week 3 post Katherine Brookshire 

One of the problems facing western culture is “what to do with the older family members”.

Just because someone is older does not mean they have lost their attitude in life. Personally being shoved into this situation when I was 16 was very difficult. Grandma did not want roommates, she did not want to be co parent to a third teenager, she did not want to give up her independence. But she had close to absolutely no choice, she could not live on her own anymore. So since the house had been paid off decades previous, it was decided that family would move back home.

Which did not work out well in the end, the hierarchal thing played itself out between sister and brother. Just because they were in their 60s does not mean a thing when it comes to the interaction kids have. Kids are kids, no matter if they are 5 or 65, without parents involvement kids will be kids. No matter if they are grandparents themselves, they will still do said actions.

Which actually brings me to an idea I researched years and years ago.

Abigail Williams was 8 years old; John Proctor was 50. The events which took place over the next 4 years are actually directly about this subject. John had great granddaughters older than Abby. But his “ways” were not curtailable. In those days teenagers were married and started to have children. A 15-year-old bride was the norm then, as opposed to the more than decade later the 1900s. A 15-year-old having a baby, that 15-year-old having a child, that 15-year-old having a child.

How many older people as their suppression factors begin to loosen in old age, do their proclivities come out. That would also be an interesting study to conduct. How many “good solid upstanding people” in old age turn into really bad people as their ability to suppress their urges declines.

How much of those trials were about this type of seniors losing control of their faculties and the community reacted as badly as possible