Kinship and Cohort in an Aging Society: From Generation to Generation

8. Biography and Generation: Spirituality and Biographical Pain at the End of Life in Old Age

chapter eight Biography and Generation Spirituality and Biographical Pain at the End of Life in Old Age Malcolm Johnson Families, generations, and relationships have been at the center of the study of aging as long as it has been as a recognized area of scientific study. Social scientists from a variety of disciplines have long been preoccupied with the connectedness of human beings from the primary social units called families through to those called communities and those called nation-states. They are the essential components of societies. Much of the attention was given to cross-sectional accounts that provided snapshots of life and relationships at a given point in time. There is value in such pictures, but that value is multiplied when the images are repeated over time, providing an understanding of the way social, economic, cultural, and personal factors interact over time. Such an approach is particularly apt if the object is to understand the processes of aging, which commence at birth and continue throughout the span of life. It is in the dynamics of living that human lives are shaped. The search for understanding of the formative influences on identity and kinship; the modes of adaptation to economic and political changes; and the consequences of fresh conceptions of gender, race, and nationality have an established place in social gerontology. Driven largely by public policy concerns, the research has often been problem-focused, influenced by the need of gov- Biography and Generation 177 ernments to address pressing issues of the day. Retirement policies, the costs of pensions, illnesses in later life, inequalities between the genders, the quality of services to older people, and dementia are all perennial topics. The now well-known phrase describing this research is “data rich and theory poor” (Bengtson, Putney, & Johnson, 2005). Despite its focus on the end of life, this chapter is firmly grounded in the life-span approach and the longitudinal studies of generations (see Alwin, Chapter 6) and intergenerational relations that Vern Bengtson has carried out over the past four decades. It considers the concept of biographical pain and the distinctive spiritualities of people living in the fourth age. This chapter’s intellectual links to Bengtson’s work are to be found in its parallel lines of development and common commitment to articulating theories of the life span that address the dynamics of human biographies. But here, as in other writings (Johnson, 2009), I am anxious to ensure that these theoretical discourses recognize that complex lives have endings and that death is treated as an integral feature of the life span, not simply a period at the end of the sentence. Biographies reach their conclusion as finitude translates into death, and in that last period of life, autobiographical reflection, dominated by intergenerational relations, is at its most intense. Biography, Generations, and the New Demography of Death The early years of the twenty-first century play host not only to the demographically oldest societies in human history but also to an unprecedented conjunction of old age and death. In Western Europe today, 80% of all deaths are of people over 65 years old and predominantly of men and women who are much older. The democratization of very old age has seen the average age of death move rapidly along the life path, extending the standard working-class period of lived retirement from around 3 years to 13. Among the expanding battalions of survivors in their tenth decade, men lose out to the extent that there are six women for every man. As a consequence, when we look for the oldest old in those places where one in three will find themselves—nursing homes or assisted living facilities—the average age is 90. Centenarians, so rare in the recent past, are almost commonplace. Residents of such establishments are overwhelmingly female. Death has moved away from the newly born, mothers in childbirth, children with infectious illnesses, men involved in hazardous work, and adults 178 Of Generations and Cohorts with life-threatening illnesses into the province of old age. It has also become a correlate of late-life widowhood. This might be the major loss, but entry into these total-care facilities also means a marked deterioration of physical health, probably resulting in loss of mobility. Other correlates include loss of visual acuity, decline in hearing, and, for around half of the resident population, troubling memory loss or dementia. While...