The Third Age Identity Crisis - Truth or Dare

Abstract

The growing interest contemporary society shows toward senior citizens, especially from the demographic and socio-medical points of view, has led to intense debate globally. This debate has materialized in ways of raising awareness of, and rising sensitivity to the phenomenon, such as declaring the year 2012 “The year of active aging and solidarity among generations”. The present work focuses on an aspect that hasn’t been tackled by literature very often, but which needs to be the subject of complex research: the senior citizens’ identity. Retirement, the dissolution of the social network, and the essential rearrangement of the “marriage nest” are the causing factors of the change or loss of identity during the third age, which can lead to the perception of senior citizens’ lives in a way that is totally different from what is considered to be normal from a social point of view.