Theorizing about aging well: constructing a narrative.
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.
Chapman
Sherry Ann
SA
Department of Human Ecology, University of Alberta, 302 Human Ecology Building, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2N1, Canada. sherryc@ualberta.ca
D000375:Aging; D005853:Geriatrics; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D033262:Narration; D013598:Systems Theory