When We Were Individuals, Not Categories

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

I am not sure care for the aged is a career I would pursue.  We are in the tail of the baby boom curve now and as people like me die off – which will happen well before the end of the working life of the average current college student –  the opportunities in the field are going to decline.  But apparently you can study how to care for the elderly in college, and like most other fields of study, it is becoming heavily politicized.

My own personal experiences with eldercare are not pleasant.  My mother suffered with dementia for many years, being institutionalized for the last 11 years of her life.  Let’s put a bookmark there and look at a story out of Florida:

“Gerontological Social Work” covers many topics expected in a graduate level course on aging, such as biology and psychology.

“Topics include the demography, physical, cognitive, and psychosocial aspects of aging,” the course description states. Students will also learn about “health-care and social policies that impact older persons, caregivers, and the aging network of services.”

But students in Jocelyne Fliger’s class will also learn about “forms of oppression (such as ageism, sexism, racism, ablebodyism, beautism, and homophobia).” Another instructor is also offering a similar course that covers the same list of “isms.”

I get the idea here – it is to teach people to treat the elderly and disabled as individuals, not some category, but by focusing on the categories, I am pretty certain the effect will be the exact opposite.

My mother’s care was not in my control.  My mother lived two thousand miles from me.  My mother was placed on hospice status well before she was anywhere near dying so that Medicare would pay for some equipment that was needed to assist with her neurological deterioration.  So now, she was labeled as dying.  She was officially on hospice for five of those eleven years.  Somewhere in Year Two of hospice status, some “well-meaning” social worker called to encourage me to visit my mother less frequently – after all, “There is not much left there.”  It was, frankly, Sarah Palin’s much ridiculed “death panel” come to life – and it was horrific.  And all because my mom had been categorized instead of viewed as an individual.

Interestingly, I was the one being oppressed because I was being encouraged to reinforce my mother’s label rather than consider my mother’s personal, actual status.  The system ran by the categories it assigned.  My mom’s category had obviously been deemed worthless and a burden to the system.

Labels and categories are intended to be useful tools, but in way too many instances they have become our overlords.  We have endless debates over what labels are discriminatory or oppressive and what ones are useful and productive.  Yesterday I wrote that we fear things, when what we really need to fear is the people operating the thing.  The same applies to these labels and categories.

The world would be a much better place if we focused less on fighting labels and more on developing people that knew when they were useful and when they were not.  I think it better to teach people the utility of labels rather than fight labels.