Weiye Loh's Library tagged Age →  View Popular, Search in Google

we know instinctively and research evidence itself is beginning to emerge that particularly in the case of older persons individualized, medicalized, institutionally focused care may be precisely what is not needed and may have the effect over the span of the final decades of life to not only reduce the quality of life but even the length of life itself.

individuals including or even especially older persons are happiest and healthiest and thus less likely to need interventions from the formal medical system if they are living surrounded by family and friends and firmly embedded in communities where they have support, friendship and love.

Youth surveys have shown that the young sometimes have moral standards just as high, if not higher, than those of adults, says the respected scholar who has done research in the fields of citizenship, moral and values education.
 
 One study he did on youth in Hong Kong, for example, showed that they expressed deep respect for their parents. 'They sometimes don't know how to communicate with their parents, but they know that fulfilling filial piety is not just giving money to them, but also spending time with them.

The problem, he says, is that people tend not to notice when the values that they have imbibed since they were young no longer take pride of place in society.
 
 While frugality, for example, is a long-cherished virtue, it is increasingly at odds with capitalist economies where employment is dependent on people spending - rather than saving - money.

""窃以少年老成，中国称人之语也；年长而勿衰，英、美人相勖之辞也，此亦东西民族涉想不同、现象趋异之一端欤？青年之于社会，犹新鲜活泼细胞之在人身。新陈代谢，陈腐朽败者无时不在天然淘汰之途，与新鲜活泼者以空间之位置及时间之生命。人身遵新陈代谢之道则健康，陈腐朽败之细胞充塞人身则人身死；社会遵新陈代谢之道则隆盛，陈腐朽败之分子充塞社会则社会亡."
 
 Roughly translated, Chinese people like to compliment young people for being mature, where as British and Americans like to encourage each to stay young while growing old. Young people are like the fresh and active cells of a body. If there is no metabolism and the old cells don't get replaced by the young ones, the body dies. Society works the same way.
 
 Chen Duxiu said this in 1915. Nearly a century later, we are still trying to make young people boring old people."

The age of first motherhood is rising all over the West. In Italy, Germany, and Great Britain, it’s 30. In the U.S., it’s gone up to 25 from 21 since 1970, and in New York State, it’s even higher, at 27. But among the extremely middle-aged, births aren’t just inching up. They are booming. In 2008, the most recent year for which detailed data are available, about 8,000 babies were born to women 45 or older, more than double the number in 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Five hundred and forty-one of these were born to women age 50 or older—a 375 percent increase. In adoption, the story is the same. Nearly a quarter of adopted children in the U.S. have parents more than 45 years older than they are.

Reproductive technology accounts for the sharp rise in the numbers. Women over 45 who want to carry their own babies most often use donor eggs, though egg freezing, a more cutting-edge method, offers early adopters another option, a kind of reproductive DVR for circumventing the inflexible and often inconvenient schedules handed down by Mother Nature. (Save your shows, and watch them when you have time; put your own eggs on ice, and wait for Mr. Right.) Egg freezing now gets write-ups not just in medical journals but also in Vogue, where a long feature on the technology appeared this past May between articles on avant-garde gastronomy and the fashionable art of mismatching patterns.

Yet, the same report noted that few Muslim youths read the Quran often or understand it well. That being the case, the desire for the Quran to replace the existing constitution seems to signal less any true understanding of Islamic concepts of governance and jurisprudence, but more a frustration with and loss of confidence in the constitution.

Just 18.1% read the Quran often, 8.6% never do so and the rest of them read it sometimes. Their low understanding of the Quranic verses could be a factor for the rather low reading rate which necessitates the knowledge of Arabic, which is taught at rather low proficiency levels in High School. Only 0.9% of youths understand all the verses and 11.7% understand most of them, while the vast majority (78.4%) understand rather little. Age makes little difference to their ability to understand the Quran. Rural youths appear to experience more difficulties than urban youths.

 

– Muslim Youth Survey 2011 Malaysia and Indonesia

According to a new study by the London School of Economics, one in every three children in the U.K. between 9 and 12 has his/her own Facebook page, despite Facebook’s minimum age requirement of 13. Among 13-16 year-olds, that number shoots to 43 percent.

The study, titled Social Networking, Age and Privacy, looked at trends among 25,000 young people across Europe. Researchers noted that European children are taking undue risks online:

 

A quarter of 9-16 year-olds on social networking sites across Europe have their profile set to ‘public’. One fifth of children whose profile is public display their address and/or phone number, twice as many as for those with private profiles. However, children in the U.K. tended to be more careful – only 10 per cent have their profiles set to ‘public.’