In the main article, Laurie Penny offers: "Many of us are failing to build the secure, stable households we were taught to desire. Not only is that OK, it's the future of families"
Louise Aronson, M.D., author of "Elderhood," and a geriatrician comments further in this sidebar. She emphasizes the variety of experiences among the elderly which are impacted by income, ethnicity, etc.
"Even before the pandemic, we'd done a lot to strip older lives of purpose and meaning." I would suggest this is not done actively, but as a result of negligence.
Nursing homes are much in the news due to the pandemic, but Aronson notes 93% of "older people do not live in facilities." For-profit owners account for 70% of nursing homes, which have a strong lobbying effort. Penalties for not abiding by regulations are small, and staff are generally underpaid. Add to this the prospect of the workers contracting Covid-19, which makes the job even less desirable.
Aronson suggests there may be creative solutions such as having the elderly "tutor children or immigrants," but this needn't be the only purpose that they should be given, In fact, it is preferable that each senior person develop a plan to actualize their own purpose well before they become less physically able. This approach has led me to create the Eudaimonia Project, meant to make known the need for citizens to find a purposeful pursuit that will carry them into elderhood.
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