As a part of our psychology assignment my friends and I were required to collect primary data to examine the human developmental process of ‘Ageing.’ Our target group consisted of Indian men belonging to the age group of 50 to 70 years, preferably from different cultures and classes. We meticulously crafted a questionnaire that attempted to study their transition from adolescence to late adulthood, consisting of questions aimed at understanding their worldview & ideology, their educational and occupational background, roles and responsibilities, challenges that they faced, their coping mechanisms, cultural barriers and stereotypes so on and so forth. There was a lot that we absorbed from the stories they told us, we gained a new perspective towards the male geriatric population and in this essay, I want to put forth some of those findings and realizations.
All of us are aware of the fact that as people start ageing their daily functioning begins to decline for some the onset of this decline is delayed and for some it is pre mature but irrespective of the time when it begins this decline in their cognitive, physical and social skills not only makes them vulnerable but also a neglected section of the family and society at large. If you are an Indian kid, it is likely that you have watched the movie ‘Baghban’ either voluntarily or involuntarily, if its involuntarily it is likely because your parents forced you to watch it. After interviewing people from this age group, I precisely understand the Indian parents’ obsession with this movie. What was also surprising for us is that later adulthood seemed to be more challenging for men as compared to women, of course we do not have any empirical evidence to support this but the experiences and responses of older Indian males were enough for us to jump to this conclusion.
There were some common behavioural trends that we found among men of all socio-economic classes and cultures. Firstly, we realised that our society is still very conservative in terms of defining success because even though we say we live in a modern society the success of a person is still measured in terms of ‘whether this person has married off his kids particularly if it’s a daughter.’ This is true for most of the men we interviewed, who believed that their primary duty was to financially secure their family’s future and marry their kids off and then they get so caught up in this process that they often forget to actually enjoy their lives, to sit down and spend some time with their families and engage in activities that they loved to do.
Men from the lower socio-economic strata proudly mentioned that despite having four or five daughters they had managed to give a hefty dowry and marry their daughters off with quite a pomp and show. This came as a shocker for us, for we knew that the practice of dowry still existed but on a scale as this and in a metropolitan city like Mumbai was something that we did not quite expect. We realised what a big deal it was for men to find a good suitor for their children and the kind of societal pressure that was attached to it.
Second, we observed the kind of denial they lived in, the denial of the hardships they experienced or have continued to experience, the fact that men have to be breadwinners and earn for the family irrespective of the working conditions they have to operate in or the challenges that they have to face and it is so deeply ingrained in their minds that even if they have gone through some excruciatingly difficult situations, they don’t find it to be worth mentioning or talking about. The idea that men have to put a strong front to be able to run the family and are the patriarch of the house is normalised to the extent that their emotional pain, physical exhaustion and traumatic experiences are completely dismissed by the society and people don’t often ask them ‘If they are, okay?” because all of it is seen as a part and parcel of being the man of the household and securing the future of the family.
Thirdly, despite the small and limited responses they gave to the questions we asked, there was this need to be heard, we felt as if they wanted someone to listen to everything that they had bottled up, that they did not emotionally express because they were taught that it was not manly enough to do that. I say this because for the first few questions that we asked, most of them were hesitant but as they went along, they had so much to share as if they were waiting for us to probe them further and the moment we did, they just began to narrate their answers in such a free flow of thoughts and emotions.
The experience we acquired in this whole process was tragically beautiful. The insights we gained has inspired us to lead a life filled with resilience but it also gave us a reality check. A reality check about the ways in which the elderly male population is treated, is expected to behave according to certain set standards, the way our society and its members are not aware and equipped to deal with the elderly and to top it all off even the urban civic cities are not age friendly and are designed in a way that makes the roads, buildings and other infrastructure difficult to access and operate for the geriatric population. It is essential therefore to recognise the needs and desires of the elderly, make a unique space for the older generation in our families and society.
It is also necessary that we stop perceiving their transition into late adulthood as their conversion from being assets to liabilities and instead see them as transitioning from a seed to a huge family tree with its strong roots keeping everyone united and its branches spreading out to new heights as they enter this new phase of their life.