Rainy, RDW, RDGal, WOMAN!
Your name is hard to turn into a nickname!
I've been meaning to get back to you to thank you for that post about middle age. It had a great deal of truth in it, at least for me.
I went looking for Roger Gould's Four Illusions (wondering if I had seen the light), and came across the site where you got this (I guess). It makes me want to read some of these studies. I like Levinson's theory of alternating stable and transition periods.
For those DARians who have retired and moved on to Late Adulthood:
Late Adulthood (55-75)
The lower boundary of late adulthood is early retirement. No longer considered "old age" those in these years are considered by Neugarten as the "young old." They are not biologically, sociologically, or mentally like the stereotype of decrepit, senile old. Rather, they are healthy, often well-educated, and the major consumers of leisure in our society. No longer in the labor force they may become politically active and community oriented. They may just be the first to reach the society of the future, a society that values personal development, community involvement, and political activity over a task-oriented work ethic.
There may be the re-emergence of the excluded. Getting situated twenty years earlier may have forced one to establish some part of one's total being as "me", as "my identity" and exclude other parts. With the end of the dream the excluded parts may emerge. Like the retiring corporate executive who decided to take up the piano with the comment "This is something I have always wanted to do, but never had the time." If we look at the reference to Guttman's research we see also the tendency of men to develop attributes our society labels as feminine (Nurturing behavior) after mid-life.
I was glad to see I have a long way to go before Old Age which they said is sometime after 75.
In fact, I suddenly feel so young, I think I will take up skydiving. |
