Aging in the 21st Century
Today, in the early 21st century, we no longer have a shared map for the course of life. The timing of major life events has become less and less predictable at all levels of society. In upper socioeconomic groups, for example, a woman with a graduate degree and career responsibilities may delay having a first child until age 35 or later; in other parts of society, where teenage pregnancy rates have soared, a 35-year-old woman may well be a grandmother. We are no longer so surprised when a 60-year-old retires from one career and takes up a new one, perhaps in consulting if the retiree has been an executive or a professional or in small electronics repair if the retiree has been a technician. In many other ways as well, the life course is becoming more “deinstitutionalized,” more fragmented, disorderly, and unpredictable (Held, 1986; Hockey & James, 2003). Major life events are no longer parts of what are often considered to be predictable or natural patterns.
Although the rigidity of the linear life plan has failed to keep up with new demographic realities, it did offer a degree of security. In the new “postindustrial” life course, we are increasingly each on our own. Familiar social institutions such as marriage and employment can no longer be counted on for security throughout adulthood, and therefore the last stage of life also becomes less predictable.
Society has not yet come to terms with the meaning of “aging” in such unpredictable times. Optimists believe that medical science could permit us to delay aging-related decline until later and later in life. Yet economic forces seem to move in the opposite direction. In science and engineering, knowledge becomes obsolete within 5 or 10 years, so life experience counts for less than exposure to the latest technological advances. On the one hand, biology promises to postpone aging, but on the other hand, social forces such as age discrimination make the impact of aging on individuals more important than ever.
Time and the Life Course
Expectations about time remain a major element in how we think about aging and the life course today (Hendricks & Peters, 1986). Just as industrialization imposed time schedules on workers to improve efficiency in the workplace, so the life course became scheduled by differentiated life stages and the expectations associated with those stages. The factory and the assembly line had their parallel in the linear life plan. But that mode of organization has become outdated. In a postindustrial information economy, the pace of life is speeding up, and flexible modes of production require a more flexible life course. The volatile global economy demands multiple job changes and thereby makes every career unpredictable. Individuals at any age may be called on again and again to rewrite their biographies, although reinventing oneself gets more difficult as the résumé gets longer.
Another example of our contemporary time orientation is the prolonged period of life devoted to education. The knowledge explosion and pressure for specialization put a premium on added years of schooling, and the job market has fewer places for those without advanced skills. Our postindustrial economy is increasingly based on “knowledge industries,” where emerging fields, such as computer software and biotechnology, favor cognitive flexibility.
The trend toward cognitive flexibility also poses a distinct challenge for an aging society. Middle-aged and older workers, who are perceived to be less creative than younger workers, may be at a disadvantage in the fast-moving labor market. For instance, in some branches of media or advertising, employees are viewed as “old” if they are over the age of 40. But if retirement, the defining institutional feature of old age, is to remain economically feasible, then we will have to develop ways to keep people working as long as they can remain productive. Retraining for displaced workers of whatever age is likely to become an imperative in the future. These trends underscore the importance of adaptability and lifelong learning.
Parenthood offers still another example of our changing time orientation. Demographers estimate that, in the 1930s, 90% of a woman’s years after marriage were spent raising dependent children (Gee, 1987). By the 1950s, that proportion had dropped to 40%, giving rise to what some observers have dubbed the “empty nest syndrome”—an extended postparental period of life that occurs after children have grown up and left home (Lowenthal & Chiriboga, 1972). Because of women’s roles and responsibilities in the family, their later lives typically have greater variability than do men’s (Rindfuss, Swicegood, & Rosenfeld, 1987). Gender roles are increasingly shaped by the power of culture (Gullette, 2004; Pipher, 2019; Walker, 1999).
Another change has been the postponement of childbearing. People often spend more of their lives in their roles as adult children of aging parents than as parents themselves (Brubaker, 1990). But what does it mean, in psychological and social terms, when a “child” is 50 or 60 years old or even older? Even to ask these questions shows that the human life course has changed in ways that are still not fully recognized.
The Moral Economy of the Life Course
The changing structure of the life course has profound implications for obligations and expectations across the life course. We can speak about these expectations in terms of the “moral economy” of the life course (Minkler & Estes, 1998). The moral economy embodies expectations of what is fair or right: Stay in school and you’ll get a good job, become a senior citizen and you’ll have a right to retirement income, and so on. In other words, the assumption is that moving through the life course means following the rules and getting what you deserve. But the old moral economy, with its characteristic distribution of work and leisure according to chronological age, is losing its power, and we do not have anything as well defined to replace it.
To overcome limitations of the old map of life, we may need to develop bolder ideas about the positive social contributions that can be made by the old; we also need to think more deeply about the meaning of life’s final stage. Cicero (106–43 BCE), author of the classic essay “On Old Age,” offered a realistic account of both the gains and the losses of aging. Cicero was inspired by the hope that the mind can prevail over the body. Thus, he viewed old age not exclusively as a time of decline or loss but also as an opportunity for cultivating compensatory wisdom. Cicero, in fact, was one of the first and most eloquent proponents of the ideal of “successful aging” (Baltes & Baltes, 1990).
Despite Cicero’s wise words about later life, we should not sentimentalize the status of old age in the past. But at least in the past, those who had lived a full lifespan could take for granted shared values and shared experience across the generations simply because the pace of change was slower. With the rapid social changes of the 21st century, we can too easily stereotype those who are older as people who are “behind the times.”
One role well suited to older people in such an environment might be mentoring, or guiding the next generation in the capacity of teacher, coach, or counselor (Neikrug, 2000). This idea is attractive for several reasons: It encourages intergenerational relationships, and it takes advantage of generativity and wisdom, the virtues to be cultivated in the second half of life, according to Erikson. Older adults who are serving as mentors, however, still have to develop up-to-date skills and attitudes if their advice is to be respected by younger workers.
There appears to be a mismatch between the flexibility of the individual aging experience and the rigidity of outdated social attitudes, such as age discrimination and retirement practices (Riley & Riley, 1994). Instead of treating the life course as fixed, in the future we may come to see later life as a period more susceptible to intervention and improvement. Instead of viewing aging only as decline, it is possible to create a new model of aging as a shared lifelong process and of later life as a period of new opportunities. The goal would be to move from an age-differentiated society to an age-integrated society, where opportunities in education, work, and leisure are open to people of every age and across the entire life course.
The Biology of Aging
The life course perspective on aging offers an optimistic view of possibilities open to older people. That