Are you a member of the Fifth Generation? Are you looking toward your 70s,80s and beyond? This is the fastest growing group of Americans. They have had war, detent, peace, riots, and social change as their life partners. They welcomed rock-and-roll and rap, the princess phone and social media. They have the most decades of experience in the workforce, the most experience with personal and family relationships, and a lifetime of engagement with public affairs. They encom all races, genders and ethnicities. From high school dropouts to college professors, they form our collective memory bank of past successes and failures, and they are an invaluable resource for shaping a successful future.
If you are a member of the Fifth Generation, however, you already know that it is a struggle to use your skills, let alone the fruits of experience, in the marketplace, the not-for-profit-sector, the community or even within the family. No one seeks 70+ year olds for their wisdom, interpersonal skills, or management expertise. No one is interested in asking if some form of this year’s new idea has been tried before, whether it succeeded or failed, or your 70 plus or minus years of analysis about why?
As a society we have been remarkedly successful at adding to the inherited life cycle. Compulsory education and child labor laws extended childhood, leading to a more inclusive high school and collage population. Adolescence became a recognized stage of development. Vaccines, vitamins, orthodontics, and birth control have ensured each generation longer and healthier lives. Retirement, backed by Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, created a safety net for older adults who once would have worked till the end of their largely shorter lives.
For women, expanded educational and career opportunities, full personal legal rights, and effective birth control have dramatically altered their life course. Whereas women once routinely married in their teens and were often grandmothers in their forties and fifties, today they are more often mothers of school age children with plans for future achievements stretching decades into the future. The change has not gone unnoticed. Ironically, and in contrast with the 19th and 20th centuries fixation with overpopulation, a growing stream of articles in the popular press focus on women bearing too few children, beginning families when they are older, or most serious of all, choosing not to have children.
As indicative of significant change in generational life and expectations are articles in print and on news feeds suggesting that this generation of men and women who have assumed family responsibilities later in life are surprised by an older generation that refuses to retire. Older people, especially those who have attained positions of authority and leadership, are said to be blocking the advance of the next generation. Yet, why should older workers “go gently into the night”? Are they not on the frontier of a new age in the ever-evolving trajectory of human life?
There is evidence all around us that they, no less than younger people, need an adequate income to live fully and enjoy whole new industries devoted to their generationally defined interests. From travel to hang gliding, from special 55+ communities to gray-haired actors selling all variety of consumer goods in print and on TV, older adults are associated with a vibrant lifestyle. Most astonishing is that older adults are now encouraged to plan for their future. Look at the ads for Vanguard, Fidelity, and TIAA encouraging growth plans for security into your nineties and beyond.
Retirement, however, means less income and diminished status. Despite all the evidence of change, the decades after 65 are dominated by a social work mentality that privileges caring for decline, loss, and an ever-diminishing personal competency culminating in dependency and death. The best life during these years is all too often portrayed as the purposeless pursuit of meaningless activities. Hobbies, from painting to golf, are touted as the ultimate goals of satisfaction. Playing bingo becomes the equivalent of meaningful social interaction. Public policy, public funds, and cultural tropes direct adults who see, hear, and think, and who once had vital roles in business, public life, and society’s educational and social institutions, into ever more child-like situations under the guise of caring for the elderly.
We need to adjust our public policies, business practices, social mores, and cultural expectations to the realities of generational change. Reaching 65 is no longer the good luck of longevity. Retirement is not an option for many and not desired by many more. The Fifth Generation is alive and increasingly healthy. It is here to stay. And it has every right to fully participate in society. Being 70 or 80 is a part of life and not just the time to prepare to die. Working after 65 may be a choice or necessity just as it is for every adult of any age.
At 84 years old, Marjorie Lightman is a Senior/Senior. She is also a community activist, former ANC Commissioner, and a working partner in QED Associates LLC, a consulting firm focused on creative solutions for complex projects in the non-profit sector. A longtime resident of the Southwest, Dr. Lightman has turned her considerable energy and intellect to issues of discrimination based on age compounded by gender and race. She invites all like-minded Seniors to her circle of colleagues prepared to create a future in which ability inclination and choice govern decisions to work or not work, engage or not engage, during an expected three decades of life after sixty-five.
