title: Theorizing about aging well: constructing a narrative.
abstract: Aging well is new, again. The recent interest is part of a 50-year period of research. Contradictory conceptualizations of aging well create an opportunity to consider assumptions that underlie the concept. In this paper, through the construction of an aging-well, theorizing narrative, an underlying assumption is identified in past aging-well conceptual frameworks: to age well is to achieve self-integration in relation to particular sets of resources or forms of engagement. The narrative relates how more recent aging-well theorizing is being shaped by a growing interest in later life meaning-making. Evidence is presented of a contemporary shift toward describing aging well as the negotiation of the co-construction and reconstruction of multiple selves in an ongoing, open-ended process of meaning-making amid later-life events and transitions. The paper concludes with implications for future research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Ecology, University of Alberta, 302 Human Ecology Building, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2N1, Canada. sherryc@ualberta.ca
authors.forename: Sherry Ann
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Chapman
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging; D005853:Geriatrics; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D033262:Narration; D013598:Systems Theory