Ralph, 72, recognised that he might be more frail himself in the future and welcomed support from fellow residents: “We are currently the people to whom the neighbours say, ‘can you help with this or do that?’ Take me somewhere or do that?‘ But I think one day it will work the other way round. I think maybe when we get older, we will become dependent on others here too.”
Cultural geographer, Kevin McHugh has argued that retirement communities reflect and sell compelling narratives about successful ageing.
These narratives, he argued, are “defined as much by the absent image (old, poor folks) as by the image presented: handsome, healthy, comfortably middle-class ‘seniors’, busily filling sun-filled days”.
A lot of these retirement communities are often so vaguely defined that they appear to offer all things to all people. But they can only be a desirable model if they recognise and accommodate the diverse needs of that community.
As Swedish gerontologist, Håkan Jönson, has argued, it makes little sense to resent more frail, vulnerable older people – why should we resent a percentage of the population that we will probably be part of in the future?
*All names have been changed to protect identities.
Sam Carr Senior Lecturer in Education with Psychology at the University of Bath. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.
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