Читать книгу Aging - Harry R. Moody - Страница 18

A life course perspective recognizes markers of the passage through life: important normative life events or transition points, such as graduation from school, first job, marriage, and retirement. In some respects, life transitions have become more predictable than was true earlier in history. For example, today people commonly die in old age, whereas in an earlier era, death was not unusual at any time of life. Thus, an event such as the death of a spouse or a parent is now a more predictable marker of later adulthood than it once was.

At the same time, however, certain transitions are less often tied to a particular age or stage of life than they might have been in earlier times. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s, college students were expected to graduate at the age of about 21. But today’s college students graduate at any age from the early 20s to the 30s and beyond, and news photos of a gray-haired grandparent wearing a cap and gown are no longer uncommon. Graduation may occur at any point in the adult life course. Whatever the age or circumstance of the graduate, however, the transition still marks a major role change.

Special events that mark the transition from one role to another—such as a bar mitzvah, confirmation, graduation ceremony, or wedding—are known as rites of passage (Van Gennep, 1960). These rituals reinforce shared norms about the meaning of major life events. Some traditional rites of passage, such as the sequestration of adolescents prior to induction into adult society, are no longer commonly observed in our society. However, we continue to observe a great many, including markers of old-age transitions such as retirement parties, 50th wedding anniversaries, and funerals.

How are we to understand the significance of life transitions? As the human life course became an object for scientific study, the stages of life were no longer seen as part of a cosmic order of meaning (Cole & Gadow, 1986; Katz, 1996). Instead, psychology tried to explain change over the course of life as a natural process unfolding in individuals as they travel through time. The result was the rise of a new field: lifespan development psychology. Erik Erikson (1963), an influential developmental psychologist, depicted the life course as a series of psychological tasks, each requiring the person to resolve conflicting tendencies. For middle age, Erikson posited a conflict between stagnation and generativity: roughly, being trapped by old habits versus going beyond self-absorption to nurture the next generation (Kotre, 1984). For old age, Erikson saw a conflict between ego integrity and despair—that is, accepting one’s life versus feeling hopeless and depressed about the limited time remaining.

Related to Erikson’s basic ideas has been the attention on psychological changes during midlife transition, a time when people in middle age confront facts about mortality and the limits of youthful dreams (Jacques, 1965). Psychologist Daniel Levinson (1978) has described life transitions characteristically associated with ages such as 30, 40, and 50. These are times when people at midlife reassess themselves and ask, “Where have I come from, and where am I going?” Many of these psychological “passages” or changes of adult life have been popularized by journalists. However, doubts have been raised about just how universal such passages and age-related transitions actually are (Braun & Sweet, 1984). Midlife, just like old age, turns out to be a time of life that is different for different people (Brim, Ryff, & Kessler, 2004).

In contrast, many theorists today see personality in terms of continuity or flexible adaptation over the life course. These theories are more optimistic than those that see old age as a time of loss resulting in either passive adjustment or dependency and depression. Today, most gerontologists believe that people bring positive resources to aging, including a personal sense of meaning, which in turn can promote resilience or adaptation to losses in later life (Bolkan & Hooker, 2012). Empirical studies show that people generally cope well with life transitions such as retirement, widowhood, and the health problems of age. When problems come, styles of coping tend to remain intact, and people adapt. Because of this capacity for adaptation, old age is not usually an unhappy time.

Nevertheless, many behavioral or psychological problems come about because of the difficulties of preparing for transitions without the help of widely observed rituals for rites of passage and institutional structures. For example, the transition from adolescence to adulthood is typically marked by events such as marriage, parenthood, and employment (Hogan & Astone, 1986). Although schools, job orientation, and marriage counseling help people make transitions to adulthood, the situation is different in later life. Few social institutions exist to help people with the transitions in the second half of life.

In addition, we currently have no consensus about how people are supposed to act when in later life they confront events traditionally linked to younger ages (Chudakoff, 1989). For example, how are older widows supposed to go about dating? How much help should older parents expect from their children who are themselves at the point of retirement? When confronted with a 70-year-old newlywed or a 60-year-old “child,” we recognize that norms are unsettled when it comes to transitions in later adulthood (Featherstone & Hepworth, 1993).