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Headings: Beautiful American Landscape Paintings By Elliot Essman

Content: The old person was no longer seen as a useful member of a family team, but rather as a drain on the family's resources. The Shrinking Family. Older people had previously depended on their families, hence on younger people, for support in their “declining years,” but suddenly that support was gone. Older people suffered as a result. Government programs could provide money at best, and never enough of it, hardly a substitute for a caring, loving family. Living past seventy became, for many, a rather bleak prospect, a time of loneliness, poverty and illness. The Stereotype. The youth culture did another great disservice in stereotyping old people as chronically ill, unable to work, behind the times, slow-thinking, useless financial burdens on society. The idea that old people could actually fall in love or have sex with each other is embarrassing to many Americans, old, young and in-between. The baby boomer generation, which at present is fast entering the ranks fo the elderly, has other ideas about this stereotype.