"Concerns about aging, old age security, and intergenerational relations existed long before youth culture and failing fertility became popular media topics. In The Shady Side of Fifty Lisa Dillon explores the psychological, social, and economic dimensions of aging from 1870 to 1901, a period of socio-economic and demographic change that mirrors our own. She breaks new ground by integrating statistical analyses of historical data from Canadian and U.S. censuses with a discourse analysis of ideas about age and old age." "In addition to using the census as both a qualitative document and a source of quantitative data, Dillon draws on diaries and letters to show how subtle shifts in the living arrangements of the elderly, decreasing intergenerational interdependence, and the advent of retirement and the empty nest changed the trajectory of old age. She analyses these social shifts to reveal two distinct kinds of age anxiety: facing a new decade and dealing with extreme old age."--Jacket.