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/9780199357277.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing, Occupations, Professions, and Work
This chapter documents how individuals and couples are improvising, responding to the challenges, risks, and opportunities of life today, and in so doing helping to define the contours of an evolving ...
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This chapter documents how individuals and couples are improvising, responding to the challenges, risks, and opportunities of life today, and in so doing helping to define the contours of an evolving twenty-first-century life course. It also charts the unevenness of this evolving paradigm of a more voluntarily customized life course. What many want, but can’t always find, are chances to reset the time clocks of their lives, often in the form of different combinations of flexible, frequently less-than-full-time work, volunteering, learning, caring, and leisure, including more healthy lifestyles. Despite the absence of institutionalized options for such configurations, growing numbers of Boomers are indeed time shifting, resetting their lives and their identities, making them up as they go. Others are less fortunate. Boomers are following four pathways through encore adulthood: neotraditional time shifting, time shifting for the long game, portfolio time shifting, and unanticipated time shifting.Less
This chapter documents how individuals and couples are improvising, responding to the challenges, risks, and opportunities of life today, and in so doing helping to define the contours of an evolving twenty-first-century life course. It also charts the unevenness of this evolving paradigm of a more voluntarily customized life course. What many want, but can’t always find, are chances to reset the time clocks of their lives, often in the form of different combinations of flexible, frequently less-than-full-time work, volunteering, learning, caring, and leisure, including more healthy lifestyles. Despite the absence of institutionalized options for such configurations, growing numbers of Boomers are indeed time shifting, resetting their lives and their identities, making them up as they go. Others are less fortunate. Boomers are following four pathways through encore adulthood: neotraditional time shifting, time shifting for the long game, portfolio time shifting, and unanticipated time shifting.
