Psychologists today recognize childhood as a separate stage of life which can only be understood in its own terms, and they wonder why the Western world took so long to see the folly of regarding children simply as small, inadequately socialized adults  Most psychologists, however, persist in regarding people 70 to 90 years old as though they were 35 year olds who just happen to have white hair and extra leisure time  But old age is as fundamentally different from young adulthood and middle age as childhood is -- a fact attested to by the organization of modern social and economic life
Surely it is time, ttherefore, to acknowledge that serious research into the unique psychology of advanced age has become indispensable
Whenever a society's economic life is so organized that two distinct times of life are treated as being fundamentally different from one another, each time of life can be understood only in terms of its own distinct psychology.