Creating Positive Experiences as We Age

Meaning through Connections

Jacquelyn B. James, Ph.D.jamesjc@bc.edu

A 21st Century Focus on Aging

• The U.S. is aging--people are living longer than ever before.

• Older adults are healthier than ever before.

• The economy has affected plans of the “retirement-eligible.”

Celebrating Transitions

How old are you….really? Your chronological age

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

How old you feel when you try a new physical activity

vital and energetic frail and ‘spent’

How old you feel when you are with people 20 years older than you

young old

How old you feel when you compare the types of life experiences you have had with those you thought you would have at this age

way ahead of schedule on time way behind schedule

How old are you….really? Your chronological age

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

How old you feel when you try a new physical activity

vital and energetic frail and ‘spent’

How old you feel when you are with people 20 years older than you

young old

How old you feel when you compare the types of life experiences you have had with those you thought you would have at this age

way ahead of schedule on time way behind schedule

How old are you….really? Your chronological age

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

How old you feel when you try a new physical activity

vital and energetic frail and ‘spent’

How old you feel when you are with people 20 years older than you

young old

How old you feel when you compare the types of life experiences you have had with those you though would have at this age

way ahead of schedule on time way behind schedule

Expectations for Aging: Quiz

1. Most older adults have difficulty adapting to change. In other words, they tend to be set in their ways.

2. Declines in all five senses normally occur in old age.

3. The majority of older adults say that they are happy most of the time.

4. The vast majority of older adults will at some point end up in a nursing home.

5. Older adults who slowly disengage from work, social connections, community activities are adapting to the inevitable need to withdraw from the world.

Women and the Prism of Age

Chronological Age

• Health and physical functioning

• Expectations for accomplishments and experiences at particular ages

• How old you feel compared to people around you

• How old do you think others think you are

• Accumulation of competencies and skills

• Developmental stages of understanding life experiences and making meaning of them

• Roles and responsibilities associated with life events, such having children

• Cultural perspective shared by groups born in a particular generation

• Connections to organizations and institutions

Subjective Age[You are as old as you feel.]

Age and Generations

Entering New Territory

“All of us are now in uncharted territory, a stage of life not seen before in human history. And whether woman or man, whether working-class or professional, we are all wondering how we’ll live, what we’ll do, who we’ll be for the next twenty or thirty years.”

Lillian Rubin, Sixty on Up: The Truth about Aging in America, p. 54

Normative Disengagement?

The Journey Continues

生きがい

Good News: Life Satisfaction by Age Group

Source: Sloan Center on Aging & Work , 2010. Life and Times in an Aging Society

Gendered Lives Affects Choice about Involvement

• Women still earn less than men and have higher rates of poverty.

Because women live longer, the number of poor older women in

2008 (2.4 million) was more than twice the number of poor older

men (1.1 million) (Purcell, 2009).• Caregivers of the elderly are predominantly women (66%).

(National Alliance for Caregiving, 2009). Women between 50

and 64 are the group most likely to be caring for sick and disabled

family members (Ho, Sara, and Michelle, 2005).• When asked about the future, women are somewhat more likely to

say that they expect to do volunteer work (83%) than men (77%).

63% involved in Paid Employment 34% involved in Caregiving 32% involved in Volunteering Activities 40% involved in Educational Activities

Involvement by Age Group

Source: Sloan Center on Aging & Work , 2010. Life and Times in an Aging Society.

Engagement by Activity

Source: Sloan Center on Aging & Work , 2010. Life and Times in an Aging Society

Source: Sloan Center on Aging & Work , 2010. Life and Times in an Aging Society

Engagement by Age Groups

If you are involved, there are rewards of for greater engagement.

• High engagement predicts greater outcomes of well-being compared to no involvement.

• Low engagement predicts lower outcomes of well-being compared to no involvement.

A Bright Future across the Life Course

[Today’s older generation]… could play the lead role in demonstrating to the world the power of the 50-50 model of life, in which you spend the first half of your life exploring the world and developing your skills, and the second half using that expertise to help others.”

(Carstensen, L., 2009, p. 253-254)

Ashley Montagu: I want to die young at a ripe old age.

Benjamin Franklin: All would live long, but none would be old.

Billie Burke: Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese.

Carl Jung: Among all my patients in the second half of life ... there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Cicero: As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age: first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.

Clarence Darrow: The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.

Coco Chanel: A woman has the age she deserves.

Cornelia Otis Skinner : There are compensations for growing older. One is the realization that to be sporting isn't at all necessary. It is a great relief to reach this stage of wisdom.

Dr. Johnson: Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

Edith Wharton: There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Edna Ferber: Being an old maid is like death by drowning -- a really delightful sensation after you have ceased struggling.

Elizabeth Arden: I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Eric Hoffer: Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunites for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.

Florida Scott-Maxwell : Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.

Florida Scott-Maxwell: No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld: The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.

H. L. Mencken: The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

Helen Hayes: The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

Helen Keller: It is not possible for civilization to flow backward while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance its allotted length.

Sir Arthur Pinero: Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

Henry David Thoreau

Are They Engaged?

Young @ Heart Chorus

http://www.youtube.co

m/watch?v=-3uOOhm8Fj8