COMING OF AGE IN AMERICA: HOW TO MAKE THE MIDDLE YEARS MORE REWARDING?
To make the middle years more rewarding, we should begin by abolishing our rigid concept of the life cycle whereby a twenty-year block of intensive education is followed by a forty-year block of tedious work, which is then topped off by an empty time of retirement—the time when, as we know, many men disintegrate or die. As an alternative, Dr. Robert N. Butler, the head of the National Institute on Aging, has proposed that we reorder the adult life cycle into more flexible periods of education, work, and leisure, which continue throughout the entire life span. This would enable men in their forties to grow, to gain spiritual refreshment, and to change direction periodically without risking everything.
Corporations should grant the mid-life man a sabbatical to rest or study or even pursue interests unrelated to his job. Portable pension plans would facilitate a man’s moving from one company to another without losing what he had built up.
Private and public funds for education, unemployment insurance, and Social Security would all have to be reallocated to support such a basic change. The federal government might be the place to begin conducting experiments of this kind.
Similarly, continuing education should be part of life. We should make it easier for adults to weave periods of formal and informal study into the working years. Colleges and universities should expand their responsibility to the adult population, not only to offset obsolescence by offering retraining programs but also to make the learning experience a lifelong process. In addition, these new approaches to continuing education should be developed in partnership with business, industry, and labor. Higher education must be viewed not as a privilege for the young, but as a resource for everyone from eighteen to eighty-five.
To revitalize their lives, men in their forties also need more second-career opportunities. Both government and industry should address themselves to this problem. At the present time most institutions do everything possible to discourage occupational change. This is a mistake. The need for new work options, far from being an elitist concept, also extends to the working-class man. In a study of malaise among male union members over forty, industrial gerontologist Harold L. Sheppard found that 35 per cent, based on their own aspirations and goals, were good second-career candidates. To facilitate such change we need mid-career clinics, an idea proposed some time ago by John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Walfare. Such clinics would help men re-examine their goals and consider changes. It is apparent even now that there is a pressing need for such centers to provide information and guidance.
Our social systems are still too rigidly geared to the present rather than the future, to what people are instead of what they are becoming. We need more facilities to advise and support individuals who are undergoing major life changes. One new approach, suggested by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, is “situational groupings.” Such groups would be for people who are passing through similar life transitions at the same time. They could join together temporarily to share their experiences, trade ideas and insights, and help each other cope. In addition to groups, says Toffler, there should be individual “crisis counseling” available. Today men who want advice must turn to psychiatrists or vocational specialists or physicians or marriage counselors. What is needed are crisis counselors who are experts, not in psychology or health, but in specific transitions such as job changes or relocation or divorce.
We also need counselors for the normal crises of adult life. The helping professions should pay more attention to these life-stage problems, and develop programs for the healthy rather than the sick, programs that people could attend without being stigmatized. In addition, the business community should take the mid-life crisis more seriously in their planning and programming. To cope with mid-life stress, men need the opportunity to talk about it. Corporate physicians or medical centers should provide time for this; business groups and managerial training programs should have the topic on their agenda; and company educational programs should inform their employees about the pressures of this period.
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