Phyllis Moen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199357277
- eISBN:
- 9780199357314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199357277.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing, Occupations, Professions, and Work
This chapter is about Boomers’ decisions in the unsettled period of encore adulthood. A confluence of forces is opening a window of risk but also of potential prime time, a new life stage coming ...
More
This chapter is about Boomers’ decisions in the unsettled period of encore adulthood. A confluence of forces is opening a window of risk but also of potential prime time, a new life stage coming after career- and family-building and prior to old age. Boomers are having to make their own plans and develop their own expectations. The chapter describes decision-making under uncertainty and the elusiveness of choice for some, as well as offering an institutional framing of the ways plans and structures reproduce the gendered life course. Decisions are constrained or opened up by historical, cultural, and organizational environments. When laid off, insecure, burnt-out, well-heeled, or enterprising Boomers seek what’s next in the face of ageism and essentially two institutionalized choices, full-time work or full-time retirement, the encore adult years become an improvisational work in progress. Concluding sections address whether couples plan together, along with singles’ plans and possibilities.Less
This chapter is about Boomers’ decisions in the unsettled period of encore adulthood. A confluence of forces is opening a window of risk but also of potential prime time, a new life stage coming after career- and family-building and prior to old age. Boomers are having to make their own plans and develop their own expectations. The chapter describes decision-making under uncertainty and the elusiveness of choice for some, as well as offering an institutional framing of the ways plans and structures reproduce the gendered life course. Decisions are constrained or opened up by historical, cultural, and organizational environments. When laid off, insecure, burnt-out, well-heeled, or enterprising Boomers seek what’s next in the face of ageism and essentially two institutionalized choices, full-time work or full-time retirement, the encore adult years become an improvisational work in progress. Concluding sections address whether couples plan together, along with singles’ plans and possibilities.
Phyllis Moen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199357277
- eISBN:
- 9780199357314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199357277.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing, Occupations, Professions, and Work
This chapter defines concepts key to the book’s argument: life course, institutions, and careers. The life course serves as a lynchpin between individual and family biographies, gender, ...
More
This chapter defines concepts key to the book’s argument: life course, institutions, and careers. The life course serves as a lynchpin between individual and family biographies, gender, organizational careers, public policy, and social change. Institutions are taken-for-granted schema and logics embedded in language, customs, and a body of norms or laws. Assumptions about careers remain based on the career mystique of continuous hard work and commitment as the path to both security and success, but that is an out-of-date model given the uncertainties and risks associated with a global economy, automation, outsourcing, offshoring, and restructuring. Boomers’ and Millennials’ contemporary improvisations are driving the individualization of the twenty-first-century life course—expanding, rebranding, jump-starting, delaying, or blurring the boundaries around once-lockstep timetables of schooling, work, careers, retirement. The chapter concludes by describing other related concepts: age (along with gender), cohort, and historical period.Less
This chapter defines concepts key to the book’s argument: life course, institutions, and careers. The life course serves as a lynchpin between individual and family biographies, gender, organizational careers, public policy, and social change. Institutions are taken-for-granted schema and logics embedded in language, customs, and a body of norms or laws. Assumptions about careers remain based on the career mystique of continuous hard work and commitment as the path to both security and success, but that is an out-of-date model given the uncertainties and risks associated with a global economy, automation, outsourcing, offshoring, and restructuring. Boomers’ and Millennials’ contemporary improvisations are driving the individualization of the twenty-first-century life course—expanding, rebranding, jump-starting, delaying, or blurring the boundaries around once-lockstep timetables of schooling, work, careers, retirement. The chapter concludes by describing other related concepts: age (along with gender), cohort, and historical period.
