Ageism on Mumsnet (and in society)

[SusanandMidge]

There's a discussion going on at the moment as to whether old people should be made move out of their family homes to free them up for younger couples (which thankfully no one on that particular thread is endorsing). However it's a topic that has come up a number of times on MN with many posters bitterly begrudging the fact that old people are 'hogging' family sized homes, or that their parents' house is now worth ten times what they paid for it in 1972.

I have also seen posters complaining about elderly people using the supermarket at weekends or being in the post office at lunchtime, because they should leave these busy times to working people; questioning why their teenagers should offer seats to elderly people who travel for free; and in many ways belittling and being unpleasant about the older generation.

I know all generations get their stereotyping but some of the ageism is really unpleasant. It's a minority of posters but their begrudging, bitter and hostile attitude towards the elderly can be really depressing to read.

More young people who can’t afford to have a baby while young will mean more older people with babies. Where are they going to sit in all of this?

I think most people empathise though. So why talk about it as though it is all of ‘the elderly’. And suggesting that drugs should not be available is a thoroughly unpleasant thing to say. There no doubt are old people who don’t care - but there are plenty that do. Frankly, making sweeping generalisations is not very bright.

So you don't have enough saved to retire now you're past 50....neither do I but I'm not bitter enough to begrudge those that have their good fortune.

Everyone is some kind of "ist" and commits various forms of "isms". I don't think it's the massive deal that some parts of the media would have you believe and I'm not going to be told to be mortally offended by any and every such labelled thing, let alone shout and holler about it all over the internet.

Whoever you are, not everyone is going to like you and what you do all the time - and some of that dislike may even [sharp intake of breath] be capable of being categorised as an "ism".

Has always been thus and will always be thus.

People can think what they like about me. I simply don't care and I can't be made to care. Nice and easy!

Retiring at 50 and then expecting to be waited on for the next 30yrs etc by people who can’t afford their rent etc.

I’m 52, I’ll be working well into my 60s, no one in my social circle is going to be retiring much before statutory age. I have 2 school age kids, so juggling work, home, childcare - I don’t remotely recognise all these 50 year old retirees with no caring commitments and high incomes/gold plated pensions. And I certainly don’t consider myself to be elderly - what a fucking nonsense.

In all honesty most of the people I know my age are juggling multiple commitments, many have had to start over again as kids leave home and marriages break down, not living a life if easy and easy finance.

No one disputes that many pensioners made wise financial decisions during their working lives, but what some people seem to forgot is that those opportunities are nonexistent in today's world.

For example, my parents between them have a good income. Part of my mums pension which amounts to around £500 a month is from private pension schemes from working in private healthcare and occupational health, a sector she was in for about 8 years. Find me a scheme now that has that kind of return. I pay into a private pension, and if I continue at a similar percentage rate for the remainder of my working life will be looking at a monthly payment of less than £200 a month, and that would be from over 40 years of work!

It might be difficult for some young people not to resent the generation whose voting has taken away so many opportunities for them such as living/studying abroad (obviously not everyone but a large share: https://www.statista.com/statistics/520954/brexit-votes-by-age/#:~:text=Brexit%20votes%20in%20the%20UK%20by%20age%202016&text=In%20the%20Brexit%20referendum%20of,of%20people%20aged%20over%2065. )

That’s a good point. My DM started working at 16 (for the NHS). My DC says they want to do an MSC so will be at least 6 years older before they enter the workforce.

Couldn’t disagree more OP. I see shocking ageism on MN - but directed towards young people, who are almost always described in very negative terms.

say anything however accurate about someone 60 plus and their selfish entitled behaviour and you get called ageist. However if anyone posts about their teenage daughter - posters will frequently call the DD “spoilt madam” “brat” etc unchallenged.

There was a post on here recently by a mum whose 21 year old daughter was pregnant and in a mess and posters were demanding she have an abortion. However in a post a few days later a mum was posting that her daughter had told her to have an abortion and the posts were uniformly negative towards the DD - it was none of her business, teenagers, how dare she etc. So older women can have bodily autonomy but younger women and girls can’t. The irony.

I think we are actually a very pro age society. Elderly people have been overwhelmingly protected against austerity (cuts have all been towards services for young people and families - child benefit, sure start, EMA etc). And now they are getting a boosted pension thanks to the triple lock - paid for a diminishing number of working people, who in a lot of cases have less disposable income than the pensioners. The demographics in this country and many other western countries don’t stack up - we have never had so many old people supported by so few working people. In the next 10 years there will be less than 1.5 workers for every retired person and the social and economic implications are huge. We are going to have to switch towards taxing wealth in the form of assets (including land, so those 4 bed houses), far more than we do and move away from taxing income because the situation is simply unsustainable.

Personally I think housing is a public good not a private asset and people who occupy space they don’t need (so 2 people in a 4 bed house) should be taxed heavily - 2 or even 3 times the rate of council tax to encourage them to move. It’s fair and ethical and better from an environmental point of view than destroying more green belt land for housing.

If I was an old person now I’d feel like I’m far too old to move out the way and not to what I want for the sake of entitled super busy young people.

Imagine reaching the age of 90 and being told when to go to the post office - they should tell anyone suggesting this to fuck right off and stage a slow-queue sit-in.

I do worry for the Entitled Youth how they will cope when they reach old age and become invisible and irrelevant.

Someone mentioned about the prohibitive cost of house moves - see stamp duty, if you buy another, smaller house. (Why should the government tax you for buying a house, anyway?)

One of the effects of these costs is that people choose to stay rather than move. And when they stay, they extend the house. Extending the house means creating bigger and more luxurious houses, which they then want to live in, but it also removes smaller houses from the market that younger / older/ other people could otherwise buy. This is very obvious in the houses surrounding me: one
two-bedroom is now a four bedroom, another now a three bedroom. And most of the three bedroomed houses have become four or even five bedrooms plus extra bathrooms and living space.

Someone also mentioned singles in cars. I don't hear this being discussed in the midst of all the climate change panic. (Not even by those pesky protestors stopping people getting to work or hospital. Maybe I haven't been listening.) Or that people are buying bigger, fatter, heavier, cars, rather than smaller, more economical ones or none. I hate that bonkers Mayor's attempt to extract money from poorer paid - often women - and working-class people who can't afford to live as it is, never mind extorting even more from them but yes there are problems with cars. The single occupancy must be a sacred right - and anyway, car sharing on any mass scale wouldn't work - who wants the hoi polloi in one's personal chariot? It'd be like travelling on the bus with the same - perish the thought.

I got some really awful comments once about being weird (I am but not for this) because I said I loved my time working with the elderly.
I wonder if the people who have such disdain for older people realise ageing happens to us all.
Being old is shit physically for so many older people, it's a tough time too navigate with changing technology/social norms etc, the world can become scary for those who feel trapped 20 years behind it.
So what do we do?
Treat them with fucking contempt, because that's useful to everyone.

There was an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review recently that showed all women faced a level of gendered ageism in the workplace and wider society. The research found younger women were treated primarily as silly girls or sexual objects - rather than their knowledge or expertise. Women approaching and in middle age faced presumptions around family commitments and again, looks took precedence over actual experience or ability - in a way that men did not face. And then as women got older, they were treated as being less capable or nagging/ interfering when men of the same age were reversed for experience and wisdom.

It was a depressing, but interesting read.

https://hbr.org/2023/06/women-in-leadership-face-ageism-at-every-age?fbclid=IwAR3A3vZOh8yujL8gqVYPG-f2gMXbgpZ0-036e-ksHX1Y2iwbA21Rl0Gk17g

I think people are just understandably angry at a situation where they’ve got little prospect of getting on the housing ladder or ever retiring and a whole host of other societal imbalances that have arisen that no one is exactly to blame for. They should be reported if they express this as ageism. At the same time it’s not necessarily difficult to see why some people feel a bit hard done by - especially when they had been led to expect things to only get better and it’s not exactly gone that way. I also think it goes both ways as - and we know it’s a classic example - I have been criticised for having a Netflix subscription for example as though this sort of millennial “life choice” has anything to do with the ability to afford housing. I am a fortunate person who can afford housing though - thanks entirely to my boomer parents, for which I’m grateful.

Yeah, it’s interesting that people say body size is the last acceptable prejudice, but arguably ageism impacts on more people and for women is a double whammy.

It is against MN guidelines as a PP says so we could all be more active at calling it out

Personally I think housing is a public good not a private asset and people who occupy space they don’t need (so 2 people in a 4 bed house) should be taxed heavily - 2 or even 3 times the rate of council tax to encourage them to move.

Does that include younger people who have bought a 3/4 bed house in anticipation of starting a family? What if the planned children don’t come along - should we tax infertile couples who bought a family home but weren’t able to conceive? Or set a time limit - they can stay in their bigger home for 3 years and then be taxed accordingly? Or is it just older people you’re meaning?

My ex and I were in our 4 bed detached house for 20 years before we finally had children, through adoption, at what point should we have been taxed to encourage us to move?

You might as well say a recently married couple oughtn't clog up a four bedroom house because they haven't got children yet or maybe never will.

It really is a daft argument.

And for the MIL haters - The mothers of little boys will very likely have a DIL eventually-

What goes around comes around!

I'm old, and with luck, they will be too, one day. I think they will look back and think their young selves were idiots!

I've noticed over the last year that I get treated like I'm 100 years old. I've had people giving up seats, waving me in front of them in a queue, helping me load my car at IKEA. The other day the woman serving in a cafe insisted on carrying my tray to the table for me. I know I look rough but I'm only 50.

There is also a lot of bitterness towards those who inherited money from their parents. Those parents (like mine) who witnessed WW2 and all the horrors that brought. Those parents who scrimped and saved, didn't have fancy holidays, go out drinking etc, managed to buy property, brought up children, no cars, walked everywhere, no extravagant christmas/birthday presents.
What do the haters expect these inheritors to do?
Refuse it and give it all to those who have spent a life time sitting on their arse with their hand outstretched?

I'm 53 - my retirement age is 68 - I'd need to live to be 119 to have been retired longer than I have worked and paid taxes - I do not intend to do this!

If all us old fuckers in 4 beds buy up all the 2-3 bed where will first time buyers be then? I have enough equity to be a cash buyer when I next move (because I am moving back to my home town where prices are cheap) - I'll be in a better position than someone with a 95% mortgage - is that fair?

My home town still has 3 bed houses for under £100K - I do understand that in some places it's very hard to buy but not everywhere - I moved to buy my first house and lived in a very rough area - I couldn't have afforded to buy in a nice bit of town and certainly not in Solihull - where I worked!

I have worked since I was 17, I have paid tax, I have raised 3 kids and worked all their lives - older 2 also work - life was never easy or handed to me on a plate - I do think people have a rose tinted view of our lives in the 70's/80's - and indeed of my mums post war childhood - with rationing, two traumatised parents and inadequate housing

Why should single elderly people clog up four bedroom homes?

Totally agree - let’s go one step further. When an elderly woman becomes widowed, let’s have the hearse drop her off in her new home (a charming puddle in a leafy suburb, what more does she need) on the way back from her husband’s funeral so that a Boden couple with two children can move into the house her and her lifelong companion lived in together for 50 years. That’ll teach those selfish, clogging bitches.

I mean when will people stop thinking of their families and start thinking of random, angry strangers instead?!

Yes but the poster I was addressing seemed to be implying that lots of 50 year olds just waltz out of the workplace and expect to be supported and 'waited on' for the rest of their lives ie did nothing to deserve it and are leeching off society.

And yet the 20+ continue to have babies they "can't afford" and expect the older generation to subsidize them with free childcare and house deposits.