did she attend college. In addition to, while at her stay at the hospital, she admits displaying confusion about the time of day or the day of the week, as well as often, “losing track of time.” (Rowe and Kahn). As per as Ms. Rodriguez’s physical functioning drives, it indicates, “She can do almost all of her Activities of Daily Living (e.g. getting out of bed, using the toilet, getting dressed), all by herself. But she prefers to take a shower only when her daughter is home.” (Rowe and Kahn). In this section of their theory, Rowe and Kahn declare activities and measures of what moderate activities entails, such as brisk walking, walking leisurely, and high physical performance of the hand, trunk, lower extremity and integrated movements of…show more content… Interestingly enough however, the text immediately illuminates her motivation to engage in these productive activities, and that is by means “To give her daughter some time off.” (Rowe and Kahn). Thus implying, Ms. Rodriguez is not doing so willingly, but for the sake of not becoming a burden to Sylvia. In fact, it may be argued that had Sylvia not been present during this stage of her mother’s life, Ms. Rodriguez would not achieve even the minimum that requires for successfully engaging in life and productive activities. Unfortunately, due to the failure to meet Rowe and Kahn’s three domains previously mentioned, Ms. Rodriguez is not considered to be aging successfully.
In 2002, Strawbridge, Wallhagen and Cohen evaluated the utility of two different definitions of successful aging, assessing the definitions of self-rating and Rowe and Kahn’s data criteria of absence of disease, disability and risk factors; maintaining physical and mental functioning; and active engagement with life. According to Strawbridge and his collaborators, whatever alternative term used by…show more content… Despite a lack of consensus about what should be included in an operational definition of successful aging, Phelan and Larson attempt to identify the many and varying definitions published to better understand the ever-growing population of aging adults. According to Phelan and Larson’s observations regarding the way successful aging has been operationalized, they have concluded that very little work has been done to establish the views of aging individuals. Therefore, the relevance to aging individuals of the various definitions thus remains uncertain. As per indicated in data extrapolated from Phelan and Larson’s research, it was found that although several definitions emphasize maintenance of high/independent functional capacity as an essential element of success, including Rowe and Kahn as well as Strawbridge’s definition of aging successfully, no single operational definition of “success” among these researchers has been adopted. As a result, Phelan’s recommendation for future research is to consider the definitions of aging from individual’s perspectives. An important question however, would be whether individuals who experience functional loss believe they can still age successfully. According to Ms. Rodriguez, although she is faced with
