The Old Man

Karen Pallesgaard Munk, Michael Smaerup, Kirsten Maibom, Kristian Park Frausing, Karen Pallesgaard Munk, Michael Smaerup, Kirsten Maibom, Kristian Park Frausing

• Publisher: Aarhus University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9788772191263
• eBook ISBN: 9788775972005
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory
• Index: Psychology

Old men – especially those who live alone – remain an understudied group in the gerontological literature, despite their significance to the demographic development. Among the elderly, the proportion of old men living alone is rapidly rising. This book is an anthology of different perspectives on The Old Man. It contains a personal account of becoming an old man, treats ideas about the old man throughout Western cultural history, and presents the first studies on the very old man. It also discusses a wide variety of topics – including alcohol as a prism for male aging; the old man and sexuality, digitization, and masculinities; and the single old man as lonely or just living alone – paying much-needed attention to this long overlooked group. The contributing researchers come from disciplines as different as psychology, philosophy, theology, anthropology, health, and gender studies.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The history of the longest-living men
• Choice and chance: Aging men and masculinities
• On the old man’s well-being and what to do when he is not well
• “I appreciate it when they come here, but I also bloody do when they leave”: Meanings of loneliness among older men living alone
• The old man and sexuality
• Older Danish men: Digital practices of care
• Rising from very poor childhoods: Old men on a life trajectory with the growing Danish welfare state
• Dimensions of older male existence seen through the prism of alcohol use
• On his own terms: Everyday lives of older men living alone
• The immigrant old man
• The “criminal old man”: Forget me not!
• Being and becoming an old man: An essay
• Being a very old man: Fragments
• About the authors
• CONTRIBUTORS