Sociology Now, Census Update

■65–75: “young” old age

■75–85: “old” old age

■85 and over: “oldest” old age (Moody, 1998)

Of course, the boundaries of these life stages are subject to

lots of variation and change.

In most societies, the transitions between life stages are

occasions of great importance, marked by important milestones,

ceremonies, and rituals. Many nonindustrial societies require

grueling rites of passage, such as weeks in a sweat lodge or

embarking on some “spirit quest” in the wilderness. Today the

many transitional stages of late childhood and adolescence are

marked by bar mitzvahs, religious confirmations, high school

and college graduations, coming-out parties (for young women

entering fashionable society at age 18), and quinceañeras(for

15-year-old girls in Hispanic communities).

There are also a seemingly endless number of milestones, especially for the mid-

dle class: a first part-time job, a first full-time job, getting a driver’s license, being

allowed to vote or to drink alcohol, owning a first car, moving into a first apartment.

Middle-class adulthood has fewer milestones, and many involve watching children go

through the life stages. Late adulthood and the transition to old age are marked by a

flurry of retirement ceremonies and often accompanied by cross-country moves.

Childhood

When you look at paintings and sculptures from medieval Europe, you may notice

a curious phenomenon: Children are portrayed as miniature adults. The artists could

certainly look around and see that a 10-year-old differed from a 30-year-old in

shape, proportion, and features, but they were responding to a society that did not

differentiate childhood as a separate stage of life. Children worked alongside the

adults, boys mostly in the fields, girls mostly at home. They were

smaller, so they received easier tasks to do, but there was no concep-

tion that childhood should be free of cares or responsibilities. The

“miniature adults” had little free time for play and few toys and games

to play with; only a tiny percentage went to school. They were not pro-

tected from knowledge about sex and death, as modern children are.

At night, around the fire, they sang the same songs and listened to the

same folktales as the adults, many of them sexually suggestive and very

violent. Because they were not considered innocent, when they commit-

ted crimes, they received the same penalty as adults, including the death

penalty. They could even be tried for witchcraft and burned at the stake

(Ariès, 1962; deMause, 1976).

While some scholars disagree, Ariès (1962) and deMause (1976)

argue that the Western concept of childhood, as a distinct stage of life,

didn’t emerge until the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Now most

children would require training outside the home before they could go to work, so

schools and apprenticeships became common, and books, toys, and games designed

to train children in adult social norms began to appear in large numbers. When Dante

wroteThe Divine Comedyin the thirteenth century, he assigned unbaptized babies

to limbo, a place between heaven and hell, but he put older children into hell along

with everyone else. By the eighteenth century, Protestant theologians were arguing

that children were innocent by nature, so they could not be held accountable for their

350 CHAPTER 11AGE: FROM YOUNG TO OLD

JMany cultures celebrate
rituals that mark the end of
one life stage and the begin-
ning of another. An example
of such a ritual is this
Quineañera (a young woman’s
celebration of her fifteenth
birthday) in Salina, Kansas.

At the turn of the century, boys wore short

pants, even on formal occasions. A major

milestone in the road to adulthood was

their first pair of long pants. We still

sometimes hear the term “pantywaist” for

someone so weak and ineffectual that he

is obviously still wearing the short pants of

a child.

Didyouknow

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