Retirement (060321)

 

According to Wikipedia, retirement is the withdrawal from one’s position or occupation or from one’s active working life. Retirement, or the practice of leaving one’s job or ceasing to work after reaching a certain age, has been around since the 18^th century. Prior to the 18^th century, humans had an average life expectancy between 26 and 40 years. In consequence, only a small percentage of the population reached an age where physical impairments began to be obstacles to working. As life expectancy increases and more and more people live to an advanced age. Ash (1) examined retirement by designating it as a reward for a lifetime of work.

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Continuity or crisis?

They spend in leisure roles as age increases (Riley & Foner, 1968). Upon retirement, leisure pursuits occupy a great deal of the individual’s time, and there is a question as to whether leisure roles can fill the void left by work. There is little doubt that leisure can fill the time formerly occupied by work, but the problem is whether leisure is capable of giving the individual the kind of self-respect and identity that he got from the job.

·       People got the kind of self-respect and identity from the job.

The identity crisis theory 

Miller (1965) took the following position:

1.     Retirement is basically degrading because although there is an implication that retirement is a right that is earned though life-long labor, there is also a tacit understanding that this reward is being given primarily to coax the individual from a role he is no longer able to play.

2.     Occupational identity invades all of the other areas of the person’s life. Accordingly, the father and head of household roles, the friend role, and even leisure roles are mediated by the individual’s occupational identity.

3.     The identity that comes from work is related to deeply ingrained values as to which roles can give a legitimate identity.

4.     Leisure roles cannot replace work as a source of self-respect and identity because it is not supported by norms that would make this legitimate. That is, the retired person does not feel justified in deriving self-respect from leisure. Leisure is simple not defined as a legitimate source of self-respect by the general population.

5.     Beyond the simple need to be doing something there is a need to be engaged in something that is defined by most people as utilitarian or gainful in some way. Thus, the stamp collector must emphasize the financial rewards, paintings are offered for sale, or woodworking is confined to immediately “useful” objectives. In short, the only kinds of leisure that can provide identity are work-substitutes.

·       People got a sense of self-respect and identity from work.

6.     There is a stigma of “implied inability to perform” that is associated with retirement and carried over into all of the individual’s remaining roles and that results in an identity breakdown.

7.     Identity breakdown involves a process whereby the individual’s former claims to prestige or status are invalidated by the implied inability to perform, and this proves embarrassing for the stigmatized person. Miller calls this result “the portent of embarrassment.”

8.     Embarrassment leads to the individual’s withdrawal from the situation or prevents him from participating to begin with.

9.     The answer lies not in inventing new roles for the aging, but rather in “determining what roles presently exist in the social system … offering vicarious satisfactions, that can reduce the socially debilitating loss accompanying occupational retirement.”

10. Miller implies that creating an ethic which would make full-time leisure an acceptable activity for a worthwhile person is a possible way to resolve the dilemma of the retired leisure participant.

Miller’s analysis of the situation is an insightful one. Nevertheless, it rests on the assumption that prior to retirement the individual derived his identity primarily from his jobs. Also implied in Miller’s identity crisis theory is the assumption that most people want to stay on the job, since this is their main identity, and that therefore most retirement is involuntary. This is no doubt related to the fact Miller leaves out of his discussion those who retired voluntarily. Miller also implies that he subscribes to the activity theory of adjustment to aging since he assumes that los roles need to be replaced (Havinghurst, 1963).

Evidence concerning identity crisis

There are several sets of questions which thus emerge from an examination of the identity crisis theory presented by Miller: is his portrayal of the relationship between involuntary retirement and leisure an accurate one?, is the pattern, even if accurate, typical of most older leisure participants?, and what is the pattern among those who are voluntarily retired?

1.     Retirement has been found to result in a loss of a sense of involvement, but this was unrelated to other self-concept variables of optimism and autonomy (Back & Guptill, 1966).

Disengagement theory tells us to expect some withdrawal from involvement, and it is noteworthy that this loss of involvement does not appear to have adverse results for other aspects of the self-concept. This leads to skepticism concerning Miller’s “portent of embarrassment.”

2.     Strong work-orientation is frequently found among retired people, but this is not accompanied by anxiety, depression, dislike of retirement, or withdrawal from activity (Cottrell & Atchley, 1969).

Our findings indicate that a strong positive orientation toward work “exists apart from the job itself but … has no import for the individual apart from the job itself.” In terms of adjustment, there was apparently no negative result from carrying a positive orientation toward work into retirement.

3.     When men retired from upper-white-collar, middle status, and semi-skilled jobs were compared, it was found that the upper-white-collar people had internalized occupationally-oriented norms. Middle-status workers were oriented toward specific tasks and situations often resulting in the acquisition of skills that were transferable to leisure situations. Semi-skilled workers were engaged mainly in activities oriented about things (Simpson, Back & McKinney, 1966).

Of these occupational strata, the upper-white-collar stratum comes closest to Miller’s model of the retired person. These are work-oriented people. However, neither of the other two strata fit the work-oriented model. Middle-status people develop skills on the job that carry over into other roles. Thus, the salesman may carry his smooth-talking style over into his leisure roles. Semi-skilled people are oriented around the job, but not necessarily because they have any deep abiding commitment to the job. For them it may be purely a matter of not having been trained for anything other than a job.

4.     (…)

5.     In addition, data from retired railroaders indicate that there are continuities in the situations people face that minimize the impact of retirement (Cottrell, 1970). Family, friends, church, and other roles continue despite retirement. Cottrell’s data suggest that the portent of embarrassment and loss of identity is minimized by the tendency to select friends on the job from among those of one’s own age. The end results of this process is to create retirement cohorts of people who have known each other on the job and who retire together. (…) It results in a group of retired friends who have known each other for years and whose concepts of each other involved a great deal more than the mere playing of an occupational role. Nevertheless, this group is also capable of sustaining the prestige gained on the job because they know all about how this prestige was generated.

To the extent that older people are geographically mobile, they might tend to lose these continuities, but most retired people, particularly the semi- or unskilled, do not move away from their place of long-term residence (Riley & Foner, 1968).

6.     Cottrell’s data (1970) also indicate that as the concept of retirement is incorporated into the culture, the tendency to look upon work as a temporary part of life increases.

The implication here is that if work is not a permanent part of life, then one puts greater emphasis on other parts of life that are more permanent. For example, if a man knows the day he begins working that he will work 25 years and then quit, he is very likely to avoid letting work become an all-consuming part of his life.

7.     (…)

8.     Nearly two-thirds of retired men retired as a result of their own decision. Less than 1 in 5 was retired involuntarily as a result of their own decision. Less than 1 in 5 was retired in voluntarily as a result of reaching retirement age (Cottrell & Atchley, 1969; Riley & Foner, 1968).

By leaving out those in poor health and those who voluntarily retired, Miller (1965) effectively limited the group he was talking about to less than a third of the retired men and an even smaller proportion of the retired women.

Identity continuity theory

It may seem that we have dwelt too long and too deeply with the relation between leisure and retirement. Nevertheless, if we are to understand the nature of leisure among older people, it must be put in its proper context. Miller’s position is a very common one and is constantly being used as a basis for decisions that influence older people’s lives. Our detailed examination of this approach has shown it to be at least questionable and very possibly false.

To begin with, there is evidence in the Scripps Foundation studies and elsewhere that the adjustment problems sometimes associated with retirement are not the result of the loss of work and the identity it provides. In fact, a highly positive orientation toward work had little influence on retirement adjustment. There is no indication that highly work-oriented people are unable to take up leisure roles; in fact, just the opposite. We could find no concrete evidence that retirement in and of itself negatively influences the quality of one’s family life, friendships, or associations.

Accordingly, an alternative to Miller’s identity crisis theory of the relationship between retirement and leisure might contain the following points:

Many people are never highly work-oriented and thus they may very well provide a model for others concerning what it would be like to derive self-satisfaction from leisure. In addition, the ethic of the system allows this as long as the money used to lead a life of leisure is legitimately earned.

Self-respect can be gained from leisure pursuits in retirement if (a) the individual has enough money, and (b) he has a cohort of retired friends who will accept his full-time leisure as legitimate and help him to negate the stigma of implied inability to perform, if such a stigma exists.

As retirement becomes more and more an expected part of the life-cycle, this orientation should spread beyond the cohort of friends. In any event, the retired individual will continue to see himself as a railroader, teacher, etc. even though he longer plays the role. Thus, the crux of this alternative theory is identity continuity.

(…) The identity continuity theory and the data which give rise to it suggest that leisure can have a great deal of positive value as a bridge between pre- and post- retirement life and that this value will increase in the future.

On Miller’s identity crisis model & continuity model

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Adjustment to loss of job at retirement

How do people adjust to retirement? (…) Apparently most people respond favorably to life in retirement. In our study of retired teachers and telephone company employees, not quite 30 percent felt that they would never get used to retirement. Harris found that 33 percent of his sample viewed retirement as less than satisfactory. Streib and Schneider found that about 10 percent of their sample rejected retirement by taking another job, and these people tended to be high on a scale of job deprivation, a measure of the extent to which they missed their jobs.

(…) Retirement per se is directly responsible for only two of these sources of difficulty: missing one’s job and financial problems. Health problems are almost always a cause rather than a consequence of retirement. (…)

Theory is a necessary element in the development of knowledge. Theory serves to identify gaps in knowledge and as a guide for organizing research. With regard to adjustment to retirement, theories are needed to describe and explain 1) adjustment to changes in income and 2) adjustment to no longer having job responsibilities.

As yet no theory concerning how people adjust to income decline has been developed. What is needed is descriptive data on the phases of adjustment and on the strategies that are employed. A decision model would probably be useful. However, at this point the basic descriptive data necessary to begin to develop such a theory have not been assembled.

More attention has been given to the problem of adjusting to the loss of one’s job. Several theories of adjustment have emerged, each of which has a different emphasis.

1)    Activity theory

Activity theory assumes that the job means different things to different people and that to adjust successfully to the loss of one’s job, one must find a substitute for whatever personal goal the job was used to achieve. The most often quoted proponents of this theory are Friedmann and Havighurst and Miller. Friedmann and Havighurst approach the matter in terms of substitute activities, and Miller carried it one step further to include substitutes activities, and Miller carried it one step further to include substitute activities which serve as new sources of identity. The assumption here is that the individual will seek and find a work substitute. In a test of this theory, however, Shanas found it to be of very limited utility when applied to American society. In my own research, activity theory has fit the behavior of only a tiny proportion of retired people

2)    Continuity theory

Continuity theory assumes that, whenever possible, the individual will cope with retirement by increasing the time spent in roles he already plays rather than by finding new roles to play. This assumption is based on the finding that older people tend to stick with tried and true ways rather than to experiment, and on the assumption that most retired people want their life in retirement to be as much like their preretirement life as possible. However, continuity theory allows for a gradual reduction in overall activity. Obviously, these basic assumptions do not fit all retired people, although they may fit the majority.

3)    Disengagement theory

Disengagement theory holds that retirement is a necessary manifestation of the mutual withdrawal of society and the older individual from one another as a consequence of the increased prospect of biological failure in the individual organism. This theory has been criticized for making the rejection of older people by society seem “natural” and, therefore, right. However, the fact of the matter is that many people do want to withdraw from full-time jobs and welcome the opportunity to do so. Streib and Schneider refined disengagement theory to apply more directly to the realities of retirement.

4)    Differential disengagement

Differential disengagement is the term they use to reflect the idea that disengagement can occur at different rates for different roles. And they do not contend that disengagement is irreversible. They hold that by removing the necessity for energy-sapping labor on a job, retirement may free the individual with declining energy to increase his level of engagement in other spheres of life. Such increases in involvement do in fact occur.

(…)

Hazardous as it may be, I would like to offer another approach to understanding adjustment to the loss of job which accompanies retirement. (…) In sum, the central processes of adjustment are held to be internal compromise and interpersonal negotiations. While these two elements interact quite strongly in real situations, for analytical purposes I shall treat them separately.

TO BE CONTINUED.