CONTINUITY
THEORY: HOW ELDERS FIND WISDOM IN SPITE OF IT ALL
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In
recent months Aging
Today has received two books by Robert C. Atchley: the impressive ninth
edition of Social Forces in Aging (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000),
arguably the leading introductory textbook in gerontology, and a slim volume
titled Continuity and Adaptation in Aging: Creating Positive Experiences
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). The latter represents the
culmination of three decades of Atchley's work developing one of the leading
human-development theories in aging. We received his permission to excerpt a
portion of the preface, in which the author explains how one conversation with
an older woman set him--and gerontology--in a new direction. Atchley chairs
the Department of Gerontology at the Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO.
By
ROBERT C. ATCHLEY
Continuity
theory was developed to explain a common research finding: Despite significant
changes in health, functioning and social circumstances, a large proportion
of older adults show considerable consistency over time in their patterns of
thinking, activity profiles, living arrangements and social relationships. But
the long-term consistency that forms the foundation of continuity theory is
not the homeostatic equilibrium predicted by activity theory. Instead, continuity
is conceived of more flexibly, as strong relationships between past, present
and anticipated patterns of thought, behavior, and social arrangements.
Continuity
theory presumes that most people learn continuously from their life experiences
and intentionally continue to grow and evolve in directions of their own choosing.
This is a general theory that attempts to explain why continuity of ideas and
lifestyles is central to the process of adult development in midlife and later
and why continuity is such a common strategy for coping with changes in middle
and later life.
'THE
GOOD STUFF'
I have
been interested for over 30 years in how people adapt to the changes associated
with aging. I began my research in gerontology with a study of how retirement
influenced the self-concepts of retired women. My hypotheses predicted negative
effects for the self when women retired and thus no longer had a work identity.
As I was pretesting my interview schedule, though, I was brought up short by
a woman who, at the end of a pretest interview, said, "Is that it? When are
you going to ask me about the good stuff about retirement?" I realized that
I had unconsciously biased the interview by asking only about areas where negative
effects of retirement might be expected. Using focus groups of retired women,
I developed a more balanced set of questions.
I was thoroughly
impressed with the positive adjustment I found among both retired women schoolteachers
and retired women telephone operators. By and large, they had strong and resilient
self-concepts, high self-esteem and a firm sense of values that informed their
everyday decision making. Of course, both these occupational groups had adequate
retirement pensions even before major changes increased the generosity of Social
Security benefits in 1972. None of the negative effects I expected materialized
because these women carried their occupational identities with them into retirement
and continued to derive self-esteem from them.
I later
conducted a similar study with a sample of over 4,000 retired teachers and telephone-company
employees of both genders and again found that an overwhelming majority were
well adjusted to retirement, had carried over their occupational identities,
and had high self-esteem. Men and women adapted to retirement equally well,
although there were substantial other gender differences.
Although
in my studies only a very small minority of people experienced social withdrawal,
declining morale, or declining physical health as a result of retirement, anecdotal
and clinical reports still stressed negative outcomes of retirement. I continued
to be curious about the mechanisms that might cause people to have difficulty
adapting to retirement. I thought it possible that external social circumstances,
such as age discrimination in the labor market for those who wished to work
part-time in retirement, might lead to negative effects on peoples' view of
themselves and on life satisfaction. I also thought it possible that people
might become disenchanted with retirement if their preretirement plans turned
out to be unrealistic.
THE OHIO
STUDY
Most research
on retirement adaptation published before 1975 was cross-sectional. Researchers
compared those who retired with people of similar age who remained employed.
The differences were attributed to retirement, or retired individuals were asked
to look back retrospectively and compare their situation in retirement with
their situation just before retirement. I began the Ohio Longitudinal Study
of Aging and Adaptation in 1975 to follow one group of people as they went through
years of retirement transition.
Funded
initially by a seven-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health,
and later by the Ohio Long-Term Care Research Project, the Ohio Longitudinal
Study of Aging and Adaptation (olsaa) was designed to survey the entire population
who were age 50 or over and residents of one small town in middle America as
of July 1, 1975. This panel was surveyed six times from 1975 to 1995, beginning
with 1,274 respondents and ending with 335.
Readers
of the new book will find themselves on a tour of adult development and adaptation
in later adulthood that took me over 30 years to map. I developed this map from
studying people age 50 or older, not by extending theories of child development,
but by a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. I employed not
only the usual clinical observations, mail questionnaires, and structured interviews,
but also observations of elders in a variety of formal and informal settings
and in-depth, open-ended interviews. The map is still crude in many places,
but I believe that the results show that continuity theory consists of a body
of concepts, causal relationships, and research methods that can be very helpful
as we try to understand the later-life development of the upcoming generations
of elders.
Continuity
is not a magic prescription for "successful" aging. For example, among people
who have invested themselves heavily in job and family roles to the exclusion
of other sources of life satisfaction, attempting to preserve continuity by
clinging to a past that is not a practical resource for making decisions about
the future is unlikely to provide continued life satisfaction. Likewise, people
who ignore their functional limitations and retain unrealistic expectations
of continuity are likely to be unhappy with the results.
A GENTLE
SLOPE
I believe
that continuity theory serves as an explanatory framework that can be used to
understand how a large majority of older individuals manage to experience aging
as a gentle slope and as a positive experience, despite the modestly negative
effects of aging on physical and mental functioning and despite the widespread
erroneous beliefs in our culture about the extent and degree of negative effects
of aging and the high prevalence of age discrimination in our social institutions.
One reason aging individuals may place greater focus on spiritual development
is that it is a functional area in which continuity and growth are possible
in the face of substantial negative change in physical and mental functioning.
For example, research on cognitive functioning shows that age decrements are
confined mainly to psychobiological functions and are much less likely to occur
in "higher" mental processes such as integration. This is why a greater proportion
of elders have been found to exhibit the quality we call wisdom compared
to young or middle-aged adults.
Most aging
adults use continuity to create and maintain a personal system that provides
direction and life satisfaction and that does not depend heavily on what strangers
think about the effects of aging or what social institutions offer in terms
of opportunities for continued participation. This is not to say that ageism
and age discrimination do not matter. They very much constrain the field within
which most people can anticipate future continuity, and the patterns of continuity
people use in later life today might be very different if ageism and age discrimination
did not exist.
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