Tibetan culture views becoming old in a positive way, as a time when the cares and worries of managing a household are lessened and shifted to one's child or children. Ageing is seen ideally as a process of disengagement from everyday worldly concerns. It is a time when persons devote more time and attention to acquiring merit by religious activities in preparation for the future, i.e. for the rebirth that follows death. Although all of one's productive and household work does not usually cease, the worries associated with the struggle for subsistence should decrease substantially. Ideally the elderly should live their later years as respected members of extended families in which their children look after the day to day activities. Tibetan values and norms, moreover, hold that one's parents in particular, and the elderly in general, should be treated with kindness, consideration and respect.
Sherpa society, despite its unquestioned inclusion in the broad category of Tibetan culture, appears to deviate markedly from this. Two ethnologists who studied Sherpa society in Solukhumbu, have suggested that the status of the elderly there is low. A basic conflict in Sherpa society pits parents against their children and parents, when they become old, are left propertyless and abandoned. This is seen as one of the great tragic themes of Sherpa culture.
A study was made over a six-week period in 1979 in Helambu, focusing on elderly in two Sherpa villages about two days north of Kathmandu, where 37 persons over the age of 50 were taken as a sample.
