Work, Leisure, and Retirement

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Work, Leisure, and Retirement
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Traditional age-differentiated structure

• Education Work Leisure
• Now age-integrated
• Education
• Lifelong learning
• Gain adaptive knowledge and skills
• Train for new occupation
• Understand technology
• Develop retirement, liesure role

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Work

• Careers
• Choice of Vocation
• Influences?

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• Family
• Opportunities (SES, occupational status)
• Socialization (values)
• Mothers employment status (women)
• Early work experiences (attitudes)
• University experiences

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Interest/Work Match

• Hollands Person-Environment Fit Model
• personality characteristics and success in
  occupation
• moderate but significant relationship
• stable throughout adulthood

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• Contextual Factors
• Marital/Family commitments
• Economy

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Donald Super Stages in career planning

• Crystallization vague, general
• Early adolescence
• Specification being focus
• Late adolescence/university
• Implementation try outs
• Young adults
• Establishment

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Super stages

• Consolidation
• Maintenance
• Deceleration
• Retirement

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Career Development

• Early Career
• early professional socialization
• forming a dream (Daniel Levinson)
• goal expectation
• career satisfaction (intrinsic, extrinsic
  factors)
• reality shock and mentorship
• self ethic vs. work ethic
• focus on quality of own work (control)
• reduced loyalty, commitment

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Middle Career

• settling down
• taking stock of dream
• increased autonomy
• Spillover effects
• Multiple roles (enhancement, stress)
• positive, negative
• job strain and stress (high demand, low control)
• decreased immune function
• poor health habits
• mental health (depression, anxiety)

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Women and Minorities

• occupational segregation (service/clerical)
• lower income
• dual career, dual earner couples
• underrepresentation in managerial/professional
  positions

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Late Career and Retirement

• Normative life event in recent history
• Retirement in popular culture?
• Valid images?
• Why?

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Decision to retire

• Adequate retirement benefits (financial security)
• Leisure interests
• Spouse retiring
• Declining health
• Routine, boring job
• Low work commitment

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Retirement Modern Phenomenon

• 1900 68 over 65 working
• 1960 30
• 1985 16 (1/2 part time)

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Why the shift?

• Personal resources
• Previous work until death/disability
• no safety net
• Retirement requires
• Productive economy
• Public/private pension
• First government pension Germany, 1889
• Retirement age 65
• Lower life expectancy

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Canada Pension Plan

• 1930s
• Response to growing unemployment and poverty
  among elderly
• Cheap labour (immigration)
• Displacement (technology)
• Great Depression
• Age discrimination
• Pension Plans employment incentive

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Retirement as a Life Stage

• Not poverty
• Addresses problem of youth unemployment
• Leisure for elderly

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Impact of Retirement

• Adjustment
• Atchley (1976) Stage Model
• Honeymoon
• Disenchantment
• Reorientation
• Termination
• Much individual difference
• Bridge jobs

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Adjustment

• Crisis Theory
• Retirement correlates with loss of
• Health
• Status
• Self esteem
• But supporting research did not control for
  pre-retirement characteristics

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Adjustment

• Continuity Theory
• Identity based on more than work
• Attitudes, activities changed minimally after
  retirement

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General Characteristics of Adaptation

• Individual variation in responses
• Coping ability depends on previous coping skills,
  perceptions (challenge vs. threat)
• Adaptation easier when
• Voluntary vs. forced retirement
• Change is minimized (bridge job)
• Transition is gradual
• Personal resources critical (income, health,
  social support, high occupation level)

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Busy Ethic

• Idealization and expectation of retired life
• Retirement manages socially, morally
• Authority from Work Ethic
• Therapeutic value of activity
• Encourages habit of engagement
• Continuous with general cultural prescriptions
  for adulthood
• Legitimates leisure of retirement

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Busy Ethic

• Defends retired people against judgments of
  senescence
• Gives definition to retirement role
• Helps individuals adapt to retirement
• Adapts retirement to prevailing societal norms