The Science Daily reports that cultural expectations impact the benefits of intergenerational support. Intergenerational Support and Depression Among Elders in Rural China: Do Daughters-In-Law Matter?, a study published in the July 2008 Journal of Marriage and Family,
stated that in the province of Anhui in rural China, assistance from
daughters-in-law with household chores and personal care created fewer
depressive symptoms in elders than that offered by sons and daughters.
The report's authors, Dr. Zhen Cong and Professor Merrill Silverstein
of the USC Davis School of Gerontology, found this was most evident in
situations where daughters-in-law co-resided with their husband's
parents. In traditional rural Chinese society, the efforts of a son's
wife are seen and accepted as meaningful contributions. Almost
two-thirds of China's older population lives in rural areas, making it
the largest concentration of elders in the world. Considering that
Chinese society is changing, elders will be disadvantaged if they don't
adjust their expectations about the appropriateness of support from
their children.
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I was talking with a fellow recently who was asking why this blog is
called Serene Ambition™. He thought that the two words didn't seem to
go together. He could get 'serenity' and also understand 'ambition',
but together they made no sense to him. In our normal way of relating
to the world, you can have serenity (meaning inner peace, calmness,
maybe even joy) or you can be ambitious (meaning committed to creating
or accomplishing something in the future)—but not both together. In some ways, we might say these two terms label the best of East and West.
[ Read More]
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By Shae Hadden | Bio
The premise being that we CAN talk it through…
This is the question that epitomizes the possibility that the World
Café represents. It is the question that informs Anne Dosher, the
80-something ‘Elder’ of the World Café and Board member of the World
Café Community Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to developing and
disseminating this and other innovative dialogue approaches. I recently
had the privilege of interviewing this gracious, generous and engaging
lady—the human embodiment of what I imagined the World Café phenomena
itself to be—with a few inquiries of my own.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
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I was watching the CBS show “Sunday Morning” on the weekend and it had
a segment on the dying art of conversation. The point was that with all
our technology and almost real-time connections available with email,
handhelds and social networking sites, people seem to have lost the
ability to have conversations. It was a thought-provoking and, I think,
mostly true observation about what is happening to us. The show also
showcased a new book by Stephen Miller called Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. The program drove home the fact that we may be communicating more than
ever, but we’re conversing less and less. Various people were
interviewed and all agreed that we’re losing (perhaps have already
lost) what may be one of the most basic and pleasurable aspects of
life.[ Read More]
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 By Lauren Selman | Bio
I
recently watched one of my favorite shows, "Sex in the City." This show
features four protagonists that constantly prove that 30 is the new 20
and uncovers their relationships in the city of New York. In this
particular episode, the older women were poignantly juxtaposed against
young starlettes to emphasis they're "getting older". The plot
circulated around the question about aging that Carrie posed at the top
of the episode: "Does getting older mean getting wiser?" I
feel that, in the discussion of aging, the concepts of "getting older"
are synonymous with "getting wiser." But is this really the case? [ Read More]
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I am perplexed by the fact that companies have been laying off older
workers for years as part of various downsizing projects. I understand
the drive to cut costs. Under normal demographic conditions, laying off
older workers would even make some sense from a strictly financial
point of view, since they generally command higher salaries than
younger workers. The fact is, however, that those same companies are
moaning about shortages of qualified people and the difficulties
they’re having in recruiting really good people. They often resort to
paying more for younger workers or having to hire older workers back as
“consultants” at even higher rates of pay than they would receive had
they stayed on the payroll. Moreover, aside from this financial shell game, corporations are often
blind to their real costs in terms of what they lose when they lose
their mature workforce.[ Read More]
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For a long time, I have had the point of view that one of the biggest
problems of aging in our contemporary culture is that it leads most
people towards a ‘state of resignation’. Resignation is the mood we can
get caught in when we ‘give up’, when we stop living into the future as
possibility. It is the mood of succumbing to the belief that
circumstances are bigger than we are. It is a mood of defeat that
generates comments like: “Why bother since we can’t do anything about
it anyway?” It should not be confused with conscious acceptance of ‘the
things I cannot change’. Acceptance (surrender) is voluntary;
resignation is not. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at News
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Most of us are fans of the idea of ‘dialogue’. Dialogue is generally
touted as the answer for resolving conflicts, building trust and
crossing cultural divides of all kinds—be they national,
organizational, ethnic, racial, gender-based or generational. I was
having a conversation recently with a very bright young woman in the
same business as me and we were swapping stories and ideas and
experiences.
Although we are both professional communicators and teach others how to
communicate more effectively, it became obvious after a while that we
were talking ‘at’ each other. I began to experience the same kind of
tension I sometimes feel when I am speaking with my son. Nothing was
wrong per se, but I had the feeling that she wasn’t really listening to
me. As we began to speak about what was going on, I found out the same
was true for her. I felt like she either wasn’t interested in what I
had to say or didn’t care about or respect the breadth and depth of my
experience and knowledge. She also felt I wasn’t ‘getting her’ and
wasn’t respecting her and her considerable knowledge on the subject at
hand. We were two professionals from two generations who were more
competitive than collaborative, and at the end of the day we were both
frustrated at not being able to ‘connect’ the way we do every day with
people of our own generation. There was no dialogue and we ended up
with, at best, a discussion that will not in all likelihood make the
slightest difference in either one of our lives. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Wisdom in Action
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People sometimes ask me what I mean by ‘the culture of aging’. I can start by explaining what I mean by ‘culture’. Culture is, first of all, a word. And, like all words, it is a label for some phenomenon, some observable thing or idea. Culture is a concept and a very basic aspect of who we are. It contributes to how we relate to the world and, most of the time, constitutes an opening for our actions. It is a context for our human experience and occurs as a kind of non-stop conversation about ‘the way it is’. Culture defines our local reality, our norms and acceptable practices and, most importantly, what is and is not possible. Our paradigms or interpretations of the world persist and are maintained through culture. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Fearless Aging
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By Shae HaddenBio
How often do we take time to look a little closer at beautiful works of
art? To learn about the culture that shaped the images we see?
I recently had an opportunity to visit a unique gallery in my
community. Founded and run by a Canadian who is committed to bringing
Australian Aboriginal art created by women to North America, the Jan Townend Art Gallery
features paintings, textiles, weaving and basketry. The British art
critic John Ruskin once said, “All great art is the work of the whole
living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.” The powerful
paintings I saw at the gallery amply conveyed the soul of the
Aboriginal people—its beauty, strength and hidden meaning. The
deceptively simple style is grounded in a complex ceremonial tradition.
Consider that these people have no written languages, so their art is a
visual record, a way to communicate their history and culture: the
images help them tell their creation stories, their ‘dreamtime’, their
explanation of the world they live in. Pausing to view the creative
work of these women made me realize how my hectic, technology-driven
life has left me disconcertingly out of touch with my own soul. And in
speaking with Jan, I gained a greater understanding of what this art
means to the artists and their communities.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
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