Narrative Gerontology

Narrative gerontology is a way to study ageing. Its main approach is to explore ageing through the metaphor of "life as story" understanding individuals as thinking and acting on the basis of stories, seeing human beings as storytellers and storylisteners, as biographical beings who do not have stories, but are stories. It is "a lens through which to view the aging process, a unique way of seeing what aging involves" (Kenyon & Randall, 1999).

Over the decades, the body of gerontological research continued to grow but perspectives from the humanities were absent until the 1970s. Only then did researchers start asking questions about the meaning of age, i.e., the whys rather than the hows. "The shift to meaning-based inquirey in gerontolgy in many ways laid important groundwork for narrative gerontology." The term "narrative gerontology" was coined by Ruth in 1994 (via).

My parents were storytellers: the first half of my life was punctuated by the stories they would tell us (me and my siblings) of our Dutch ancestry, culture, and history, our Canadian roots, our family’s journey, the early experiences of my older siblings, and my early life. These stories informed and intrigued us, connected and grounded us, provided direction, and occasionally embarrassed or bored us. I recall that these stories would often enliven my parents, sometimes sadden them, and/or appear to stimulate their thinking; as a child, I can remember remarking to myself (and being somewhat perplexed at the time) that these stories were often directed more at themselves than at us. There seemed to be multiple messages and many levels to these stories. Now my parents are deceased and their stories, as I struggle to recall them, have a renewed, more immediate and ultimately poignant appeal. (de Medeiros, 2013)

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- de Medeiros, K. (2013). Stucturing the Insider's View: Narrative Gerontology in Research and practice. The Gerontologist, 55(2), 337-338.
- Kenyon, G. & Randall, W. (1999). Introduction: Narrative gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies, 13(1), 1-5.
- photograph by Gundula Schulze Eldowy via