by Stephen Bate

Created on: September 16, 2008

Obviously, the answer to this question almost entirely depends on the recipient and their sense of humor and their attitude towards the age that they have achieved. It is also important that this type of gift comes from someone that they know well. A sudden and unexpected gift ridiculing their age from a mere acquaintance may be a little too surprising and hurt their feelings.

Some people realise that with age comes wisdom and maturity and they may wish to celebrate this, so sending them a gift to emphasize their role as a "wise old man" may be self affirming and give them a huge amount of confidence in their role in life.

Others may just realize that the gift is meant entirely as a point of fun and treat it as such. Their sense of humor about their age will just mean that the derogatory nature of the gift has no effect on them, and they are able to laugh about it and not be insulted at all. At least outwardly!

However, many people are very insecure about their age, seeing it as a creeping measure of their own mortality, a recognition of a dimming of their physical or mental abilities or as an indication of their "usefulness" in society. I would guess that most of us feel some of these, at least in part, and therefore would not fully appreciate a gift that makes fun of our age.

The problem, as I see it, with these types of gift, is that they stereotype our opinions of people once they reach a certain age. They only serve to re-inforce our concerns over our increasing age, so can only act to weaken our self esteem or sense of self worth. When you look at it this way, these gifts can only ever be seen as insulting, because that is exactly what they are trying to achieve!

In an ever more diverse society, we need people of all religions, backgrounds and ages to add, in equal measure, to the fabric of our community, so reinforcing negative stereotypes can surely never be a good thing. Indeed, reinforcing any stereotypes with an obvious act can only be bad. It reflects badly on us if we try to weaken someone else's position, maybe to better our own, even if this is unintentional.

Be very wary of the individual's feelings towards their age and advancing years before selecting these gifts, as they may not see it as the joke that it was intended to be, and it may spark really strong feelings of diminishing self worth and what their role will be in their older years.

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