Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics PDF
Preview Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics
Mother Tillle Women, Aging, and Ethics Edited by Margaret Urban Walker ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham· Boulder· New York· Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com 12 Hid's Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 911, England Copyright © 1999 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Chapter 2 copyright © 1999 by Diana Tietjens Meyers Chapter 3 copyright © 1999 by Sara Ruddick First paperback printing 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval "system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available The hardback edition of this book was catalogued by the Library of Congress as follows: Mother time: women, aging, and ethics / edited by Margaret Urban Walker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Aged women-Social conditions. 2. Aging-Moral and ethical aspects. I. Walker, Margaret Urban, 1948- HQI061.M67 1999 305.26--dc21 98-45361 CIP ISBN 0-8476-9260-4 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8476-9261-3 Printed in the United States of America en< The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSIINISO Z39.48-1992. For my sister Linda and my brother Frank remembering how we cared Contents Acknowledgments IX Introduction 1 Margaret Urban Walker Part One: Looks 1 There Are No Old Venuses: Older Women's Responses to Their Aging Bodies 7 Frida Kerner Furman 2 Miroir, Memoire, Mirage: Appearance, Aging, and Women 23 Diana Tietjens Meyers Part Two: Lives 3 Virtues and Age 45 Sara Ruddick 4 Unplanned Obsolescence: Some Reflections on Aging 61 Sandra Lee Bartky 5 Stories of My Old Age 75 Hilde Lindemann Nelson 6 Getting Out of Line: Alternatives to Life As a Career 97 Margaret Urban Walker 7 Death's Gender 113 James Lindemann Nelson Part Three: Looking at Health Care 8 Old Women Out of Control: Some Thoughts on Aging, Ethics, and Psychosomatic Medicine 133 Susan Wendell Vll Contents Vlll 9 Menopause: Taking the Cures or Curing the Takes? 151 Joan C. Callahan 10 Religious Women, Medical Settings, and Moral Risk 175 Peggy DesAutels 11 Age, Sex, and Resource Allocation 189 Daniel Callahan Part Four: Living Arrangements 12 Aging Fairly: Feminist and Disability Perspectives on Intergenerational Justice 203 Anita Silvers 13 Home Care, Women, and Aging: A Case Study of Injustice 227 Martha Holstein 14 Caring for Ourselves: Peer Care in Autonomous Aging 245 Robin N. Fiore 15 Age-Segregated Housing As a Moral Problem: An Exercise in Rethinking Ethics 261 Joan C. Tronto Index 279 About the Contributors 289 Acknowledgments This project was made possible by a grant to the Ethics Center of the University of South Florida from the Commission on Aging with Dignity. The Ethics Center of the University of South Florida provided the material and staff support for all phases of the project. A working conference that allowed contributors to generate and refine ideas was hosted by the Center on February 20-22, 1998. The conference was funded by the Pettus Crowe Foundation, with additional support from the Florida Department of Elder Affairs. On behalf of the Ethics Center, I thank these sponsors for seeing the importance of seeding discussion on ethics, women, and aging. The views expressed in the chapters, of course, represent only those of individual authors. In organizing the project and editing the volume for the Ethics Center, I was fortunate to have the assistance and counsel of colleagues and staff at the Center. Peter French, director of the Center, initiated the project idea, followed its progress with keen interest, and remained enthusiastic in his support for it throughout. Peggy DesAutels, assistant director of the Center, provided advice, encouragement, and her characteristic good judgment throughout the project's development; she also served as a facilitator for sessions at the contributor's conference. Robin Fiore was indispensable at several key points in helping me move the project along; with Peggy, she was instrumental in designing a novel and successful conference format. Kathy Agne, the Center's office manager, was tireless and exact in working out all travel and local conference arrangements with participants. She brought generosity and good cheer to all phases of the project and confer ence, from providing Florida oranges from her own backyard tree for our guests, to preparing the final manuscript for publication with energy and care. Asuncion St. Clair efficiently organized the original invitations to contributors. I am grateful for the complete support and enthusiasm of Maureen MacGrogan; one blessing of a scholar's life is having a good friend who's a IX x Acknowledgments great editor. Very special thanks go to Lynn Gemmell, our production editor, for steering us through a high-speed production process with a steady hand and a clear head. Finally, I want to thank the contributors to this volume, who rose on short notice to a challenge to tread on what was for most of them new ground. It has been a pleasure to be instructed by their work. I have been rewarded not only by what they have done, but by the cooperation and camaraderie they have displayed throughout. Margaret Walker St. Petersburg May 1998 Introduction Margaret Urban Walker ../Cm I old? Am I "older"? When am I old, and how can I tell? Who determines this? How does my growing older affect my experience of my self? How does the evidence of my aging affect others' experiences of me? If I ask these questions, I ask about the reality and experience of aging. If I ask whether it makes any difference whether the person asking these ques tions is female rather than male, I broach the topic of gender and aging. And if I ask how the reality and the experience of aging affect understand ings-women's own and others'-of women's selves and their moral agency, of their responsibilities to themselves and to others, and of others' responsibilities to them, I enter fairly novel territory. It is this largely unfa miliar terrain into which the authors in this volume were invited. Under significant constraint of time, they were asked to make initial and explor atory journeys into "ethical issues in women's aging." The very notion that women's aging presents distinctly moral prob lems, both for women and about them, is not obvious. What is striking is how little this nexus of topics-women, aging, and ethics-has so far been explored. There are large literatures on aging in social science, gerontology, and medicine. In the past two decades empirical research specifically on women's aging has been growing in tandem with an elderly population in our society that is ever more disproportionately female at the close of the twentieth century. A small literature on ethics and aging has emerged in the past twenty years as well. It includes humanistic, cultural, and critical studies that explore the history, meaning, and societal construction and valuation of aging, as well as medical, legal, and ethical issues about health care and the end of life. Yet this ethical work has not much addressed situations and experiences of women, or the ways that gender in our society distinctively shapes the reality, experience, and meaning of aging. Our project was to begin an exploration of assumptions, practices, and 1
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