Youth, Aging, and the Life Course

2011
Mary Byrnes*
Marygrove College

We concur with Chris Wellin’s (YALC Divison Chair, 2009-2011) preceding mission statement, that: “From the perspective of the SSSP Division of Youth, Aging and the Life Course, a just society would enable full participation, appropriate to age, throughout the life span, without any discrimination or oppression on the basis of age, sex/gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexual preference and disability, and their intersections. More specifically, in a just society, youth would have adequate nurturance, nutrition, housing, and education for participation in a global economy. Adults would have adequate employment and a work/family balance that permitted doing care work for the young, the old, and the disabled. Senior citizens would have adequate social support, financial resources, and health care for the preservation and restoration of good health.” This set of principles and goals, though appearing to be quasi-Utopian in the current political economy of the U.S., is in fact enshrined in the Older Americans Act, passed in 1965 (and amended through 2006). The Act’s Declaration of Objectives for Older Americans reads includes:

(1) An adequate income in retirement in accordance with the American standard of living.

(2) The best possible physical and mental health which science can make available and without regard to economic status.

(3) Obtaining and maintaining suitable housing, independently selected, designed and located with reference to special needs and available at costs which older citizens can afford.

(4) Full restorative services for those who require institutional care, and a comprehensive array of community-based, long-term care services adequate to appropriately sustain older people in their communities and in their homes, including support to family members and other persons providing voluntary care to older individuals needing long-term care services.

(5) Opportunity for employment with no discriminatory personnel practices because of age.

(6) Retirement in health, honor, dignity—after years of contribution to the economy.

(7) Participating in and contributing to meaningful activity within the widest range of civic, cultural, educational and training and recreational opportunities.

(8) Efficient community services, including access to low cost transportation, which provide a choice in supported living arrangements and social assistance in a coordinated manner and which are readily available when needed, with emphasis on maintaining a continuum of care for vulnerable older individuals.

(9) Immediate benefit from proven research knowledge which can sustain and improve health and happiness.

(10) Freedom, independence, and the free exercise of individual initiative in planning and managing their own lives, full participation in the planning and operation of community based services and programs provided for their benefit, and protection against abuse, neglect, and exploitation. (42 U.S.C. 3001)

In 2012 scholarship, service, and teaching about youth, aging, and the life course present new vistas, as well as challenges. First, we can note challenges. The demographic aging of populations in the U.S., Western Europe, Japan and elsewhere is raising public concern—even alarm—about the viability of public pension and health care systems. Such alarmism tends to reinforce negative, “problem-centered” views of late life that have too often characterized social gerontology since its inception in years after WWII. The crisis of the financial system in recent years, helping to fuel a deep and lasting recession, have compounded fears: a large proportion (estimates hover around forty percent) of those currently of or approaching retirement age have had to revise life plans because of the loss of housing equity, pension benefits, and buying power due to slow wage growth. In turn, the delayed labor market exit of tens of millions of baby boomers—whether by choice or necessity—exacerbates unemployment and, at least potentially, generational conflict. The same fiscal pressures have led to cuts in social service programs at every level of government, programs on which the most economically vulnerable older and disabled people rely. Increasing privatization and commodification of services, set in motion by Neo-Liberalism in politics and cultural discourse, has substantially eroded the network and goals of the “Older Americans Act of 1965 and its later amendments.

In a more sanguine spirit, societal aging has enriched and expanded the meaning and roles of kinship networks, and many in the post—WWII baby boomer cohorts are bringing to later life a history of social commitments and community participation that will be vital social resources in the years to come. Better health for many older people (a variable still strongly linked to socioeconomic status, informal support networks, and race/ethnic and gender inequality) will provide a promising “Third Age,” post-retirement, for tens of millions of older adults. Already we are seeing the flourishing of intergenerational programs, in domains spanning youth development and mentorship, education, occupational development and the arts. For nearly a decade we have had the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, an outlet for theoretical and applied research on the topic.

Also exciting is the vitality and growth in the study of youth and other life-stages, in keeping with the promise of a life-course framework. The SSSP is poised to advance this mission, given its increasingly global, comparative character. Moreover, timely but long-neglected issues, such as “Care-Work”—which bridges aging and illness, family/kinship roles, health care institutions and policies, gender dynamics, and disability studies—have become active sites of scholarship and advocacy within the Society. Through co-sponsorship of conference sessions, and the alliances these activities create, the division on Youth, Aging, and the Life Course has built strong bonds with other SSSP divisions, such as those devoted to Disabilities; Crime and Juvenile Delinquency; Health, Health Policy and Health Services; and Institutional Ethnography.

Below we offer a list of important books and articles, which reflect (however imperfectly) the critical and expansive domain of members’ interests.

 

A Selection of Key Books and Articles (Compiled by Carolyn Perucci & Chris Wellin)

S. Arber and J. Ginn (eds.). 1995. Connecting Gender and Ageing. Buckingham: Open University Press.

P. Aries. 1962. Centuries of Childhood. N.Y.: Vintage.

V. L. Bengston and K. W. Schaie (eds.). 1999. Handbook of Theories of Aging. New York: Springer.

R. H. Binstock and L. George (eds.). 2006. Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, 6^th Ed. Boston: Academic Press.

T. M. Calasanti and K. F. Slevin. 2001. Gender, Social Inequalities and Aging.  Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

P. Chambers. 2005. Older Widows and the Life Course. Keele University, U.K.: Ashgate.

W. A. Corsaro. 1997. The Sociology of Childhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

J. M. Coyle (ed.) 1997. Handbook on Women and Aging. Westport, CT: Praeger.

D. Dannefer. 2003. ‘Cumulative Advantage/Disadvantage and the Life Course: Cross-

Fertilizing Age and Social Science Theory.” Journal of Gerontology: SOCIAL SCIENCES, Vol. 58B (6): S327-337.

D. Dannefer. 1987. “Aging as Intracohort Differentiation: Accentuation, the Matthew Effect, and the Life Course.” Sociological Forum, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring): 211-236

T. Diamond. 1992. Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

D. Eder. 2003. School Talk: Gender and Adolscent Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

C. L. Estes & Associates. 2001. Social Policy & Aging. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE

C. L. Estes. 1979. The Aging Enterprise. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass.

G.A. Fine. 1987. With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

J. Z. Giele and G. H. Elder. 1998. Methods of Life Course Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

J. Z. Giele and E. Holst (eds.) 2004.Changing Life Patterns in Industrial Societies. Boston: Elsevier.

J.F. Gubrium. 1993. Speaking of Life: Horizons of Meaning for Nursing Home Residents. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

T. H. Hareven. 1994. “Aging and Generational Relations: A Historical and Life Course Perspective” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 20:437-461

J.A. Holstein and J.F. Gubrium. 2000. Constructing the Life Course. Lanham,MD: General Hall.

S. Hunter and M. Sundel. 1989. Midlife Myths: Issues, Findings and Practice Implications. Newbury Park: Sage.

S. Katz. 1996. Disciplining Old Age. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia.

S. R. Kaufman. 1986. The Ageless Self. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

A. Lareau. 2003. Unequal Childhoods. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

J. Mortimer and M. Shanahan (eds). 2004.  Handbook of the Life Course Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

M.H. Meyer. 2000. Care Work: Gender, Labor, and the Welfare State. New York: Routledge.

B. Myerhoff. 1978. Number Our Days. New York: Touchstone.

B. L. Neugarten. 1996. The Meanings of Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

K. S. Newman. 2003. A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner-City. New York: The New Press.

M. Pitt-Catsouphes, E. E. Kossek and S. Sweet (eds.) 2006. The Work and Family Handbook. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

J. Quadagno. 2008.Aging and the Life Course (4^th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

J. Quadagno and D. Street (eds.). 1996. Aging for the Twenty-First Century: Readings in Social Gerontology. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

M. W. Riley. 1988. “On the Significance of Age in Sociology.” Pp. 24-25 in (M.W. Riley, ed.) Social Structures and Human Lives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

K. W. Schaie and G. H. Elder (eds.) Historical Influences on Lives & Aging (2005) N.Y.: Springer Pub.

J. S. Savishinsky. 2000. Breaking the Watch: Meanings of Retirement in America.

R. A. Settersten, F. F. Furstenberg Jr., and Ruben Rumbeaut (eds). On the Frontier of Adulthood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

R.A. Settersten (ed.). 2003. Invitation to the Life Course. Amityville, NY: Baywood.

R.A. Settersten. 1999. Lives in Time and Place. Amityville, NY: Baywood. 

E. P. Stoller and R. C. Gibson (eds.). 2000. Worlds of Difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

B. Thorne. 1994. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press.

R. S. Weiss. 2005. The Experience of Retirement. Ithaca, NY: ILR/Cornell University Press.

R. S. Weiss and S. A. Bass (eds.). 2002. Challenges of the Third Age. New York: Oxford.

C. Wellin. 2010. “Growing Pains in the Sociology of Aging and the Life Course: A Review Essay on Recent Textbooks.” Teaching Sociology, Vol. 38, No. 4: 373-382.

 * Chair of the Youth, Aging, and the Life Course Division, 2011-2013