(BQ) Part 2 book “Introduction to occupation - The art and science of living” has contents: Occupational transitions - work to retirement, occupational balance and well-being, occupations and places, work, occupation, and leisure, occupational deprivation - understanding limited participation, occupational justice,… and other contents.
CHAPTER Occupational Transitions: Work to Retirement Hans Jonsson OBJECTIVES Describe characteristics of occupational transitions Identify positive and negative meanings of work and attitudes toward retirement Describe three different directions evident in narratives about retirement Identify common changes in the rhythm of life and meaning of occupations after retirement Discuss the six characteristics of engaging occupations in retirement Examine images of retirement in the media KEY WORDS Engaging occupation Freedom Life transitions Meaning Narrative methodology Narrative plot Narrative slope Occupational balance Occupational rhythm Occupational transitions Retirement CHAPTER PROFILE This chapter considers occupational transitions that have a major impact on what people and how they organize their time Retirement as an occupational transition is studied as a major transition of ordinary life in the Western world Phenomena www.prenhall.com/christiansen The Internet provides an exciting means for interacting with this textbook and for enhancing your understanding of humans’ experiences with occupations and the organization of occupations in society Use the address above to access the interactive Companion Website created specifically to accompany this book Here you will find an array of self-study material designed to help you gain a richer understanding of the concepts presented in this chapter 211 212 Chapter Occupational Transitions: Work to Retirement like the meaning of occupations, rhythm of daily life, and the relationship between inner motivation and external expectations/demands are explored through this chapter The presence or absence of an engaging occupation is analyzed as a key determinant for experiencing satisfying occupational patterns in retirement and is also discussed in more general terms The chapter ends with a discussion of cultural images of retirement and how they might mirror and shape expectations and attitudes in society INTRODUCTION An occupational transition can be defined as a major change in the occupational repertoire of a person in which one or several occupations change, disappear, and/or are replaced with others There are many transitions in the life course, and some of them have a major influence on what people and how they organize their daily living Transitions can be expected and awaited, such as when a student becomes a worker or a parent leaves work and becomes the caregiver of a newborn child They can also be unexpected and unplanned, such as unexpectedly becoming unemployed or experiencing a disease or accident resulting in a chronic disability that will heavily influence daily living A transition can be expected and desired, or it may be unexpected and feared in different combinations On the one hand, different occupational transitions have characteristics that are unique On the other hand, significant transitions in people’s lives share some common characteristics This chapter focuses on one type of major transition: the transition from worker to retiree, and is based on a seven-year longitudinal study in Stockholm, Sweden (1) Thirty-two participants were interviewed when they were 63 to 64 years of age and working at least half time This was followed with interviews with the same persons at age 66 to 67 (n = 29) and at age 70 to 71 (n = 26) The participants varied in gender, marital status, blue- or white-collar work, and full- or part-time work, as shown in Table 8-1 ■ The collected interview data were transcribed and analyzed using narrative (2, 3) and constant comparative methods (4) One study was focused on the anticipation of retirement from the perspective of being a worker (5) Two studies were focused on the experiences and narratives that were told when the participants were newly retired (6, 7) One study analyzed the narratives of the participants when they were established retirees (8) TABLE 8-1 Demographic Characteristics of Participants Total Men Women 32 16 16 Living in Living Workers Lower Higher White Working Working Partnership Alone Blue Collar White Collar Full-time PartCollar time 19 13 11 15 14 18 Retirement as an Occupational Transition 213 RETIREMENT AS AN OCCUPATIONAL TRANSITION From an occupational perspective, retirement can be seen as the exit of a person from one established occupational form (9, 10), paid work, that has been occupying and organizing time and space in that person’s life for many years For the generation on which the studies in this thesis focus (i.e., those born in the late 1920s), paid work had been a part of their lives for about 50 years Many participants said that they began to work at about 12 to 13 years of age and had worked continuously since then The end of this occupational form in an individual’s life is accompanied by the loss of the personal values and meanings (9, 10), both positive and negative, that each individual finds in paid work The end of this large occupational form greatly affects the whole organization of the individual’s occupational pattern (11); it opens new possibilities for a person to expand performance of other already practiced occupations and to take up new ones A new pattern will develop (12, 13, 14) in which time and space are organized without the presence of paid work This is not a sudden change but a process of adaptation over time (15) for individuals who go into new circumstances, anticipating this change in a certain way, then experiencing it, and finding (or not) ways of adapting to the new circumstances Attitudes toward Retirement Studies in Europe and North America show that a great majority of people have a positive attitude toward their retirement and report a basically positive experience (16–19) Given this, it is important to note that some people report difficulties adapting to their life as full-time retirees A study by Andersson in Sweden showed, for example, that about one-third would have liked to continue to work full or part time if they could have decided for themselves (16) A survey in the United States showed that a large majority wished to have the possibility to work part time (20) Importantly, other factors such as enjoyment, challenge, and social contacts were reported as the most important reasons for this attitude (20, 21) Although most statistical studies show that a majority are positive toward retirement as well as being retired, maybe the most important finding is that attitudes differ greatly This finding is also confirmed in qualitative studies about retirement A 70-year-old woman reported her retirement transition in this way: Now when I look back to the period of my retirement it was really like a part of me was amputated (22) She told how, at work, she was a special person who was treated in a certain way that did not correspond to the way she was treated in the rest of her life When work no longer was a part of her life, she did not feel like a complete person any longer This woman told a story of retirement that was connected to losses in life quality Some people will recognize themselves in such a description, but not all A person who had been retired for about a year told the following story: “Well I had prepared myself for this time, planned what to and what activities to be engaged in And everything has worked as I have thought it would be.”(1) 214 Chapter Occupational Transitions: Work to Retirement This man described retirement as a period in his life where he could increase his engagement in occupations that really interested him As negative and positive experiences of retirement exist parallel to each other, it is important that theories and models for working with retirees incorporate such differences Traditionally, theories in gerontology have been critiqued because they not readily incorporate big differences between individuals (23, 24, 25) and because they may or may not describe and understand the variety in retirement experiences In the following sections we further examine retirement experiences as they were narrated in this author’s longitudinal study on retirement (1) Leaving Work for Retirement—What Are You Leaving? The first question concerned the values of work as they were expressed while those studied were still working but approaching retirement In the first part of the study, the participants were 63 years of age, and their retirement was coming in one to two years (5) Retirement was, first and foremost for these participants, defined as being no longer working Narratives about retirement were invariably stories about “not working.” Consequently, to understand retirement, it was important to understand what leaving work meant for the participants by looking at how persons interpreted their work A number of positive and negative meanings could be seen in the narratives that could be sorted into five different categories regarding the meaning of work: social, doing, organization, material, and productivity (see Figure 8-1 ■) Regarding values, participants talked about the positive aspects of work life by mentioning the following factors: social contact and fellowship, being part of a larger whole, use of one’s knowledge and capacities, having something to do, earning one’s income, being productive, freedom and autonomy in work, doing something useful, and having an external structure Social contact and fellowship, in the sense of being part of a working team, was the factor mentioned most frequently as a positive value of work One person characterized this element of work as “working and toiling together with the others, having fun together.” Another fondly referred to the teamwork: The discussions, the problem solving, the eagerness to find something good, to convince someone of something, balances between different wills to get people to come together for something that produces a result When the participants talked about negative aspects of work life, they mentioned the following factors: uninteresting work and boring routines, negative changes affecting the workplace structure and staff, diversion of energy away from preferred activities, stress and the burden of responsibility, and the rigidity of the external structure of working The most frequently mentioned negative factor of work was the lack of freedom due to the work routine Four persons cited undesirable changes in the structure and staff at work (i.e., reorganization and structural changes connected to ownership Retirement as an Occupational Transition POSITIVE MEANINGS CATEGORIES · Having social contact and Social fellowship 215 NEGATIVE MEANINGS · Having unwanted social contacts · Making use of your Doing knowledge and capacities · Experiencing boring routines, uninteresting tasks · Having something to · Experiencing stressful, unwished for responsibility · Giving life a preferred Organization external structure · Giving life an unpreferred external structure · Having freedom and · Experiencing stressful autonomy in work changes in structure and staff · Perceiving external stressors · Experiencing economic Material/Economic importance · Experiencing no economic benefit or using scarce resources · Doing something useful and being needed Productivity · Using energy that one would like to be placed elsewhere · Being part of a bigger whole FIGURE 8-1 Meanings of work as expressed by 32 working Swedish persons at the age of 63 changes) as reasons for work being undesirable overall As one person noted, “Thanks to the new owners, I will enjoy leaving.” These participants had mixed thoughts and feelings about the structure created by work As noted earlier, lack of freedom was the most commonly mentioned negative aspect of work Yet, several others found the structure to be valuable As one person expressed, work is “something permanent, something time-bound [that] I and people in general need.” Another person pointed out the importance of having to get up and off to work: If I’m at home I feel a little out of sorts I stay in bed until nine, half past nine, maybe ten And then nothing is really done So I want to get up 216 Chapter Occupational Transitions: Work to Retirement Some participants were ambivalent toward work structure, viewing it as both good and bad—a sometimes unwanted but generally important factor in their lives Whatever subjects’ views on the structure of work life, it was the single factor that evoked the most attention It is particularly interesting that workers emphasized the impact of work on their routine or habit structure, more than work as a role or social identity Discussions of work and retirement in the literature often focus on the worker role and the role change associated with retirement, but participants in the author’s study were much more focused on the daily reality of how work structured time and activity In summary, interpretations of work life involved the confluence of several factors Different factors predominated in participants’ considerations of work and in the valuation of it being positive or negative No single factor accounted for overall positive or negative interpretations of work Moreover, most participants evaluated work as essentially positive or negative for themselves, despite some contrary sentiments Of the 32 participants, 25 were categorized as having an overall positive interpretation of work and as having an overall negative interpretation of work There were no essential differences in these attitudes between men and women In the end, each person had a unique set of work experiences and interpretations of that experience Their interpretations focused on the interest of work as well as its role in structuring their lives Different Directions in Retirement Narratives The interpretation of work was a point of departure in how each person narrated their future retirement There were three basic directions in these narratives: • A progressive slope where participants were looking forward to retirement • A regressive slope where participants narrated a possible decrease in their life • A stability slope where participants did not think of retirement as affecting their quality of life in a significant way Participants with an overall negative interpretation of work told basically progressive narratives, reasoning that getting away from something negative was positive in itself As one person put it: It’ll be the best thing that ever happened to me I look forward to retirement, I And I hope that I will have many years—that we [referring to spouse]—will have many years together to everything we have imagined and really it To dispose of my own time—that’s something I look forward to To get rid of all these obligations There will certainly be obligations in the future too, but not to the extent of having to get to work everyday, and having to this and that Instead I can decide for myself what I have to For those persons who positively valued their work, the challenge was to anticipate how one could replace the valued parts of a good working life with the same or replaceable values in retirement occupations This anticipation influenced the attitudinal direction as progressive, stable, or regressive Compensation was more than Retirement as an Occupational Transition 217 simply finding activities to fill the time Rather, the participants were very concerned about the qualities of those things they would be doing For example, those who tended to emphasize fellowship with colleagues at work as a positive value generally sought to achieve the same experience of fellowship on retirement Consequently, persons that had an overall positive interpretation of work could tell a progressive, a stable, or a regressive narrative about their retirement Consider an example of a regressive narrative Maria worked as a secretary and the value of work that she listed first was the social aspects of companionship with her fellow workers She then described a situation in her life outside work where she and her husband, who was already retired, had few other social contacts Her conclusion anticipating retirement was: I don’t think I’m ready to stay at home full time I am not If it’s possible I will try to get something more to at home to at least keep my brain going The other example is a stability narrative Anders is an engineer who values his work very positively, especially challenges in work and social contacts In assessing what retirement will be like, Anders noted: Well, I think that I’ll well filling up my retirement and my leisure time And I can’t say that it won’t be nice I guess I can look forward to when I can be engaged in my leisure activities Anders also indicates that he will miss his colleagues and he added: And of course [I’ll miss] the work itself, but not that much because there I have so many assignments that are similar to my leisure activities As the statement implies, he envisions continuing to use the same knowledge and skills in a similar way Retirement for him, as with most others who told a stability narrative, means continuation of many elements of a satisfying life Going into Retirement—What Are You Entering? So far we have discussed how persons view retirement from the perspective of a worker who is anticipating this change This is, of course, important, as people’s attitudes and eventual preparation for these transitions have an influence on how the transition will turn out The following section discusses the retirement transition of subjects interviewed before their retirement, reflecting on the question of how they felt now that they had become retirees This was analyzed in two studies (6, 7) with data collected at ages 66 to 67 when most of the participants were quite new as retirees and had been into retirement about to 18 months The Paradox of Freedom Freedom is one of the most common words connected with retirement The participants’ employment had for many years ruled much of their life, and many looked forward to retirement as a period when they could plan and schedule the day and the week themselves As one participant said: 218 Chapter Occupational Transitions: Work to Retirement I feel now that I have leisure all the time I guess when one is a retiree this is the only time in life one really owns After turning 60, many of the participants described working life as requiring more energy One did not have the same total capacity as in earlier years So work took more of a person’s total energy, and evenings and weekends were more likely spent in rest and recovery from work This was put in contrast to earlier years in which the participants had the stamina and energy to other activities besides work From that perspective most of the participants were looking forward to retirement Once one enters retirement the new freedom is appreciated You own your time But at the same time there is another side of this freedom in the analysis called the paradox of freedom Everything is up to oneself, and no one expects anything from you A woman who went from full-time work to full-time retirement expressed the following: When I now look backwards at my retirement I really would have liked to stepwise withdraw from work—worked for a couple of hours and then decrease it For one really misses the actual doing in work And also the social part with colleagues and all the chats we had I think I miss that very much A man who had a job as a manager felt the need for something more organized: I would very, very, very much like to have a small job Not like in the old company but some small job that I can manage Like cutting the lawn or a hedge Or go out with old people for a walk or shopping Participants found it difficult to replace the externally created routines that employment generated, when they had to manage new routines themselves This can be exemplified by a man who started a small consulting business after retirement; he found himself having difficulties in being the ruler of his own time: It has been hard to create new work routines Maybe I should call it life routines In 25 years I knew what ruled me and what I ruled And I was very pleased and life rolled on But now—to find a new life-discipline to the things I want and have imposed on myself to takes time and I’m not sure if I’m ready for that yet One could look at this paradox of freedom as going from one imbalance in one’s occupational life as a worker to another imbalance as a retiree As a worker, some participants felt an imbalance in which work took too much of their energy and engagement As a retiree, they felt an imbalance in which too much time was available, requiring decisions to occupy time that were not needed during work Retirement brought a lack of interaction with other people and institutions that previously created demands and expectations for time and energy The freedom that the subjects looked forward to in retirement was often not experienced as real freedom One could say that to experience freedom required having to give away a part of the freedom One participant, who had chosen to continue to work about 10 hours a week, expressed it in this way: still I feel that I have my free-time, it’s my own I can use it—and I not want to use it for free-time—I want to use it for activity [referring to his job] That’s a very nice feeling, that’s fantastic Yes, that’s freedom Retirement as an Occupational Transition 219 The freedom that subjects had anticipated could—when reached—be experienced in a paradoxical way A woman expressed that structuring time was very energy demanding, and that everything was up to herself Every day she had to push herself, telling herself that she should this, or that, motivating herself in an inner dialogue To not have demands and expectations could also be experienced as stressful It resulted in an imbalance between inner motivation and external demands and expectations Gliding into a Slower Rhythm in Life The participants described how during the first year as a retiree they had adopted a slower rhythm of daily life Morning was described as the period during the day when this was most apparent Eating breakfast and reading the paper page by page took almost all morning The transformation in rhythm was described as a gliding process, an adjustment that they just went into without actually being aware of it, before or during this process Some participants were surprised when they reflected on the present situation compared with the situation before retirement These participants asked themselves how they ever had the time to the things they needed and wanted to do, when they were working One participant demonstrated her reflection on the change of rhythm and revealed a perplexing experience of the time available: When I’m going to something today it takes a whole day Before I had the time to several things It seems that a new time structure is created after retirement This transition was described as a gradual process that led to a slower rhythm of life Most of the participants described this change in positive terms, as a feeling of ownership of one’s day Expressions like, “It is calmer now” and “It’s less stressful” were used to describe the new rhythm However some participants experienced their new pace as a slower rhythm that caused emptiness that they didn’t know how to fill A few had hoped to fill time with meaningful occupations, but had found this difficult to realize This sheds light on another finding related to temporal adaptation, namely the participants’ plans for new occupations in retirement Most of the participants had anticipated that they would take up new occupations or resume occupations from their younger days, but these were still mostly possible plans, rather than a reality And there were no evident health problems or economic reasons for not realizing these possible plans One participant stated: “Yes I have been thinking of it but no action so far.” When the participants reflected on this, they expressed surprise about not having the time to realize their plans The finding that only a few participants took up new occupations can be related to the transformation into a slower rhythm in daily life When the participants were working, they expected they would have a lot of available time in retirement to perform new occupations Their slowed rhythm of daily life, however, meant that available time for taking up new occupations also decreased A slower rhythm meant that more time was now spent on performing each occupation, and thoughts of taking up new occupations remained largely as ideas and intentions 220 Chapter Occupational Transitions: Work to Retirement Change in Meaning Within the new temporal structure, some participants described a changed meaning of occupations or difficulties in experiencing the same meaning as before retirement One man who worked full time four days a week before retirement reported a change of meaning in going to his summer cottage: It was a real peak to get out to the summer cottage on Thursday evenings after you had worked four days I had the whole weekend to relax Now it’s not the same any longer I don’t have the same feeling for it It doesn’t matter if it’s Sunday now we don’t have to go into town And the differences between weekend and the other days have disappeared This describes a change in meaning for an old and well-known occupation when it was performed in another occupational structure The structure that work had created before retirement influenced the meaning experienced in other occupations—one occupation created important conditions for others This first became obvious for individuals when the old occupation was carried out in the new daily structure The significant meanings given to times and days of the week, provided by an organized, work-structured life were discovered only when work routines were lost One man who, before retirement, had been longing for the day when he could leave his work said: It’s a special life one lives when you have this, with work in the morning and the weekends free And there are Monday mornings and all that And as all of that has gone I really miss it Now the days don’t matter any longer—if it’s Monday morning or Friday evening He found himself (to his surprise) missing the routines of working life in retirement Two Types of Retirement Narratives—to Get Time or to Kill Time At the end of the longitudinal project to study retirement, the narratives gathered when people were new retirees were compared to their narratives as established retirees according to basic characteristics of the narratives (8) The basic plot of the narrative was especially in focus in this analysis Two types of narratives were found as illustrated in Figure 8-2 ■ One type was basically flat in its unfolding story line, one occupation after another, narrated without larger engagement or intensity The story of a day, or a week was to get time going, to kill time as the basic plot of the narrative One participant who told such a narrative said: And then I’ll go and take a cup of coffee So I’ll walk around in town for a while Then I’ll take the metro home again That will make this day pass You can travel around a bit You’ve got to find something to make the time pass The other type of narrative was fluctuating One occupation after another was narrated also in this story but with fluctuation in engagement and intensity Certain ... Henry, 26 1 Narrative methodology, 13, 21 6 21 7, 22 1 Narrative plot, 22 0 22 1 Narratives accounts of life with a physical disability, 320 Enlightenment, 39 individual, 28 retirement, 21 6 21 7, 22 0 22 1... Empirical support, 28 6 28 8 Empiricism, 37, 38 Employees, 29 0 Employment, 15, 308–3 12, 349 Empowerment, 343–344 Enablement, 3 32, 345–346 Engaged occupation, 22 1 22 3 Engagement, 23 2, 23 4, 24 2 24 4 Enjoyment... Obligatory occupations, 15 Observation, 116 Occupation biological factors, 21 complexity of, 2 6 context determining, 20 25 contextual factors, 22 25 create meaning, 12 13 defined, 2, 12 13,