What has happened to ageing cannot be understood without comparing how things are with how things were before industrialisation, when society was to a considerable extent no more than the family writ large, and the family straddled all ages. The family was responsible for the production of food, for education, a good deal of religious practice, for such entertainment as there was and for controlling those members of all ages who stayed within its fold. As the economy was based on agriculture, and as most people were at the margin of subsistence (or below it when the harvest was bad), outside the landowning classes everybody who could work had to work, irrespective of age. Who would not toil should not eat.

LRB 25 October 1990 | PDF Download