Overview

Late Adulthood

Life Doesn't End at 65

Who will you be as an older adult?

Too Old to Cry, song by Kareen King: http://www.thegoldenexperience.com/

MSW 2014 Cohort, Age Progression Video, SW7200: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI5f7WqG18M&feature=youtu.be

This song is about very late adulthood, which we don’t really focus on in this presentation,

but that is the stage which young and middle late adults are preparing for.

Additionally, the link below is a video of a social worker, Naomi Feil, and her breakthrough interaction with a woman with Alzeimers who was no longer speaking beforehand. This video is inspirational and it illustrates the same point.

Gladys Wilson and Naomi Feil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrZXz10FcVM

King, Kareen. (2008). Too Old to Cry. On The Person in the Picture Ain’t Me. Accessed at http://www.thegoldenexperience.com/

Facts

• • Late adulthood is the last life stage from 65-on

  • This is a HUGE range of years and there is a LOT of age diversity within this life stage

  • 1/4 to 1/3 of our lives are as older adults

  • This group is heavily discriminated against in general, and within elderly people there are massive differences in poverty level, retirement ability, and oppression based on race, sex, etc

Calasanti, Toni. (1996). Incorporating Diversity: Meaning, Levels of Research, and Implications for Theory. The Gerontologist. 36 (2). 147-156.

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

U.S. Elder Curve

• • 12% US population is 65+ now but by 2030, 20% of Americans will be older adults

  • In the US, Baby Boomers affected the education system, labor market, and will now strain services in old age as well

  • We will have to figure out how to provide the care so many people will need - in the U.S., let alone worldwide

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Global Population Aging

• • Surviving to late adulthood is a modern phenomenon and it adds to global population aging, as does decreased fertility

  • Worldwide, by 2030 1 in 8 people will be older adults

  • For the first time in history and probably from now on, older adults 65 and over will outnumber children under 5

  • Simultaneous population aging and population decline

National Institute on Aging et. al. (2007). Why Population Aging Matters: A Global Perspective. Publication No. 07-6134. 3-32.

Implications of Population Aging

✦There is such a compression of aging that we only have a few years to respond to the trend before our systems are overwhelmed and it is far more expensive to care for folks

✦Since people are having less children, and in places like South Africa where HIV/AIDS is decimatingpopulations, the “beanpole family” results, and there is less familial care

✦Informal care accounts for 80-90% of care for older adults

✦Less workers to support retirees with pensions BUT first there will be more workers to increase incomes & tax revenues IF they are educated and skilled (otherwise there is massive unemployment)

✦Individuals and nations can start saving bit by bit to reduce the burden on the next generation and to make the hardest impact of global population aging less hard, and governments can increase the age at which people can retire and receive full benefits

National Institute on Aging et. al. (2007). Why Population Aging Matters: A Global Perspective. Publication No. 07-6134. 3-32.

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Diversity Approach

✦Diversity Approach: It’s important to be aware of different experiences and tie that into our analysis from the beginning not as afterthought

✦Acknowledge our bias focusing on mainly American older adults in most of our sections

✦“Gernontocracy” in Chinese culture where elders are revered due to Confucianist ideals vs. shame and depression in older people in the U.S. due to our values of individualism and independe

✦Difference between men and women, and whites and people of color in terms of poverty rates and amount of Social Security benefits

Calasanti, Toni. (1996). Incorporating Diversity: Meaning, Levels of Research, and Implications for Theory. The Gerontologist. 36 (2). 147-156.

Theoretical Perspectives

✦ social construction

- similar to ecosystems perspective

-how individuals are affected by society’s ideas of old age in any historical period

-gerotranscendence - human development extends into old age and

-older people themselves identified positively with gerotranscendence because it allows them to be who they are

✦ life course perspective

-humans continue to develop over the course of their lives, constantly transitioning and growing

-”life course capital” (biopsychosocial and developmental) accumulates over lifetime to help someone meet his or her needs or not - affects aging

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Developmental Tasks

• • Morbidity (illness)

  • Grieving loss of physical and mental

  • capacities

  • Grieving loss close people

  • Search for meaning

  • Personal biographical work

  • Reconciliation with one’s life story

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Integrity vs Despair

• • Essential challenge of Late Adulthood

  • Time for deep introspection where the task is to accept the kind of person you’ve become over the years, reconciling what u set out to do vs. what you’ve actually been able to achieve

  • If successfully resolved, meaning, if not, despair

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Look in the Mirror

What do you want in life, and what will you do if you don’t get there?

Supporting Life Review

✦ Life review as a developmental task – evaluate and make sense of your life – across all cultures/time, conscious or not

✦ Reinterpretation, unresolved conflicts, narrative theory

✦ Relationship, empathic listening/reflection, witness, alt reframes/interpretations

✦ Resiliency through adversity

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Gerotranscendence & Generativity

• • Older adults are less self-centered, more altruistic, seek greater sense of oneness with the universe

  • Transcending one’s personal interests to provide care and concern for generations to come

  • Social responsibility, outgoingness, confidence, humor, & warmth increase

  • Coping mechanisms mature, less mental illness

  • Keepers of meaning – pass on traditions

Hutchinson, Elizabeth et. al. Late Adulthood. In Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course. (355-396). CA: SAGE Publications.

Spirituality & Meaning

✦Gerontologists say late life is psychological & social vacuum where people must find ways to profitably invest & find a meaningful place in the social order

✦As people get older, they get closer to god = give more emotional support to others = stronger meaning in life = less physical decline over time

✦Mental health problems are associated w physical problems; Meaning enhances immune functioning

✦Maslow on deathbed said need self transcendence/spiritual communion on hierarchy

Hayward, R. David and Krause, Neil. (2012). Religion, Meaning in Life, and Change in Physical Functioning During Late Adulthood. J Adult Dev. 19:158–169.

Retirement

✦ Difficult to measure retirement along usual dimensions because of how exclusive the concept itself is

✦ Retirement is much earlier now, especially if one is more educated or has had more sedentary jobs

✦ 20% of the young old (65-74) keep working either because the want to or because they need to

✦ retirement mostly seen as positive, and it would perhaps be a less stressful experience if there were a ritual to help people to transition

✦ Women tend to be more dependent on men, to do unpaid work, lower paying employment throughout their lives, which is reflected in SS benefits

✦ Blacks tend to be concentrated in secondary market occupations which depresses their retirement incomes & Lifelong labor force instability creates a blurred dichotomy between working and retirement, as working class black men less likely to identify as retired than white working class men

✦ Women double burden – housework throughout life, vs men cooking for first time fun and new in retirement, women have always done, leisure/choice for women is the freedom to select a different day to do chores/other job

✦ When we consider unpaid labor as productive labor, women spend more time working in lives than men

✦ White men least productive in work but social security benefits are the reverse of actual productivity levels because of power relations

✦ Continued labor is part of successful aging but factors for this include choice and people’s reasons for continued work, which reflect different social positions, as do who gets hired or fired