The Best Age? The Uses of Spare-Time and The Self-Perception of the Elderly

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the relation between the self-perception of the elderly and the uses of spare-timeb, from the Elias and Dunning theoric perspective. Therefore, the thematic oral history was adopted as methodology to the sources production, which was performed with 06 elderly people living in the Lagoa Dourada residential condominium, that is located in the municipality of Ponta Grossa-PR. As a technique for data analysis was used the content analysis, that allowed to indicate the meaning nuclei emerged in the oral interviews. By estabilishing relations between the emerging categories and the spare-time activities developed by them was possible to understand that the elderly who have a positive evaluation of the aging process spend about 50% of their time in spare-time routines, with emphasis on domestic care and rest moments, dedicating the remaining free time to intermediary spare-time activities of self fulfilment and self expansion and leisure activities. The analyses allowed to consider that the perception that they would be experiencing the best age of their lives is related to the activities developed in spare-time, which contribute to the updating of their knowledge, resulting in resistance movements to the stigmatization of the elderly.