1995-07-16: Senior Years: Living Longer, Living Better

Vol. III, No. XXIX

Transcription:

Dougherty (MCV)
Slevin (CWM)
Music
Tease
Senior Years:
With Good Reason
Vol. III, XXIX
Living Longer, Living Better
Would you like to be able to predict your personality after
retirement? Today, a look at preparing for the changes in life
after work -- mentally, physically and sexually. I'm Carolyn
Elliott. This is With Good Reason.
Music
Background
The actress Bette Davis once proclaimed, "Old age is no place for
sissies," and while some people do find their golden years in
retirement, many find it hard to cope with the aging process.
Indeed, not understanding the social and physical changes that
take place with growing older can make retirement an unnecessary
hardship. With familiar daily routines gone, one can be left
without a sense of identity or purpose. People over age 65 make
up 11% of the U.S. population, yet account for more than 25% of
reported suicides. There's also evidence that aging and
retirement are different experiences for men and for women.
We'll talk about these issues today with Kathleen Slevin,
professor of sociology at the College of William & Mary, she's
writing a new book about African-American women in retirement.
Also, Linda Dougherty is here. Her new book is Late-Life
Sexuality. Dr. Dougherty is with the Medical College of Virginia
at VCU.
INTERVIEW
Elliott
Professor Dougherty, you've said that there are patterns
that indicate what a person's retirement will be like according
to the life that they are leading now. How can we predict?
Dougherty
What we tend to find is that what happens to an individual
after retirement is very similar to what has happened to him and
her pre-retirement. That is we tend to find stability across
life functions particularly in terms of personality, in terms of
adjustment and relationships with others so that if you're
someone who plans a lot and takes your time and is cautious when
you're a younger adult, chances are you'll have those same
attributes when you're an older adult. So that when we're
talking with people who are thinking of retiring, who are
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planning their retirement, one of the things that I suggest to
them is that they take very careful analysis of how they're
living their life now and what attributes of themselves that they
find valuable, that they might not feel so comfortable with, that
they would like to change and then use those attributes as
guideposts for what they might be likely to encounter when
they're going through the retirement process and after they
retire.
Elliott
Professor Slevin, we think that people change when they
retire. Men, women, their personalities change to some extent,
Do you agree with this?
Slevin
Oh absolutely. We know very well that when we look at
somebody in retirement, particularly women in this case, that in
order to understand them we have to look back at their whole life
trajectory in order to understand what experiences they're having
in retirement. And when we talk about retirement we're talking
obviously about retirement from paid employment, but of course
women continue working as unpaid labor so there's a whole
distinction that sociologists make between paid labor and unpaid
labor.
Elliott
Well for the average forty year old, thirty, forty year old
right now, what specific things could you tell them, maybe onetwo-
three, to keep in mind and maybe think about before, you
know, during the twenty years before they quit their jobs?
Professor Slevin?
Slevin
Yeah I'll mention a few. What one works at in the
employment sector makes a big difference in terms of benefits, we
know for example that women are disproportionatly represented in
very low paying sectors of the economy. If, to someone in their
forties male or female I would say pay attention to the packages
that you might have available to you and if you're working in a
jqb, in a dead-end job that does not give you benefits, try and
get more education or position yourself to move into a sector of
the economy where you will be better treated in terms of
benefits.
Elliott
Well you mentioned benefits and the kind of job that you
have, a lot of people, particularly of the thirty, forty year old
generation have one job. Do they need to be thinking about
perhaps getting training in something else also so that they can
perhaps not go cold turkey on work but not do the current job
anymore and be trained to kind of segway into something that's a
little bit less pressure, less full time?
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Dougherty
Well I think that that is true, particularly if you're
finding yourself in a high stress job and it's diminishing your
quality of life right now. I think that finding something less
stressful, more enjoyable would be indicated even if you don't
think about retirement. Most people don't think their retirement
years are going to last as long as they do.
Elliott
What do you mean?
Dougherty
Most people think that they're going to not live as long as
they end up living. So when you're planning your retirement, if
you're going to retire at the age of sixty-five, you might plan
on 15 years in you're retirement lifespan. But what do you do if
you live until you're 90? You've underestimated your retirement
by a considerable period of time and that has direct
implications for financial planning, it also has implications for
planning of leisure time. Saying something like, "Well I'm going
to relax" is fine, but how long can you do that for and what does
relaxing mean?
Elliott
So they need to dream a little bit?
Dougherty
They need to dream a little bit and then after they've got
the dream they need to pretty much come up with a to-do list and
operationalize what the dream is.
Slevin
And to women I would say "plan". We know that there are
some major gender differences in terms of planning for retirement
and women don't plan.
Elliott
You've brought that up several times, let's go ahead and get
to it because you've done some interesting work in the
disparities between men and women in retirement. I'd like to go
through a few of them: Men and women with similar educations and
professional lives end up having different retirement
experiences. Why is that?
Slevin
Gender plays out in some interesting ways throughout the
lifespan. Women are the socio-emotional leaders in families by
and large. Women are the emotion-keepers in families and so
they tend to be the ones who do the organizing of looking after
older relatives and other people in the families who need care.
So for women in retirement, very often they find themselves in
care giving roles of other relatives who need help more than they
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do.
Elliott
Is that changing at all?
Slevin
Well yeah it is changing obviously to some extent because
nursing homes are more prevalent as an option for older people
than they were certainly at the turn of the century. But at the
same time women tend to be much more the emotional mainstays of
the couple end of a family.
Dougherty
I agree with Kathleen that women tend to be the keeper of
the kin, men tend to be more action oriented. So I think that it
may be a stereotype but it also is not atypical to see men out
there puttering in the garage and building things and working on
the house and doing things that can be done independantly and in
a solitary fashion whereas women tend to be more interconnected
with other people. And that's why my understanding of the
literature is that sometimes it's more difficult for men to get
used to the adjustment from leaving a job into staying at home
whereas women have had that pattern for many, many years and it's
a somewhat more familiar transition for many women. Would you
agree with that?
Slevin
I would also add to that particularly in terms of my own
research with Ray Wingrove that what we have found is that women
over the life cycle, over their life periods, have devoted a
considerable amount of energy to developing friendships,
particularly with other women. Men tend to be much more
instrumental. So if you take those two basic generalizations and
you come up to retirement what we found in our interviews with
retired women was that they were able to kick in to their
friendships at a level, an intensity, at a level that was really
very constructive for them. Men tend not to get together with
friends just for the sake of getting together with friends.
Elliott
I want to ask you real, real briefly before we move on to
kind of get down to brass tax, what if you don't like that
picture? What if you're a woman and you don't like that picture.
You don't want to spend your life as a caregiver. What if you're
a man and you don't particularly care to be puttering around
without friends. What should you be doing at this point in your
life to change the picture?
Dougherty
Well one of the wonderful things about being a human being
is that you can change. So that if you're doing something now
that you don't like ...
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Elliott
And you can see these things coming.
Dougherty
And you can see these things coming, then you can certainly
make a plan to change. For example, if you find yourself leading
a rather solitary life and that doesn't appeal to you, you can
start making some changes now. You can go where there are other
people around. You don't have to talk to them, you don't have to
do anything with them, but you could just put yourself in the
situation where there are other people around.
Elliott
What about for the woman who does not want to be a caregiver
all her life?
Dougherty
I think that's more challenging because sometimes women are
left with very few options in terms of caregiving. I'd like to
add that it can also happen to men too, particularly in the case
of spouse situation where one spouse may develop a debilhitating
illness like a dementia or a chronic physical illness, other
chronic physical illnesses and they consider it part of their
commitment to the relationship to care for other people. We used
to joke when I was doing some consulting on an in-patient
psychiatry unit that the best thing to do when you're young is
to have a lot of children and be nice to them, so that when
you're older you would have a wide array of people who can take
care of you.
Elliott
Who does a better job of retirement planning, men or women?
Professor Slevin?
Slevin
From what we know right now men do a better job but again,
men historically have had more to plan with. It's very hard to
plan for retirement if you don't have the where-withal, you know
if you're economicly so disadvantaged that you can't plan.
African-American women for example, and I've just, that's part of
the book that I'm writing, they've done a wonderful job. These
professional women have done a wonderful job of planning for
retirement.
Elliott
The ones you've interviewed?
Slevin
Yes. But, one of the things that has happened in their
lives that makes this an imperative for them, which is a very,
very interesting difference when you compare them with white
women of their cohort is that they never debated entry into the
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labor force. White women of their cohort did debate entry into
the labor force. It was, or they thought, "Well, I'll work and
I'll drop out and have kids or I'll work and I'll meet Prince
Charming and then I'll get married and then I won't ever work
again," outside the home that is. But the African-American women
by and large didn't have that luxury and in retirement that now
stands them in very, very good stead.
Elliott
That's interesting, I was reading Betty Friedan's book
Fountain of Age in preparing for this interview and one of the
things she kind of argued was the point that you both made
earlier which that women have the homemaker role to fall back on
and therefore they have more to do in retirement, it's not as big
an adjustment. She disagreed with it. She said that's not true,
that actually women tend to want to work longer. They have
entered the workforce late, therefore they may want to just
develop their career more or they may just plain out have less
money.
Slevin
Well I would add to that a different angle and it is as
follows, and when I started to get into the literature of women
in retirement this is actually what prompted me to get into it
because I kept reading in the literature that women retired
better than men because they went back to the housewife role.
And I thought to myself, "You know, that doesn't make sense in my
own life so why would I assume it makes sense in all other
women's lives?" And the bottom line is, for a number,
particularly of professional women, they entered the workforce,
they enjoy their work. Not just professional women, a number of
women. They enjoy the work. And maybe the housewife role has
not been a terribly appealing one to them and in retirement, my
own evidence from the interviews that I've done, is that they
pick and choose those aspects of that role that they choose, that
they want to be involved in. They like cooking and they like
entertaining but they don't like cleaning, they never have.
Elliott
Well one of you two brought up in your writings that, as you
said earlier, women tend to have more of a social life in
retirement and that seems to be more what they want, and men tend
to want to work and a lot of them actually go back to work in a
lesser job.
Slevin
Yeah, I've made that point before. But I would qualify that
also and make the distinction I made earlier in the conversation
about the issue of paid and unpaid work because one of the
interesting things about the African-American women that we
talked to last year was that they had done really significant
volunteer, really meaningful volunteer work when they were
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employed. And what they have done in retirement is to amplify
those activities in a way that gives them tremendous meaning.
They are very involved in their communities, they are you know
doing such activities as childcare centers on Saturday morning,
tutoring disadvantaged children and so on and so forth. So what
they did in retirement, what they're doing in retirement is
actually, they are as busy. And it was work that they were, it
was work, but it was unpaid work and it was tremendously
important and meaningful to them in their lives.
BRIDGE
This is With Good Reason, I'm Carolyn Elliott. The retirement
years we so look forward to often come with an unfortunate side
effect: aging. Here to discuss some of the physical changes the
body goes through as it gets older is Kathleen Slevin from the
College of William and Mary. Together with Ray Wingrove, she's
writing a book called Retired African-American Women scheduled to
be published in 1997. Also, Dr. Linda Dougherty is here from the
Medical College of Virginia. Together with Jody Titleman, she's
writing a book called Late-Life Sexuality scheduled to be
released in 1996.
Elliott
Dr. Dougherty, how should people prepare for some of the
changes in their sex life as they get older?
Dougherty
There are some changes and then there are some stable
effects that happen. One thing that we find is that sexuality
and sexual intimacy remain important throughout the lifespan.
With aging does not come less of a need for sexuality or sexual
intimacy, however there are some specific physical changes or
physiological changes rather that can impact how the sexuality
is manifested. Particularly for men there tends to be decreased
rigidity of the penis, it tends to take more direct manual
stimulation to achieve erection. There may be an increase in the
time period between achieving another erection following
ejaculation. And what I would like to highlight is that these
changes that I'm talking about are normal age related changes but
because we tend not to talk about sexual functioning, sometimes
people think that there's something wrong with them and they
don't know what to do about it and they don't know who to talk to
about it. It's not the kind of thing that, you know, you say to
your golfing buddy or you say to a friend while you're out
shopping, "By the way, have you had this happen to you?"
Elliott
But it's normal, and you were getting ready to say what
happens to women.
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Dougherty
They are normal and they are inevitable but they are not
catastrophic. For women what we tend to find is that there's a
decreased lubrication of the vagina. There is also, this is the
positive news, there is also an easier time to achieve orgasm.
And all of these changes can be ameliorated with a little bit of
education and information. We also like to emphasize, and this
is based on work that I've done with my colleague Dr. Jody
Titleman, we also like to emphasize that intercourse does not
have to be the end-all, it's not the goal of sexuality and
actually should not be the goal at any period of the lifespan so
this is not particular to older adults. But there are a variety
of ways of expressing sexual intimacy of which intercourse is
just one way.
Elliott
Does the sex drive actually decrease or increase with age?
Dougherty
There is some controversy about that. If you're a younger
individual and sexual activity is a very meaningful part of your
life, then its likely that will continue throughout your life
span barring any major illnessness, or debilitating physical
conditions. On the other hand, if you're someone who's younger
and sex is not all that important, chances are that is going to
remain stable also.
Elliott
Well lets talk about some of the other effects that come
with aging. Dr. Slevin, you were talking about male, female
differences. Are there any particularly different adjustments to
some of the effects of aging?
Slevin
What I would like to talk about is the issue of,
particularly in american society, how we perceive older women.
And I think that while we are a culture that really is very harsh
toward aging, one only has to look at the emphasis on not having
grey hair, and you know having bodies, firm bodies that belie our
age and so forth. I think it's very hard to live in this culture
and be an older women and feel very good about the fact that
you're an older women, given the cultural messages that come at
us from so many different angles. However, I do think it's
possible to counteract those and I would say that again going
back to the interviews that we did with African-American women,
among the many, many impressive things about these women and how
they lived out their lives as older women, is that they felt very
positive about being older women, and what they told us, I think
it's a very telling story, is that in the African -American
community there is a different attitude toward older people.
It's changing but I mean historically there has been more
reverence for age and for the wisdom that comes with age, and it
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really goes back to the African culture. I would suspect from my
own reading that white women who are 70, as was the average age
of the African-American women that I interviewed, I suspect they
wouldn't have been as positive.
Elliott
Are you saying that the physical changes are more difficult
for women to take perhaps than men and that it lowers self-esteem
and causes depression? Is that what you were getting at?
Slevin
That's part of what I'm saying, it doesn't have to. But
what I'm saying is that the messages that come to us through the
media, and the messages that come to us in terms of our
interactions with others very often give us that impression, that
the older man again going back to stereotypes, the older man is
handsome and dignified, the older woman is not seen as beautiful
and full of wisdom.
Elliott
Do any of the physical changes that occur with age, effect
marriage? Or if the marriage has been happy do people usually
handle it pretty well?
Dougherty
In the research that I've done, we have not had anybody
spontaneously mention physical appearence, other than being neat
and clean. Instead what we find is that people talk in terms of
having someone who is outgoing, who is positive in his or her
outlook. Who is friendly, who is warm, who can be trusted, and
who is fun to be around. So basically, all of those personality
characteristics that are commonly ascribed to extroversion and to
agreeableness, are what people in long term marriages have
identified as being very important for their spouse to have, and
further that that's what contributes to their rating of their
marriage as being very happy.
Elliott
Well let's get to some of the unhappy side of retirement and
aging which is some of the illnesses that typically come along
with it. There are side effects from some of the medications
that older people commonly take. Blood thinners, high blood
pressure pills, and problems with chronic pain. How does that
affect, particularly in a married relationship, the relationship
and the quality of retirement?
Dougherty
I think that one way that it can affect the quality of
retirement is when a couple, or even a single, has been
anticipating one course of retirement and then is felled by some
debilitating illness. There any number of stories out there of
people who will say to you "My husband and I worked all of our
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lives so that we could travel once we retired and he dropped dead
of a heart attack two weeks before his retirement date." Or "A
month afterwards she started being really forgetful and we
discovered she had dementia."
Elliott
It was interesting. Over half of the people over the age of
eighty-five have some form of dementia, and people are living
that long.
Dougherty
I would change that to say some form of cognitive
impairment. And I think that it may be attributable to how we
measure cognitive ability in very old adults, and the fact that
many of the tests that we're using, the psychological assesment
instruments that we use, are not developed for use with very,
very old people, like people who are over the age of eighty-five,
so that these may not be the most acurate assesment instruments,
but I would like to let eveyone know who's listening that you
don't have to look forward to being cognitively impaired when
you're over the age of eighty-five.
Elliott
Okay. That's fair enough. Lets talk a little bit about
dealing with, and I know you address this in your work also,
dealing with this kind of physical breakdown. If it is happening
to you, how do you personally deal with, knowing that you're
beginning to get forgetful?
Dougherty
One thing that I feel very strongly about is that we need to
normalize what's normal aging and what's patholigical aging, and
we need to make it very clear that if your over the age of fiftyfive
and you forget where you put your keys, it doesn't mean that
you have dementia. If you go into the grocery store ...
Elliott
I do that now.
Dougherty
That's right. You do it now and I do it now and many young
people do it now, and we don't think that it's dementia. With
aging comes the fear of "Oh my gosh, is this the first sign, am I
going to lose my mind, am I going to be a burden to my loved
ones." You may not need to remember everything in your head when
you go to the grocery story. It's perfectly okay to have a
grocery list. It doesn't mean that you're not as able or capable
as you were.
Elliott
But perhaps one of the things you should also look at, am I
right, are the medications that you're on?
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Dougherty
You need to look at the person from a holistic perspective,
you need to look at their physical functioning, their emotional
functioning, their social functioning, financial functioning,
environmental functioning. There are a number of environmental
things that can impact an individuals well being.
Elliott
One thing that occurs particularly with people who I would
assume have been very happily married. It's very devastating for
the spouse to die. Are there any particular things that you can
do to prepare and adjust for that type of experience?
Dougherty
The ideas that are purported to be effective are to have a
support system, to give yourself time and to realize that there
is no set grieving period, it doesn't last three months it
doesn't last six months, it lasts until you're done. And to give
yourself the time to get throught the painful memories and the
loss.
Elliott
Professor Slevin, is it harder on a man than a woman?
Slevin
It seems to, there's fairly compelling evidence that men,
when they are asked who their best friend is or who their
confidant is in life, they disproportionatly outname their wives
whereas women name a woman friend. Well, if one's spouse dies
and you're a woman you still have a number, hopefully, of women
friends who can rally behind you and offer support. We do have
some troubling information about what happens particularly to
older men who find themselves particularly if they have invested
very heavily in one person, their wife as their confidant. I
would advocate very strongly that women be as economically
independent as they can. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have
loving, sharing relationships. But I think it was Gloria
Steinhem who once said that every traditional women was one
husband away from welfare, and you know, I think when we look at
the statistics and what happens to women who are not economically
independent, it's pretty devastating.
Elliott
And in all fairness, that also happens to men who are in
lower income jobs, they don't tend to retire either, according to
your research.
Slevin
That's correct. That's correct. So I would again just say
economic independence is the one that strikes me. As much
education as you can get and economic independence. And then to
do what we've said. To develop relationships, to develop special
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interests, to not be unidimensional.
Elliott
Professor Dougherty, any last words?
Dougherty
Yeah. I would like to emphasize that the majority of older
adults are leading happy, healthy, well adjusted lives. I would
also like to add that if you see any noticeable sudden change in
yourself in terms of your personality, in terms of your memory or
your ability to get around to do things. Changes in interest
levels, that should be a red flag that you need to have some sort
of evaluation, and if there are any changes that you see in terms
of depression or cognitive changes, memory changes, we can often
times support those changes if not totally reverse them.
Elliott
Thank you both for joining me on With Good Reason.
Dougherty
Thank you.
Slevin
You're welcome.
OUTRO
My guests have been Kathleen Slevin, sociologist from The College
of William and Mary, and Linda Dougherty, a gerentologist from
The Medical College of Virginia, a part of Virginia Commonwealth
University.
Next week, we go to the beach for a look at the delicate, often
hidden ecosystems in the sand. And we talk with an expert about
the health of Virginia's Chesapeake Blue Crab population.
This is With Good Reason. The project coordinator is Michael
McDowell. Carolyn Elliott is the producer. John Wilkinson is
the assistant producer. We had production assistance from Andy
Washburg and Kevin Piccini wrote the theme music.
This program was produced with the help of WCVE, Richmond.
Amlouncer
With Good Reason is produced for the Virginia Higher Education
Broadcasting Consortium by the State Council of Higher Education
and public radio stations serving Virginia.
The views expressed are not necessarily those of the consortium
or this station.
To comment on today's program or to receive tapes or transcripts,
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call toll-free, 1-800-245-2434.
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