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BOOK REVIEW |
Professor, Institute of PsychologyIllinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL 60616
Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New Understandings of Later Life, edited by Richard A. Settersten, Jr. Baywood Publishing Company, Amityville, NY, 2003, 355 pp., $54.95 (cloth).
The Evolution of the Aging Self: The Societal Impact on the Aging Process, edited by K. Warner Schaie and Jon Hendricks. Springer Publishing Company, New York, 2000, 368 pp., $54.00.
When asked about the future of gerontology, one of the scholars who did so much to advance the field said that she was tempted to predict "that the field of gerontology is going to disappear over the next couple of decades" (Neugarten, 1996, p. 402). Bernice Neugarten said this out of her conviction that the only way to understand aging was to see it as the outcome of a lifelong process; any attempt to disentangle later life from earlier life would inevitably fail. She was equally emphatic about the absolute importance of understanding the biological underpinnings of changes throughout the life span, the social contexts that shape development and change, the modifications in psychological processes that produce and reflect both biogenetic and sociocultural influences—and the need to check all our models across cultures and across historical periods. The study of human development was, thus, inherently interdisciplinary. She was also convinced, in her later years at Northwestern University, of the need to apply such understandings to the arenas of social policy.
Neugarten conjured up an image of gerontology as a Cheshire cat: clearly defined for a relatively brief time, but fading when we focus on it. She was often a good forecaster. However, there is little evidence (yet) that gerontology, as a separate discipline, orientation, practice, or professional organization is actually fading away. On the other hand, it is evident that more scholars are taking seriously some of the messages that were embodied in the curriculum and research of the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago that Neugarten headed for many years.
The Evolution of the Aging Self: The Societal Impact on the Aging Process, edited by K. Warner Schaie and Jon Hendricks, is explicitly multidisciplinary. It features major essays by senior researchers exploring ways in which social structure impacts on the self in a particular domain. Each essay is followed by an invited commentary by one expert in the author's own discipline and one in another discipline.
The volume edited by Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Invitation to the Life Course: Toward New Understandings of Later Life, is strongly and clearly anchored in the old human development tradition (in part reflecting his study at Northwestern with Neugarten), but takes the agenda to the next level of analysis and challenge. As he puts the challenge:
It is time for change. It is not enough to simply note that age-specific research must be placed within a lifelong framework. We must actively generate substantive theory, ask questions, collect data, and choose methods with the whole of life in mind. (p. 10)
This is, of course, a substantial challenge for any field. Although Settersten reassures us that this cannot be realistically managed well in a single study, the ambition is substantial.
The goals become even more substantial as Settersten and other authors lay out the assumptions of the life course perspective that should be considered when designing any research or analyses. Various authors in this volume emphasize different aspects. Linda George cites as "central principles" those enumerated by Elder, George, and Shanahan (1996):
First, the life course consists of long-term sequences of transitions and periods of stability that form distinctive trajectories....This is probably the key and certainly the most complex of the three principles. Second, life-course perspectives focus on the intersection of history and/or social conditions and personal biography. As such, life-course scholars emphasize the interplay of macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors in human lives. Third, life-course perspectives emphasize linked lives, or the ways that the interdependence of human lives shapes the life course.... (p. 162)
In the same volume, Glen Elder, Jr., and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson describe five principles of the life course that guide their research:
(1) The principle of human development and aging as lifelong processes; (2) The principle of human agency in situations that vary in constraints and options; (3) The principle of historical time and place; (4) The principle of timing in lives; and (5) The principle of linked lives. (p. 57).
The fullest treatment of "propositions and controversies in life-course scholarship" is presented by Settersten, himself, in a chapter devoted to these issues. As he points out, the field has a long history of trying to accommodate the "life course" or "life cycle." Earlier versions were based on biological concepts of maturation and growth, followed by decline and regression. He argues that these models "ignore the ways in which lives are self-regulated and variable" (p. 16). He also points out that the life span orientation in psychology emphasizes "intra-psychic" (interior) phenomena and changes in these phenomena over the span of individual lives; in contrast, the life course perspective in sociology emphasizes external social forces, changes in those forces over time, and, ultimately, how they shape the development of individuals and larger groups. Settersten is quick to point out, however, that he is not suggesting that life course scholarship is the exclusive domain of sociology. The term developmental science is identified as a more comprehensive term that cuts across disciplines and life periods. He presents a list of 13 "emerging propositions" for life course scholarship. In addition to the ones summarized by other theorists, these propositions specify that development is multidimensional and multispheral, life course scholarship is multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary, the life course is conditioned by central demographic parameters, and variability in life course experiences should be examined. Not surprisingly, an additional proposition is that multiple levels of analysis are required, from the most proximal environments to the larger contexts and social processes that affect individual development.
The challenges of the life course model are implicit—and occasionally explicit—in the volume edited by Schaie and Hendricks. The book is the edited proceedings of a conference held at The Pennsylvania State University in October 1998. The conference itself was one of a series that grew from the deliberations of a subcommittee of the Committee on Life Course Perspectives of the Social Science Research Council chaired by Matilda White Riley in the early 1980s. The subcommittee members were particularly interested in identifying mechanisms through which society influences adult development. Thus, both these volumes address the need to understand human development in context. This is not a particularly new issue; the questions are whether the approaches to it have become more insightful, and whether we have an emerging data base on which to form social policy and interventions that may facilitate positive development.
Life Course Analyses Are Rare
We can grasp the ideal knowledge base from much of the material in the Settersten volume, but we are confronted with the substantial limitations of existing analyses when we examine the chapters dealing with how we can apply life course analyses to various domains. For example, John Henretta reviews some of the literature on work and retirement. As he notes, taking life course concepts seriously in the study of work and retirement requires careful attention to the institutional level of analysis, the individual life course, and the relationship between them. Although there are studies on some cohorts over time or several cohorts at one time, there are few (none?) which meet the stringent (inspirational?) criteria laid down. For example, Henretta cites evidence that recent changes in employment structures may have reduced age structuring of the life course at both younger and older ages; as he points out, a basic problem is that there is no standard way of measuring the degree to which the life course is organized by age. Movement in and out of the paid labor force has been documented for groups of workers, but it is not clear, for example, how the interaction between institutional rules (governing employment and pensions) and individual and shared family life course events produces such shifts. A complete analysis of the individual life course requires extensive data (not currently available) on the diversity of individuals we need to understand (a very challenging prospect). On the other hand, Henretta argues that the life course perspective is potentially important if one wishes to understand the development of current behavior. He suggests that the crucial "frontier areas" lie in the intersection of change at the institutional level and its significance at the individual level.
Gunhild Hagestad examines families using a life course perspective. Her stated goal is to "explore rich interdependencies between three levels: a changing society, dynamic family systems with complex webs of relationships, and individual life paths" (p. 135). She draws on research in other cultures to illustrate some of the ways that historical events influence family patterns of fertility, coresidence, generational ties, and assistance. This cross-cultural perspective is a very important addition to our often-limited views of life in the United States. She also points out substantial deficits in existing understanding. For example, when families have "fuzzy" generational structures because of patterns of timing and/or multiple family formations, are relationships governed by generational position, age, or cohort?
Linda George explores the usefulness of a life course perspective for studying health in the later years. She makes a strong case for the utility of examining long-term patterns of social factors and illness, and points out that most of the "longitudinal" data are really short-term analyses over a few years. Although it is crucial to study life course trajectories, George argues that the intervals used in most longitudinal studies are decided on "non-scientific grounds (e.g., to meet the convenience of the investigator or the funding available)" (p 162). When researchers have tried to document trajectories, they often find great variability. One striking example is research by Rindfuss, Swicegood, and Rosenfeld (1987), who examined role sequences for 8 years after high school graduation for a cohort of young adults. They looked only at five role transitions: work, education, homemaking, military, and "other." They report that 1,100 sequences were required to describe the experiences of the 6,700 men in the sample; 1,800 sequences were needed to capture the patterns of the 7,000 women in the sample. In spite of the challenge of variability, George argues that we need good data on trajectories that can help identify pathways of vulnerability and resilience.
The Self as Mediator of Social Structure Influences
While the authors in the Settersten volume all allude to the individual, the Schaie and Hendricks volume is centered on understanding how the sense of self is created and modified by social processes over time. Chapters explore the self in relation to many of the same domains considered in Invitation to the Life Course.
In the first chapter Linda George explores the relationships between well-being and the sense of self. One of the especially insightful discussions concerns the ways in which the global view of one's self can operate as a mediator between social structures and quality of life. In one interpretation, investigators view the self as an intervening variable, where social structure is the "driving force" and self is an intermediate outcome generated by social structures. George prefers the interpretation where the self is viewed as a more powerful and independent predictor of well-being: "the self plays an important role in determining the degree to which social structure and other external factors are able to affect well-being" (p. 10). She acknowledges the evidence that self-protection is a major motivating force for the self, but argues that an equally powerful motive is to enhance the self. In late life, especially, she argues that it is crucially important to understand the conditions under which individuals choose self-enhancement and self-protection. This is an important addition to discussions in psychology that typically focus on these options as personality traits, rather than resulting from disposition/situational interactions.
Work-related selves are explored in a chapter by Gerban Westerhof and Freya Dittmann-Kohli. They report on an important large-scale, cross-sectional study of Germans aged 40–85, focusing their analysis on how recent historical changes in social structures (before and after the reunification of East and West Germany) are revealed in the importance of work. Their conclusion, that the construction of meaning (e.g., about work) is the "result of a delicate balance between individual and social processes" is reasonable, and their illustration of how this is happening for their group is instructive.
The self in the context of the family is analyzed by Roseann Giarrusso, Du Feng, Merril Silverstein, and Vern Bengtson from the 20-year Longitudinal Study of Generations. They explored the long-term effects of gain or loss of three family roles on self-esteem of family members at several stages in the adult life course. They found virtually no evidence that changes in family roles affected self-esteem. The commentary by Leonard Pearlin and Yan Yu wisely interpreted this finding as reflecting the need to measure the personal meanings of relationships more fully, since "role loss cannot be equated with personal loss" (p. 103).
Probably because this book emphasizes the self in the later years, it includes a provocative analysis by Robert L. Kane on how the current health care system affects the aging self. As he posits, there is a "basic paradox" because "seeking health care is one of the most egocentric acts in which most people engage" but "for most people, most of the time, the cost of getting health care includes sacrificing one's sense of person" (p. 183). He provides unpleasant details about the ways in which the changing health care system, with the emphasis on technology over time and consumer satisfaction over patient outcomes, are challenging the expectations and experiences of older individuals seeking care. While he argues that the health care system is not really designed to assault the aging self, older people are at greater risk because they are more likely to be chronically ill, suffer from several simultaneous problems, and come with cohort-specific beliefs and expectations about how the health care system should operate. Their children and grandchildren are likely to concede less authority to medical experts and to be more willing to take an active part in managing their own care.
None of the studies cited in the Schaie and Hendricks volume are of the sort envisioned by the advocates of the life course approach, although some are fairly longitudinal and most explore the relationships between some aspects of the social structure and the individual's sense of self.
The Life Course Perspective and Social Policy
Both of these books address important issues of how to use models and research on human behavior to create social policies and practices that could enhance development over the long life course. These are sobering perspectives, particularly if we recognize that gerontologists have been important participants in creating policies that are good for elders, but may have negative consequences for youth or younger adults. Leonard Cain, in his chapter in the Settersten volume, reflects on his five decades of scholarship directed toward understanding age-related phenomena. As he points out, one thrust from the early years of social gerontology has been to press for "amelioration," advocating for rights and protections for older people and for public policies to support those benefits. In contrast, the focus within sociology (and psychology and other disciplines, though he does not mention these) has been on the scientific exploration of "what is" rather than "what should be" (p. 295). He particularly believes that the scientific study of those who are considered "elderly" or "senior" should be differentiated for policy purposes into at least three phases—the "go-go", the "slow-go" and the "no-go", or the "frisky," the "frail," and the "fragile" (p. 301). He also points out that policies can create self-fulfilling prophecies: "if, through legislation, we force the elderly to behave as though they are disengaging so that they can obtain certain services, we end up promoting disengagement and the theory becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy" (p. 311). Given the current, heated debates about how to "fix" Social Security, Cain's proposal to consider counting backward from projected death as an alternative to chronological age is a very provocative one. (In my calculations, well-educated, healthy White women might not be eligible for retirement benefits until 74 under such a system; diabetic African American men might qualify at 54.)
Settersten's chapter on social policy is based on the evidence that "lives have become increasingly institutionalized—structured by separate institutional spheres (e.g., education, work, and family) and by the state's regulation of these spheres" (p. 192). His checklist of questions to ask about a proposed or existing policy is instructive. Perhaps the most challenging dictate of a life course perspective is that a specific life period (e.g., adolescence, adulthood, or old age) cannot be considered—or, presumably, regulated—if it is considered in isolation of others. It should come as no surprise to realize that this admonition is seldom followed. It is standard practice to divide up the life course into age periods; each period has its advocacy groups and policy wonks that strive to make things less worse, or even better, for their age group. There are noble exceptions, such as school and community programs that try to instill eating and exercise habits that will ward off heart disease and osteoporosis in middle and later life, or parent-assistance programs that strive to reorient new parents toward effective planning and skills that could affect their own and their children's futures.
Angela O'Rand has a most interesting chapter on social policy and the aging self in The Evolution of the Aging Self. She argues that "more marketized societies with weaker welfare state structures provide fewer public protections against life-course risks, leading to even more heterogeneity and inequality across the life-span" (p. 227). At least some evidence suggests that in the United States there have been shifts in responsibility away from collective, public systems to the individual; these are especially notable in the health care and economic spheres. Rand suggests that "aging selves place greater value on what they expect to lose than what they have already gained" (p. 246); recent changes have increased the risks and the anxieties of older people. Many of the other authors also point out policy implications of their analyses.
Revising Research to Fit a Life Course, Contextual Approach
The title of The Evolution of the Self certainly implies a longitudinal perspective, of the sort described in Invitation to the Life Course. The challenges to the researcher seem daunting, but it would perhaps be best to define them as "challenging" and try to approach them in the stance of a Hardy Personality. Most of the chapters are full of interesting research ideas (e.g., How does the self mediate the effects of social structure on well-being? Why do some people choose self-enhancing behaviors rather than self-protecting behaviors? What are the conditions shaping meanings and consequences of role transitions? Is clinical attention to the older self an added cost, or can it properly be viewed as a means toward a common end?) Regrettably, but understandably, these chapters are not equally full of research designs, or funding and staffing suggestions to collect and analyze the kinds of data called for. But both these books are valuable sources of inspiration for researchers searching for the next generation of scholarship—multidisciplinary, multilevel, and multi-age.
Both books also include good rationales for including qualitative as well as survey research in exploring the self and the life course. For example, Dan Blazer (in Evolution of the Aging Self) calls for "studies which document and clarify the loss of self by older adults in long-term care settings" (p. 207).
Several of the chapters also include important warnings about the kinds of ethnocentric bias that creep into conceptualizing and implementing research. Christine Fry, in her chapter in Invitation to the Life Course, points out that the Western focus on chronological age as an important index of time organizing the lifetime is not universally shared. This awareness became clear in the cross-cultural work on Project AGE (Keith et al., 1994), where the criteria used to determine one's "age" varied in different sociocultural settings. She thus emphasizes the importance of the life course as a cultural construct. As long as we work within our own culture, we may be secure in formulating our research based on our understanding of the life course; we must be cautious, however, about extending what we find to other cultures. Similarly, Jay Gubrium (in Evolution of the Aging Self) reminds us that the propensity to think about and measure the self may be much more characteristic of some cultures and cohorts than others. Eva Kahana and Boaz Kahana (also in Evolution of the Aging Self) point out that our concern with studying "successful" aging holds within it a Western, largely American, view of achievement orientation in defining the goals of aging. Dale Dannefer (in Invitation to the Life Course) challenges the very notion of anything resembling a "standard" life-course by describing the life courses of child laborers, "homeboys," and Amazonian shamans.
Can the Cheshire Cat Have Kittens?
I would like to believe that gerontology, at least as a research discipline, could evolve toward the kinds of visions presented in Invitation to the Life Course. This has not been what I have experienced recently. Rather, there is little about midlife at the The Gerontological Society of America's meetings, although there was a time when midlife and even young adulthood were linked to occurrences in the later years. The emerging Society for the Study of Human Development may provide a venue for exploring life course issues; so far, however, researchers have presented only their research based in narrowly construed life, time, and context settings.
Both the books reviewed in this essay are valuable additions to our understanding of the interplay of context and development. Each features distinguished and generally articulate experts. They provide challenging formulations and some interesting data.
Neither of these volumes, however, acknowledges the biogenetic basis for development, despite the fact that we are clearly in the era of the genome discoveries and speculations. Both would also have benefited from greater attention to research on cognitive-emotional processing, because the task ultimately is to explain how an individual responds to the multiple stimuli that constitute the proximate and more remote social environments. In addition, some of the most notable longitudinal studies that have some of the intense detail called for are barely mentioned; particularly absent are the very interesting studies summarized by George Vaillant (2002), following men from young adulthood into old age.
References
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