Rewards Of Adulthood Reaped In 50s

What does “retirement” hold today for men with the means to design this stage pretty much to their own specifications?

I have been studying one class of Harvard Business School graduates - the Class of ‘49 - at intervals since 1974. These men represent the ultimate stars in business life: More than half became chairmen of the board or presidents, while another third became vice presidents.

But success, however grand, did not exempt these men from going through lapses in vitality and virility as they negotiated the passage from First Adulthood (ages 30 to 45) to Second Adulthood (50 and beyond).

By their own admission, when I surveyed and interviewed them in 1979, most of them had gone through a dark or a depressive period sometime between the ages of 46 and 57, when they hit the lowest point in their lives since puberty. A decade later, in 1989, when these corporate winners were at or approaching retirement, a startling change was almost immediately apparent.

At their 30th reunion they had been fat cats. By their 40th reunion, having attained an average age of 66, the same men had become pussycats. The big switch was from seeking satisfaction “out there” - through the success and status of their business careers - to savoring the pleasures of a return to hearth and home. At this stage they derived their greatest satisfaction from their intimate relationships, with their wives, friends and children, to whom they now look for understanding and support.

Taken as a group, the men at this stage were happier with their lives than they had ever been. Their health was remarkably robust; most said their health status hadn’t changed over the previous five years, and some said it had improved. Few had given mortality much thought. At 65 to 67 they were “just beginning to feel middle-aged.” More detached and less quick to anger than in their mid-50s, they expected to mellow out in their 70s at a high plateau.

About their grandchildren they were positively gooey. It was rare at the turn of the century for teenage grandchildren to know their grandparents throughout their adolescence. Today a typical 15-year-old has a nine out of 10 chance of having two or more grandparents still alive. In fact, the affinity between the spry semi-retired set and children, who are increasingly left on their own by working parents or abandoned to the streets, should only be enhanced by the graying of society.

Most of the Harvard Business School men were still working in their mid-60s, many part time. Some had retired and, finding themselves restless, had gone back to work but in more satisfying, self-directed capacities. They were involved in public service, consulting and serving on boards of directors - often working as hard as ever but usually enjoying it a lot more.

More and more Americans over 65 are taking part-time jobs: 52 percent of all white men in 1990, compared with 30 percent back in 1960. What these former corporate gunslingers really cared about, however, were entirely new pursuits, like learning how to be gourmet cooks, fanatical gardening, woodworking, restoring antique cars - working with their hands and close to home. And one quarter of them had become learners again - returning to universities for classical studies in music, art, history - for the pure intellectual and aesthetic pleasure of it rather than the instrumental value for their careers.

When they talk about themselves today, they show much greater insight and detachment from their role as businessmen. Money was a major incentive in their First Adulthood, and they had socked away a lot of it. Half of them now had net worths of over $2 million, and half of them less.

These men were not sure that their earlier obsession with making a lot of money was all that important. The greater reward from professional life was the high status it had conferred and the chance to leave a mark. Asked if they had it to do over again, would they give more time to family and less to work, half the men admitted “probably not.” Others said they would like to think they’d have a different set of priorities.

But the evidence from the earlier survey was more reliable on this point. Back in their mid-50s these men simply thrived on work. They were consumed with maneuvering into the highest possible positions on the status pyramid before the final shakedown stage. It reminds us that values can change profoundly from one stage to the next.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Gail Sheehy Universal Press Syndicate