"(...) where aging parents find orphans in their living children."

"Aging presents itself as a social diagnosis to people who reach their 60s. The symbolic representation of old age and subjective relations seem to lead to social and emotional isolation. In families there is a clear divide between grandparents and their grandchildren, as well as elderly parents and their children. We live in a time where aging parents find orphans in their living children. 

The divide between those who don’t wish to be a burden, in one side, and those who do not wish to be burdened in another is a new family setting. Abandoned, therefore, elderly people lose all status they built through life. If human beings are social beings it is in old age that, sadly, it can be noted how affection or affective or sympathetic relationships become something difficult, as though the elderly didn’t have the right to live life with affection or tenderness." (Vilhena Novaes de et al., 2018)

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- Vilhena Novaes de, J., Barreto, A., Madureira, B. & Vilhena de, J. (2018). Being old in the consumption society: body, media and social representation. Gerontology & Geriatrics, 3(2), 188-194.

- photograph by Martin Parr via