BEGINNING OF OLD AGE IN JAPAN AND AGE NORMS IN ADULTHOOD

Abstract

The idea and practice of lifelong learning (or lifelong education) have recently become popular in Japan. Clarifying the developmental process of the human life course is an important task of researchers in the education field, because knowledge of the characteristics and tasks of the human life course will be useful for planning educational programs in the area of lifelong education. In this article, I present the findings of research on age norms in adulthood (i.e., what people perceive as the normal expectable life course) and on the beginning of old age in Japan. The educational implications of these findings are discussed. To ascertain age norms in adulthood (or the normal expectable life course) and the norm for the beginning of old age in Japan, I conducted a questionnaire survey of three age groups. The main results were as follows: (a) All age groups perceived the life events listed on the questionnaire as occurring earlier for women than for men. (b) Young people conceived of the age norm events as occurring earlier in the life course than did the elderly, especially the events in the age grading and subjective sense of age categories. (c) As for the beginning of old age, many people in their 60s did not believe themselves to be old. They believed that old age begins at around 70. (d) As for the events marking the beginning of old age, many people stated that physiological and psychological changes were markers of old age. People after their late 70s stated that psychological changes were very important. These results have implications for the promotion of aging education, especially education to improve understanding of different generations.