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Heather E. Dillaway and Mary Byrnes. Journal of Applied Gerontology December 2009 vol. 28 no. 6 702-722. Reconsidering Successful Aging: A Call for Renewed and Expanded Academic Critiques and Conceptualizations

Many scholars now critique successful aging terminology. Nonetheless, there is incomplete analysis of the political motivations behind the development of and/or effects of widespread use of these terms. This article suggests that analysis of the people who developed the terms and the settings within which they work parallels an analysis of the terms themselves and illustrates the continuing negative perception of aging. This study fleshes out a more thorough critique of the sociopolitical contexts surrounding the successful aging paradigm so that it can help renew and expand existing critiques. The authors conclude that researchers need to be wary of adopting successful aging terminology without considering and expanding their understanding of the political motivations and results that accompanies it. New, expanded conceptualizations of successful aging are needed so that socially minded researchers and practitioners of gerontology do not contribute to ageism and discrimination against older adults.
 

Meredith Troutman Flood, Mary A. Nies, and Dong-Chul Seo. Successful Aging: Selected Indicators in a Southern Sample. Home Health Care Management Practice February 2010 vol. 22 no. 2 111-115

Given the increasing population of older adults in the United States, it is important to identify indicators of successful aging and the interrelationships among these variables to develop interventions to promote successful aging. This article reports an analysis of indicators of successful aging in a group of older adults from North and South Carolina. Risk factors that may make it harder for older adults to age successfully are identified. The relationships between chronic disease and indicators of successful aging are examined, and potential ideas for interventions to enhance successful aging are discussed.
 

Amanda Grenier and Jill Hanley. Older Women and 'Frailty' : Aged, Gendered and Embodied Resistance. Current Sociology 2007 55: 211

The concept of ‘frailty’, as used within public health and social services, represents a powerful practice where cultural constructions, the global economic rationale of cost restriction and the biomedical focus on ageing collide as inscriptions on the bodies of older women. This article draws on complex forms of resistance witnessed within three separate studies: narrative interviews on ‘frailty’, semi-structured interviews and participant observation in community organizations with older women in Montreal and Boston. Findings reveal how older women exercise resistance in complex ways, both consciously subverting and coopting the notion of ‘frailty’ on an individual and collective level. Such resistance demonstrates the tensions between undermining dominant notions of ageing, and fulfilling prescribed gendered and age-based assumptions about older women and their bodies. The intersections and forms of older women’s resistance challenge social constructs, social expectations and what is recognized as resistance.
 

Miner-Rubino, Kathi, Winter, David G., Stewart, Abigail J. (2004). Gender, Social Class, and the Subjective Experience of Aging: Self-Perceived Personality Change From Early Adulthood to Late Midlife. Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 30, 1599-1610.

This study explored the applicability of previous research (obtained with groups of college-educated women) about the subjective experience of aging in midlife to men and less-educated people. Two-hundred fifty-nine men and women who graduated from a public high school in 1955-1957 retrospectively assessed their feelings of identity certainty, confident power, generativity, and concern about aging for their 60s, 40s, and 20s. Participants reported higher levels of identity certainty, confident power, and concern about aging at each age, and a leveling off of generativity in their 60s. There were some gender and social class differences. Although men and women recalled the same trajectory of these feelings, men reported higher levels of identity certainty and confident power across age. Non-college-educated men recalled the highest levels of concern about aging across age. We discuss how these findings add to our understanding of the experience of aging in these domains.