baby talk (higher voices and simpler words) when communicating with people we perceive as old. So why do we have such an extraordinary aversion to ageing?

Eternal Youth

One suggestion is that we aren’t forced to face up to our own ageing process because the elderly are deftly airbrushed out of our lives by an ageist media and a business culture in thrall to youth. A survey by the Department For Work And Pensions concluded that “agerelated stereotypes are rooted in British society” with one in seven people saying having a boss in their 70s is “completely unacceptable”. Whether this is because they are viewed as too old to cope in the workplace, or not in touch with modern business technology, it’s something people will have to learn to accept if current proposals to raise the UK retirement age to 70 are successful.

Although one in three people in society is now aged over 50, you wouldn’t know it by looking at how women are represented by the media. Take the landmark case of TV presenter Miriam O’Reilly, 55. After she was dropped from Countryfile in 2009, O’Reilly successfully sued the BBC for age discrimination. A BBC report commissioned following her case concluded there was “particular concern” about the lack of older women represented on television, with more than a third of women over 55 saying there were too few of them. In trying to combat this, the BBC were accused of tokenism by Carole Walker, a 52-year-old newsreader who believes her subsequent appointment was “nothing more than a PR stunt” after she was given just one presenting shift in three months. It’s not just the Beeb either – in 2008, Selina Scott, 60, won a payout and an apology from Five after apparently being replaced in favour of a younger presenter.

Why are we scared of growing old?