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Key points
- Ageism in retirement villages reveals conflicting needs among residents of varying ages and health conditions.
- Many residents express resentment toward frail neighbors, challenging notions of community and acceptance.
- The narratives of successful aging often overlook the reality of diverse needs within retirement living.
- Recognizing ageism is essential, as today's older residents will one day be part of a vulnerable population.
“We don’t want to be tripping over Zimmer frames all the time,” said John*, 73, as he expressed his frustration over the frailer residents in his retirement village. John and his wife, Jean, moved to the village a year ago with the expectation of living in an active, independent community. Instead, John found the presence of much older, frail residents disheartening. “It’s depressing,” he said, “to see these people, who should really be in a nursing home or receiving care.”
In my recent research published in The Gerontologist, we conducted 80 in-depth interviews with older adults living in retirement villages across the UK and Australia. Our goal was to understand why people choose retirement living and how their expectations aligned—or clashed—with the needs of other residents. What surprised us most was the level of resentment that some residents expressed toward their frailer neighbors.
Retirement living is big business. It is estimated that around 5% of Australians, 6% of Americans, and 1% of UK citizens over 65 live in a retirement village. Researchers have argued that one of the problems with retirement villages is that they tend to treat “older people” as a homogeneous category, as more or less “the same” simply because they are over 60. The reality is that residents have extremely diverse needs and span up to three decades: from age 60 to over 90.
Contrasting and Conflicting Needs
We found that some residents (whom we dubbed the "Peter Pans") chose retirement living specifically to delay the challenges of old age and extend their sense of midlife vitality. David, 76, and his wife, Pam, 73, moved to a UK retirement village to stay active, fit, and independent. As David explained, "We are still reasonably fit, you see. We’ve got a strong stable background of family and friends. We hope this is a place which will be easy to live in and where we can do the things we want to and feel fit and healthy."
In contrast, others chose the same retirement village because they were concerned about increasing frailty and deteriorating health and sought a community that they felt could support them in these challenges.
Peter, 78, and his wife Sue, 76, had moved to the village to cope with Sue’s increasing dependency due to a dementia-related illness. Peter told us: “Well, it all stems really from Sue’s illness…and the problems that have occurred, and we thought this would be the answer…I was under the impression that’s what we would find by moving here.”
Ageism Among the ‘Old’
These contrasting sets of needs are often in conflict. People who move into retirement villages to prolong midlife and to feel part of an active, independent community, are not always accepting of frailer residents.
Jane, 72, remarked, “The older people here make you feel older. They can’t do as much…We do help them, but we can’t live our lives around them.”
Paul, 74, called for a more selective sales process. He told us: “I don’t think the people [here] are vetted enough. I think the main criteria is you’ve got the money. I don’t necessarily think there ought to be more support; I think there ought to be less people who require support here.”
Some people who had moved to feel more supported in their vulnerability and frailty sometimes felt marginalized and unsupported. Peter told us, tearfully, that it hadn’t turned out as he and his wife had hoped. “In some ways, now, I just feel she’s a bit like a leper really—because no one actually wants to get close to her here,” he said.
But others demonstrated a more accepting attitude towards older residents. Ralph, 72, recognized that he might be more frail himself in the future and welcomed support from fellow residents: “We are currently the people to whom the neighbors say, ‘Can you help with this or do that?’ 'Take me somewhere or do that?‘ But I think one day it will work the other way round. I think maybe when we get older, we will become dependent on others here too.”
Cultural geographer Kevin McHugh has argued that retirement communities reflect and sell compelling narratives about successful ageing. These narratives, he argued, are “defined as much by the absent image (old, poor folks) as by the image presented: handsome, healthy, comfortably middle-class 'seniors’, busily filling sun-filled days”.
Retirement communities are often vaguely defined and appear to offer all things to all people. But they can only be a desirable model if they genuinely recognize and accommodate the diverse needs of older people.
As Swedish gerontologist Håkan Jönson has argued, it makes little sense to resent more frail, vulnerable older people: Why should we resent a percentage of the population that we will probably be part of in the future?
*All names have been changed to protect anonymity. This article republishes extracts from an original article published by the author in The Conversation under a Creative Commons Licence.
