Does a gap yawn wide and deep between Americans currently middle-aged and their parents? Has the generation of younger adults been brought up so differently that communication between them and those now old is, if not next to impossible, at least extremely difficult?
Mary Pipher, Ph.D. definitely thinks so. Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders, the title of her new book, suggests as much. Pipher, a clinical psychologist based in Lincoln, Nebraska, places great emphasis on the cultural changes that have swept over this country in the past century, considering them to have made members of older and younger generations practically foreigners to one another.
Before beginning the book, Dr. Pipher considered technology to be the cause of “the great divide” between generations. However, in the course of her studies and observations she came to revise this opinion.
She now thinks that the most significant shift took 20th century Americans from a pre-psychological to a post-psychological culture. We have become a “feel-good” society quite different from the emotionally controlled society in which Americans now old grew up.
A second shift that has changed attitudes profoundly was from a communal to an individualistic culture. In the first half of this century we Americans “had a relationship with everyone we met,” Pipher claims. Now, by contrast, “we all live among strangers.”
These shifts in the way we think about ourselves and experience our world throw serious roadblocks in the way of personal communication between generations. For instance, when old people fail to talk freely about their feelings “we see them as uncommunicative.” And, when younger people do talk freely, elders “see us as endlessly massaging our fragile egos.”
As two models illustrating the cultural divide, Pipher suggests looking at Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana. Though not Americans, these two famous women show how our culture has changed. The queen is stiff-upper-lip in her public approach to almost everything while the princess let it all hang out, sharing her frustrations and joys with a worldwide audience. One can imagine the difficulties they had communicating behind closed doors.
Pipher’s views strike me as provocative. She forces us to think more deeply about relations between older and younger in American society and to imagine ways to improve them. If, as this writer claims, “we need a new way of thinking about old age,” then a good place to start may be by paying greater attention to cultural forces that influence our attitudes.
However, I feel doubtful about Pipher’s main thesis. She seems to me to exaggerate the barriers to communication between generations. Yes, the difficulties are well known to middlers who have taken responsibility for elder care; and those cared for themselves often feel frustrated with their family caregivers.
But, I suggest, these difficulties arise largely because elders who need care so often feel threatened with loss of independence and other personal goods precious to them. Anyone, of whatever adult age, would feel the same way if confronted with the prospect of losing home, automobile, bodily wellbeing.
But to affirm that older and younger adults by reason of their education are like citizens of foreign countries to each other strikes me as exaggerated. Intellectually it serves as a stimulating thesis, but does it holds water?
I asked a fortyish friend, John Wentzell of Westboro, about his relationship with his father. “We have a great relationship,” he answered. Another friend, 75-year-old Hugh Sturrock of Melrose, assured me, “I am very happy with my kids. If I have anything to say to my kids, person-to-person, I say it.”
Kathy Modica, a friend from Arlington who is forty-something, will admit that “my generation is a very self-absorbed and self-examining group and we will probably continue that tendency into our old age.” But she, too, has doubts about the Pipher thesis.
I would never pretend that personal communications between the old and the younger generations are ideal. But a recent extensive survey of family caregiving reveals a lot more than the stress so often experienced. It also shows that many people, through providing care, grow.
Pipher herself sometimes allows this to be so. Here’s what she says late in the book:
Parents aging can be both a horrible and a wonderful experience. It can be the most growth-promoting time in the history of the family. Many people say, “I know this sounds strange, but that last year was the best year of my parents’ lives. I was my best. They were their best. Our relationships were the closest and strongest ever,” or “The pain and suffering were terrible. However, we all learned from it. I wouldn’t have wanted things to be different.”
I would suggest that Mary Pipher comes closer to reality here than in her “another country” thesis.
Richard Griffin