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

Foreword

Foreword In 1970 I had just completed my first year of graduate school and won a scholarship to the University of Southern California’s Summer Institute of Gerontology . It was a fine time, with many new experiences for me. One I remember most clearly was meeting a new assistant professor who had just joined the faculty, Dr. Vern Bengtson. Everyone was very pleased that he had accepted USC’s offer. They were especially excited about his special area of interest: generations. At the time few people thought about the life course, that is, anything past childhood or adolescence, never mind through adulthood and old age. Certainly most people studied each of these age periods as though they were static and occurred in isolation. USC had the Andrus Gerontology Center, but only four or five such gerontology centers existed around the country . People did recognize the importance of families, though most gerontological research focused on the family’s role among clinical populations, and there was little talk about intergenerational family relations. Vern, because of his University of Chicago training, had the background to understand human development, including adulthood and aging. He understood quite early that generations might be important to understanding human development and behavior. x Foreword With the beginning of the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), Vern ventured into uncharted territory. It was a groundbreaking study in recognizing that generations within families are important sources of influence, change, and development. Vern knew it was important to study generations within families, but none of this early work was very sophisticated. We knew much less then about the importance of representative sampling and the perils and pitfalls of mailed questionnaires. Complex statistical modeling was basically nonexistent. But pioneers have to forge new paths regardless of the barriers they face. Despite limitations, LSOG brought us many fundamentals of intergenerational relations, including the initially counterintuitive finding that nonadjacent generation members tend to be closer than adjacent members and recognition that the perspective and developmental stake of the G1 family member (first/oldest generation member) differs from that of G2 or G3 (and later G4 and G5) members. Furthermore, the centrality of solidarity within families was developed from the study findings—later embellished upon with the important recognition of the role of conflict and, still later, of ambivalence. Although grounded in sociology, Vern’s home discipline, much of his work was interdisciplinary in nature and thus contributed to many different fields. I believe the study of adulthood and aging, in fact, gerontology in general, bene fits most from an interdisciplinary perspective. Reflecting his early training at the Chicago School of Human Development, most of Vern’s work on generations has this appeal. In addition, the early work on generations reflected some exciting times when we all began to think about the difference between intergenerational and intragenerational relations. We also came to understand that while there were unique characteristics of G1s as well as of G2s and G3s that were interesting and important, the same could be said of being within a single family, whether as a G1, G2, or G3. As times changed, generations changed as well, allowing us to begin to understand the place of individuals, families, and generations within society. The LSOG added G4s and G5s and collected data from generations as they lived through such diverse experiences as the Vietnam War, economic booms and busts, the dot.com world, and the environmental movement. An important lesson learned from the seminal LSOG study is that families evolve just as societies do and that family members mutually influence one another. Vern’s work demonstrated that families are dynamic, not static entities . It is certainly true that some families have more conflict, while others seem to have more positive emotional exchanges. The richness of the LSOG Foreword xi data taught us, however, that families are complex, they change, and they can be wonderfully supportive or heartbreakingly dysfunctional. The individual examples provided in the LSOG reports make clear the dynamism of families. There is always room for change and improvement, although sometimes breakdowns and conflict are all too predictable. Nevertheless, the LSOG gave us an initial understanding of how families and generations function. It helped lay the groundwork for an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand people and families as they live and evolve. The LSOG identified new issues to consider when seeking understanding of the...