Thirty-five million Americans are living beyond the age of sixty-five, a twenty-five year increase in life expectancy since 1900. This longevity, once the gift of a few, has become the destiny of many.
This time of life is not just about retiring; in fact, many who retire return happily to some kind of employment. It is a new stage of life filled with its own unique challenges and opportunities . . . a stage of life we have named and identified "elderescence." Elderescents are the benefactors of this longevity, with more time and space than previous generations in which to live and examine their lives.
We trace the emergence of this new life stage as we present the elderescent experience through their own stories. After several years, collecting and analyzing the themes that emerged from self reports of retirees, we became interested in understanding its genesis. Through historical review, sociological and psychological study we began to understand that 'retirement' was a euphemism for a new stage of life. We trace the roots of the retirement institution in the early 1900's, its impact on the older worker, forced through mandatory retirement policies to retire. We trace the changing messages from the psychological community, and the influence of 'ageism.' Until the 1970's obsolescence was the message, "retreat, resign and die."
We interviewed elderescents from 60 years old to those in their 90's, before the stage of senescence, using an experiential method developed by Dr. James Kidd. Some are well known, Walter Cronkite, and Katharine Graham, some are psychologists, and many were volunteers at random.
This time of life is about change. What emerged were the challenges faced by these elderescents: accepting the physical process of aging, facing mortality, feeling 'betwixt and between', looking for new meaning and purpose, experiencing times of joy and freedom, dealing with changes in relationships, and guarding against fragmentation in the face of one's sense of a changing self. Change is a paramount theme in elderescence. Change confronts, frightens, disarms, weakens, and delights us. In elderescence change accelerates. It is in elderescence that the reality of change must finally be acknowledged.
An essential task in this new stage of life is to learn to live with the reality of one's own impermanence. Many of our elderescents have had unique experiences that have helped them reach wise insights about the nature of life. The gift of longevity is the elderescents' opportunity and our hope for new visions about life's meaning. Meaning is essential to living. Yet it is easy to overlook a shift in one's sense of meaning during the aging process.
At the turn of the twentieth century the established culture in this country informed the retiree that their lives were now meaningless. 'Rest, withdraw and basically fade away.' We trace the changing message through the century and appreciate what longevity offers us.
Our elderescents have messages for their peers about what they are experiencing. For example, definite personality changes occur at this time. Understanding the particular personality changes females and males experience at this stage is crucial for the happiness and even survival of many elderescent partnerships. These insights enable others to understand their own changing sense of self and begin to create new meaning as they honor and value this new stage of life. It is also a message for the baby boomers who are soon to become elderescents, for the social scientist, and educator who wants to understand the impact of this leap of longevity.
Jane retired from her clinical private practice of over twenty-five years in Washington, DC. She moved to Martha's Vineyard in 1995 and currently has a small private practice on the Vineyard and is a trained mediator for the Martha's Vineyard Mediation Program.
Peggy has been a practicing painter for 30 years. Her recent contemporary landscapes portray her relationship with nature. Her undergraduate studies were in Fine Arts and graduate studies in transpersonal psychology. She holds a doctorate in East/West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She is the author of The Experience of Being Creative as a Spiritual Practice published in 2003.
Here is a book that can help people understand the meaning of longevity that
is so clearly identified and explored as "elderescence". This is and will be considered by many as a classic
book because Jane and Peggy Thayer have given us a direction to life where existing theorists fall short.
This work begins with experiential expressions of people then makes the move to identifying a way of talking
about it, as "elderescence". "Elderescence" is a theoretical term well grounded in experience. Jane and Peggy
have shown us that the world is change and that is what we do too. It is important not only to those facing the
later years but to those who want to know about the meaning of life itself. This work is truly a sound contribution
to humanity.
James W. Kidd, Ph.D.
University of San Francisco
Fascination, meaning, and fun in our later years
Jane and Peggy Thayer bring an awareness and intelligence to the
prospect so many of us now face--we are going to live a long time after our
normal working days and family responsibilities are over. They speak of this as
the "gift of longevity," and offer an inspired neologism,
"elderescence." The first stages of life--childhood and adventuring
youth, establishing our family, making our mark in our work and
community--these are warming-up as we gain practical knowledge and experience
for what can be the richest, more rewardingly productive stage of our life.
Chronologically, this covers the period roughly from 60 to 90--ending when
old-old age begins. Elderescence is a period when our life history provides us
with tools and perspective for meeting purposefully the conundrums, tragedies,
joys, and novel possibilities that come our way.
The Thayers are a mother-daughter team, both psychologists--the mother a
psychotherapist, the daughter an artist, combining the psyche and soul to
celebrate and shape wizened human capacity. Both pay acute attention to the
themes of meaning, change, and the interaction of selves, as we stretch our
limits in discovering our resources and powers for engaging life's rhythms and
opportunities.
Most of us learn best from stories, and in this book examples of those whose
lives pulse with personal meaning and social contribution abound. You will find
many mentors, from luminaries such as Walter Cronkite and Carl Jung to relative
unknowns such as Rose. Rose, in her 50's having moved to Martha's Vineyard, began to shape
fragments of seaweed, picked up on the shore, into remarkable designs--artistic
creations of the inventive mind joining nature's exquisite patterning. Her
works have come to be in countless personal collections as well as recognized
museums--and she continues well into her 90's.
Rose's story is a model for a path the Thayers so provocatively offer, in which
we can bring our powers into the ordinary routines of experience to discover
and express depths and energies previously untapped. Life takes on meaning that
transcends age and becomes a full, rich NOW. Reading this book, I found myself
inspired by many specific ideas to prompt and guide me. I feel better about
myself (at 71) and, as an engaged elderescent, significantly more interested in
what's next.
Robert Caldwell
Reston, Virginia
September 19, 2005
We stand on the brink of a new frontier. It is not about geography - most of the wilderness
areas of the world have been long
settled, with television hookups and soda machines stationed at every
checkpoint. And it is not about space exploration, because it would cost too
much to install our televisions and soda machines in other galaxies.
No, the biggest and most exciting challenge facing us in this century is our
capacity to grow, to create and to thrive with the new "gift of
longevity", as authors Jane Thayer and Peggy Thayer have so aptly subtitled their
newly released book Elderescence.
In a recent interview, Vineyard psychologist Jane Thayer noted that in the
early 1900's only four percent of the population survived past the age of 65.
Nowadays the figure is up to 13 percent, and it is estimated that by 2020 a
full quarter of the population will fall in the senior category, which the
Thayers have re-named "elderescence". They hail it as "a new
rung on the ladder of human aging, a stage that seems to represent a transition
period between adulthood and the stage of old-old age, or senescence".
The Thayers who, by the way, are mother and daughter, also likened these
provocative years to adolescence, when the individual transitions from
childhood to adulthood, with an attendant groping for new identity involving
one's place in the world!
Peggy Thayer of Edgartown, a painter of landscapes, has also pursued graduate
studies in transpersonal psychology, and she holds a doctorate in East-West
psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Her mother Jane, an Oak Bluffs
resident, practiced psychotherapy for 25 years in Washington D.C., before moving to the Island in
1995 to take up a smaller practice.
As Jane Thayer faced partial retirement, she and her daughter found themselves
increasingly intrigued with how others wrestled with the next big step in the
lifetime continuum. Thus began a fascinating series of interviews with subjects
in their sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, among them such Vineyard
notables as Walter Cronkite, Rose Styron and the-late Katharine Graham. Before
long the Thayer ladies realized they had amassed enough material and insights
around which to build a book.
"A number of people told us they dislike the word 'retired'", said
Peggy Thayer. In the book the authors point out that 20 percent of
elderescents never retire. A former government worker named Ricky, for example,
noted the low-key depression of his friends who opted to golf, garden and fish
away their later years: "They found no lasting contentment." Ricky
maintained there were two keys to keeping spiritually alive after a stimulating
career-keep on working, and do full-time travel.
In a mind-blowing passage, the Thayers discuss some of the elderescents who
made their biggest contributions in their later years: Michelangelo designed
the basilica of St. Peter's between the ages of 72 and 88. Plato wrote the Dialogues in what could be
described (misleadingly, of course) as his dotage. At 74 Galileo completed
Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences. Stradivari created two of his most
remarkable violins in his nineties, Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian
Science Monitor at the age of 87 and Frank Lloyd Wright at 91 designed the Guggenheim Museum
in New York City.
The Thayers go on to write "Picasso, Golda Meir and Dr. Seuss all achieved
their greatest accomplishments in their seventies, eighties and nineties."
"As we get older, we become more settled, more comfortable with
ourselves," explained Jane Thayer. Out of this new self-confidence we can achieve greater
heights of creativity, improved relationships, and enhanced well-being.
There is a down side as well.
Just as we experience conflict in that distant mirror of adolescence,
elderescence - because it is also a time of searching-can cause serious anxiety. The rates of
alcoholism and suicide, again mirroring the pitfalls of adolescence, increase
in this second transition period. The Thayers, through their interviews and their own keen perceptions, make it clear
that elderescents can make this important stage either the best of times or the
worst of times. In the words of former CBS newsman John Mosedale, "What
the idea of retirement means [is] a sudden silence after the roar of
work." This sudden silence can produce valuable thoughts and feelings, or
it can be the source of unremitting discontent.
Holly Nadler
Vineyard Gazette, July 8, 2005
Mother-daughter authors explore life's changes
As I staggered slightly from the couch and my
post-lunch nap I grumbled to my wife there was too much to do. I was on the way
to my desk and a writing assignment. She hoped I would slow down and stop doing
so much. "You're retired now, you know," she said. The coincidence of
her remark and my feelings at that moment catapulted me between the covers of
the book I had laid down just before lunch.
Reading Jane and Peggy Thayer's book "Elderescence - The Gift of
Longevity" may have sensitized me to such a moment. Mother and daughter
have written a scholarly book which in the reading flows along as evenly as a
boat's passage on a wide stream. Its passenger is reluctant to put ashore.
The authors' effort began as an outgrowth of conversation between mother and
daughter after Peggy's completion of doctoral studies entitled
"The Experience of Being Creative as a Spiritual Practice." Peg's
mother Jane had recently retired from her private psychotherapy practice and moved to
Martha's Vineyard. Peg "was intrigued to test her beliefs" in Dr.
James Kidd's experiential method, which she had used in her dissertation. They
wanted to study individual stories of people in retirement rather than to
assemble a broad range of statistical norms.
"Thus began an eight-year-long interplay of our thoughts and efforts to
understand the experience of retirement and the discovery of a new stage in
life." They solicited spontaneous responses to the question, "Describe
your experience of being retired," among residents of Martha's Vineyard and others. Respondents were largely retired
professionals, and their answers were gathered trom correspondence, phone
conversations, face-to-face interviews, and previously published work. From these they
established core themes.
As they researched a large literature related to retirement, their
knowledge and insights grew. They were jarred by the realization that the
percentage of people in the U.S. over 65 had increased from four percent in
1910 to thirteen percent in 2001. Until fairly late into the twentieth century
most retirees bought into the notion of looking for ways to live with rest and
relaxation, going to spas, moving to retirement communities, building a new
home or remodeling an old one, moving to other areas of the country. Some were
happy in mobile homes on the road, traveling across the country, meeting new friends.
They sought freedom to live the life of contentment they had always fantasized while actively working. However, many
lost their feellng of worth, thelr identity as contributing members of the
community, their contact with the world of life.
As the authors read the answers to their questionnaires, they came to believe
that the term retirement was a euphemism. "We were dealing with the
emergence of a new stage of life that included, for many, not only retirement
from one's primary occupation but also a life extended 20 to 25 years beyond
retirement. The increase in longevity had added a new rung on the ladder of
human aging ... a transition between adulthood and the stage of old-old-age, or
senescence." They called the new stage Elderescence.
A fascinating historical review of the cultural roots of our understanding of elderescents is
extensive and often surprising. I lived through the
1950's without realizing the impact of the mandatory retirement age that had
become law for many sixty-five-year-olds. For many this meant relief from hard
labor as they entered old age but also consignment to financial
stress without a weekly pay check. In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt added
an economic floor for most working people in the passage of Social Security;
industry's committment to retirement funds was becoming more universal. The
motive in both instances appeared to be creating jobs for a younger population,
among newly arrived immigrants from abroad and eventually from our
fast-deserted farmlands and large industry-displaced shops around America.
Elderescents who had recovered from the early euphoria of freedom from daily
work began to think of returning to useful occupations, even back to their original
jobs part-time; others immersed themselves in volunteer work or mentoring young people.
Those who remained active in some
productive way seemed to weather the changes in their lives better than others
who had not found for themselves a revitalized or new
identity. Change was one of the constants in the information coming back to the
authors. Change could be expectantly happy but provoke considerable anxiety. If
the change threatened the elderescent with a serious risk to identify, it could
provoke fear. The text is replete with citations and references from a wide
variety of experts and authors: Wiliam Osler, Erik Erickson, Carl Jung, Robert
Butler, Betty Freidan, Joan Rivers, Deepak Chopra, Ram Das, Bob Hope, Walter
Cronkite and others. A separate bibliography contains twelve pages.
As the Thayers continued their work, they rang the bell on every page for
themes of change, self examination, a reckoning with the life lived, settling
of unfinished business and conflicts when possible, and acceptance of one's own
mortality. Some in their sixties had come to full acceptance of the fact of
aging: "...some in their eighties were still competing with the young!
Some remained fearful of death to the very end."
The experience of elderescents in their multitudinous explorations to achieve
happiness and a sense of worth while becoming old are the heart of this book.
Their stories are sometimes funny, often poignant, and always instructive for a
reader sampling possibilities for the momentous change which comes with
retirement.
Collaborating on "Elderescence" must have been a rich adventure for a
mother and daughter together. The persuasiveness and applicability of many of
their observations and concepts described here for this reader seem to be
universal. When I put the book down during my after-lunch nap, I carried it
still in my head. To tell the truth, it is the first book I can remember
planning to revisit for a second read.
Russel Hoxsie
Retired family physician, author of "Let's Walk, Lilly"