Cultural Views Of Aging Analysis

This week’s text about culture and socialization was striking. Whenever I venture out of my comfort zone for writing, I will communicate my approach to guide the organization and harmony of my content. After reading the material and composing my response, I plan to: (a) share my personal analysis of how the United States handles aging; (b) recall the myths I heard while parenting my firstborn son; and (c) explain my belief that one’s achievements within a culture can delineate success across societies.

Cultural Views of Aging
The writing mentions the process of socialization and the varying views of aging across cultures. Socialization characterizes how “an individual becomes a member of a particular culture and takes on its values, beliefs,
and other behaviors in order to function within it” (2011, p. 55). In my Haitian and Jamaican customs, people view aging as sacred. It celebrates wisdom, change and progression, and signifies allegiance—to not abandon or hurry a family member to a third-party care system, but to maintain responsibility until a loved one passes away. Whereas, in America, I notice that people frown upon aging—with the darkening of grey hair using dye or medical treatments to correct wrinkles. There is a dire need to suppress one’s maturation by altering the physical appearance that reveals one’s age.
In America, aging is a time to press for independence in leaving a parent’s or guardian’s home at 18 years old; while in my culture, it is not uncommon for middle-aged adults to still live with parents.
Aging is a time to categorize stages in undesirable terms, like a child entering the “terrible twos,” or adults experiencing a “mid-life crisis.” Aging is a time when there is unpredictability of one’s number and how that number places a person in society, reflecting on how the retirement age changed from 65 and will continue to climb. With these limited examples, American culture tends to have a negative perspective of aging. We may not know the damage we are causing along the way; but at one point, the perspective our society has on aging and the roles individuals play in a society, will cause people to experience the phenomenon known as the “integrity vs. despair crisis of late adulthood” (2011, p. 78). Those who grow old will eventually question their existence, and if it is meaningful by how they gathered clues throughout their lives to define success and
failure.

Pregnancy and Birth
Due to how we view socialization, I think we have a faulty start in American culture with the way we nurture children after birth. In retrospect, I celebrate my innate attributes of motherhood, after I birthed my son, against a culture that contradicted my beliefs. Now, I am learning through the writing that the advice, information, and code of conduct I received as a mother in training are odd according to other cultures. For instance, while societies honor co-sleeping, or the habit of “a child sleeping with the parent” (2011, p. 64) as a secure attachment, the instructor cautioned me in my infant training class with the following statement, “Don’t sleep with your baby, or else you might roll over him and crush him.” So, with fear and trembling, I made sure my son was safe in his bassinet every night, later transitioning to his crib. At moments when my newborn cried, my mother-in-law stated, “It’s good to let him cry. It will develop his lungs.” Against her feedback, I comforted my son when he used his “earliest form of communication” (2011, p. 68). As another example, when I prepared to nurse my son, a mother advised me to research my rights on nursing in public, which I did not exercise. Overall, misconceptions and societal taboos, like my mother-in-law’s statement or the justification to nurse a baby in the open, seem heartless and harmful to human development. Consequently, when it comes to cultural views on aging, the manner in which society handles children in the early stages has a psychological impact on how people view themselves in the process of aging.

What Is Success?
With that understanding, what process of socialization is correct? In my opinion, no one can answer that question across all nations. I believe how a culture wants to prove itself to civilization is the right determiner for understanding and respecting values, not how someone else wants a culture to exist. Take for instance the Japanese saying, “Pass with four, fail with five” (2011, p. 70) that set a standard for success based on hours of sleep. Is it parental neglect for a Japanese parent to enforce four hours of sleep for a child to have academic success, or is it laziness that America recommends eight hours of sleep for a healthy habit? While the quote about hours show me that the Japanese culture establishes a relationship that less sleep breeds success, the American culture emphasizes that more sleep stimulates functionality. In both societies, they have priorities and means to meet them; and they control their path.
For example, my previous response on February 27, 2017 noted that Japan leads the United States by a significant margin for educational systems. However, the United States placed first with 121 medals in the Olympics 2016, compared to Japan placing sixth with 41 medals (“2016 Summer Olympics medal Tracker,” n.d.). That makes me think that the reversal in positions reveals the values and priorities of the two societies. To say reasonably, both societies think they are rightfully exhibiting behaviors that meet their objectives. Hence, they are models for other cultures craving the same results.
By sharing my personal journey on parenting and contrasting the Japanese and American culture, I want to express how unfair it is to label a culture as wrong and ineffective, rather than unique and productive.
As a new mother, I formed a judgment that the best way to parent was my way. This did not negate medical advice or ignore people with knowledge; but parenting became easier when I filtered out what did not work for me, and focused on what worked for my family. I believe that is what cultures do; they figure out what works for them and create avenues to meet their goals. The mistake that humans make is the decision to impose one’s beliefs on others and govern their style of
living.
After reading, I currently question the socializing views I will bring to the classroom. Can I determine every child’s needs and respond appropriately, not according to anyone’s opinion, but according to my morals? Will my classroom score greatly for reaching success as a collective group, instead of mere focus on individual achievement? As the text used different countries to highlight socialization, I noticed the process for each culture had core ethics of responsibility to one’s community and reverence for one’s community.