Men Still at Work: Professionals Over Sixty and on the Job (27 page)

The side-by-side comparison tells us that older men and women have very similar priorities about staying in the paid workforce, but women perceive financial pressures to be greater: more than half of the women indicate that they need the income; less than half of the men do. The women rightly believe they are in rougher shape than the men vis-à-vis retirement savings, Social Security benefits, rising health insurance costs, and other financial pressures. Women are somewhat more likely than men to cite as a reason for persisting in the labor force the higher earning power that comes with being at the peak of one’s career. Actually, the gender difference regarding peak of career (25 percent of the men versus 30 percent of the women) is marginal. Both men and women said that they got a new job in the same field or changed careers midstream or later, thereby accumulating fewer years in the current job and putting peak of career out of reach, but that accounts for merely 20 percent of the men and 30 percent of the women. It could be surmised that the women got a delayed and possibly shakier start on the career ladder than men and they want to hold onto what they worked hard to accomplish.

More than half (58 percent) of the women told me that they took time out to raise a family (as I myself did). A few more did so to care for an adult family member. Three men had taken time out for childrearing and five had provided adult caregiving. Except for those few, the men were not delayed by family care, so their low response rate to the peak-of-career question is harder to explain. The median years in the current job—eighteen—is one clue to “peak” status being remote, even after working for many, many years overall. Then, too, perhaps they (and many of the women) simply did not view it as salient, compared to other reasons for staying on the job.

There is almost no difference between the men and the women with respect to accruing pension benefits, most likely because pensions are quickly becoming obsolete. The BLS reports that steady retirement income from a pension is no longer assured for many workers, as risk has been transferred from the employer to the eventual retiree. Traditional “pay out” plans are being replaced by defined contribution or “pay in” plans in which the employee pays in and the company contributes a specified amount. Overall, fewer older women receive pension income than men do, and, if women do get pension benefits, the median pension is slightly more than half of what men receive.
3

In addition to job satisfaction; using abilities, skills, and training; and the financial reasons discussed here, older women are wont to say they fear boredom and an atrophied intellect if they aren’t working, and there are echoes of this concern from almost half of the men. For instance, an attorney in his eighties says, “I am staying in good physical and mental health so I’ll be able to communicate intelligently,” and a sixty-seven-year-old wine retailer says he needs “the mental stimulation that comes from being challenged and from working with other people.” A sixty-eight-year-old videographer desires “to learn more each day and to keep my mind as sharp as possible.” Many men and women equate working with staving off boredom. “I am not sure what I would do all day if I didn’t work. I don’t sit still well and get bored easily,” confesses that sixty-eight-year-old entrepreneurship consultant whom I quoted in the previous chapter.

Originally in advertising and filmmaking, seventy-year-old Tom Lazarus is a playwright, screenwriter, script consultant, writing teacher, and author of
The Last Word: Definitive Answers to All Your Screenwriting Questions
. He has been teaching in the UCLA writer’s program for the past twenty years. His play,
Do unto Others
, was part of Winterfest 2013 in Los Angeles the same month that his play,
Stevie Stern as Kick Ass Mary
, was staged in Santa Monica. Tom is forthright about what compels him to work:

I’m an artist and continue to create as I continue to work. In many ways I’m defined by my work and take great satisfaction in the process of working. The process is more important than the product, as I work all the time and enjoy it all the time. I find that when I’m not working, when I don’t have a project rolling around in my head, I have a tendency to start drifting down psychologically. For that reason, ever since I can remember, my way of dealing with that is being productive, impossibly productive. I have to figure out why that’s a negative . . . though I have my suspicions.

Mentoring early careerists is another contributor to heightened satisfaction with work because it combines helping others and enjoying colleagues and coworkers with using one’s abilities, skills, and training. One sixty-nine-year-old businessman says he spends a great deal of time mentoring and cheerleading because the shrinking workforce is creating tremendous challenges for younger workers, challenges he never had to deal with. For a seventy-year-old city manager who runs his own firm, a prime motivator for staying on the job is mentoring his younger employees. “For me (and others my age with whom I have talked), mentoring is one of the major rewards of working,” he says. Like this city manager, many professionals who were fortunate enough to be guided along their career path by older colleagues now enjoy passing along what they know to the next generation and, in the process, giving back to the field. Bruce Chabner, Jim Levinson, Larry Lucchino, Chuck Willie, Steve Grossman, John Kaneb, and John Sayour, whose profiles you have read, exemplify the powerful influence mentors and role models of different generations can exert on career choice, conduct, and duration. The men foresee mentoring early careerists becoming part of their professional legacy.

Benefits could be another reason for working late. Many men and women, regardless of age, hold onto a job because they depend on the benefits as well as the income. In addition to compensation, employee benefits may include the following categories: health and wellness, retirement savings and planning, career development, and workplace flexibility. Health insurance is particularly prized, especially when one’s employer pays the lion’s share of the cost. Telecommuting, as it is often known, is a family-friendly benefit that allows employees with young children as well as employees responsible for elder care the flexibility to work from home for at least a portion of the week. The SHRM says organizations offering some form of telecommuting has increased.
4
When next year’s SHRM survey results are reported, it will be interesting to see whether employers continued to allow workplace flexibility, or, like Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, revoked the privilege of working from home.

Three-quarters of the men I surveyed have a few or many benefits contributed partially or wholly by their current employer (or purchased for themselves, as some self-employed men are able to do). Their benefits include the following (in descending order of frequency): health insurance, retirement savings plan, vacation days, life insurance, sick leave, pension, and disability insurance. Other types of benefits contributed by some employers are: long-term care insurance; dental, vision, or legal coverage; shares in the company; an automobile; and professional development opportunities. With respect to professional development as a benefit, relatively few men say that opportunities for training, retraining, and updating skills help to keep them on the job (8 percent). Women in slightly higher numbers agree that such opportunities are minor reasons for continuing to work into one’s senior years (11 percent).

One-quarter of the men currently have no benefits, most likely because they are part-timers, self-employed, or collecting benefits from a previous employer. (Some of the men rely on their wife’s benefits.) Thirty percent of the men continue to receive benefits from a previous employer, including some of the men with no benefits from the current employer and some who get benefits both from their current job as well as a previous job. Just as older male professionals are faring better than older female professionals in terms of finances, the men are more apt to receive benefits from their current employer than the women are. The gap is large—75 percent of the men versus 50 percent of the women.

Deriving satisfaction from one’s work and receiving benefits are key incentives for staying on the job, provided that one remains healthy. Many people have to stop working temporarily or permanently when their health fails, no matter their age. Fortunately, nearly two-thirds of older men (63 percent) say that their health is good and they have high energy. (A slightly higher percentage of older women [66 percent] are similarly blessed.) Good health is both a
reason
to keep working—in fact it is one of the men’s top five reasons (see table 7.1)—and an essential qualification
or
prerequisite
for working in the senior years. The small number of men and women who told me that they are troubled by physical ailments or limitations are, nonetheless, all still working. They are unwilling to be defeated by their problems. To take one example, here is how a sixty-seven-year-old business owner gamely summarizes his current situation:

Life turned out differently than expected, and entrepreneurial pursuits make the most sense for me. An attempt at retirement (sort of) was not fulfilling, even with charity work, family, and sports. In the past ten years I have beaten TB, had a heart attack, survived septicemia, and been hit by a car while on a bike. But I will not abandon a positive approach and an effort to live a full life. I spend time exercising to be able to work and maintain mental and physical health.

In addition to considerations of health and fitness, the next chapter looks at a variety of other significant personal challenges and concerns, such as family responsibilities, competing demands on one’s time, finances, and issues in the workplace, that are associated with remaining in the workforce.

8

Personal Challenges and Concerns

Old age is like a minefield; if you see footprints leading to the other side, step in them.—George E. Vaillant,
Aging Well

Next we consider family responsibilities, competing demands on one’s time, financial and health concerns, and issues in the workplace. Working during one’s senior years is not all fun and games, of course. When I asked my survey respondents to indicate their personal challenges and concerns (allowing for multiple responses), just over one-third (35 percent) said they have none. “It’s not an issue yet, but I am on guard,” remarks a sixty-nine-year-old lawyer. The major concerns expressed by some of the men are not specifically job related. A seventy-five-year-old engineer worries and wonders what he will do after retirement. A professor, age sixty-eight, is “watching this country’s political leaders’ failure to create a more just and equal society.” He is not very optimistic about our country’s future. And a businessman, age sixty-three, is stressed by “the rising cost of health care, potential changes in the tax rates, the worldwide economic climate and its effect on the United States, and increasing US debt.”

Thirty-five percent of the men admit to experiencing a little or a lot of stress or fatigue because of their work. A seventy-five-year-old physician in private practice says he doesn’t have the stamina he had in earlier years and he gets “stressed out” more easily at work and in nonwork situations. “Overall, though,” he concludes, “it’s the best time of my life.” An eighty-six-year-old physician is bothered by “the odious burden of paperwork.” An eighty-two-year-old professor decries “education becoming ever more prescriptive and proscriptive.” A sixty-three-year-old doctor laments “the rapidly changing political landscape in medicine, making good patient care a lesser priority.” The women I studied are more prone to suffering stress and fatigue from their work than are the men—44 percent of the women (a 9 percent difference) testify to having a little or a lot of stress and fatigue. It is hard to know whether women are simply more “upfront” about it than the men (who may not want to appear vulnerable), or whether they actually do find their responsibilities more wearing. The fact that fewer older women than older men can say they have no personal challenges or concerns (21 percent of the women, 35 percent of the men) seems to corroborate
both
possibilities. Further evidence of women having work-related stress: more women than men say they are bothered by a pervasively negative organizational climate at work (nineteen women, fourteen men).

Twenty-one percent of the men say they do not have enough time for everything they want or need to do. This can be recreational time or time for volunteering, and it can be time they would like to spend with a spouse, children, and grandchildren. It can, as one fellow grumbles, be finding time to organize and dispose of accumulated possessions that are no longer needed but which have personal memories attached to them. “Working on multiple projects about sixty hours per week, plus taking care of the house, etc., leaves little time for family and friends,” frets a sixty-seven-year-old businessman. “It is difficult to balance it all” is a common refrain from these older men (and a frequent regret of older women, as well).

Physical limitations concern 19 percent of the men. Some, like a sixty-five-year-old researcher, are resigned to “the normal physical changes of aging.” Others, like a seventy-year-old businessman, acknowledge, “Isn’t it all about health? If you have it there is a lot to do, learn, and share.” One fellow, a seventy-five-year-old attorney, worries, “By the time I decide to quit, I may be too disabled to enjoy activities with my family.” Consistent with national statistics showing that older women on average are healthier and live longer than older men, 5 percent fewer women than men are troubled by physical ailments or limitations of any kind.

Dick Winslow is a psychiatrist in Washington State who works in public sector mental health clinics evaluating and treating low-income patients, many of whom are refugees from war-torn countries. Despite having a bad back and a rare neuro-ophthalmological disorder, Dick, age seventy, has no intentions of retiring. That would mean giving up his identity as a working professional and his role as a contributing person.

Profile: Richard S. Winslow Jr.

Depending on where and when you befriended Richard Winslow, you might call him Dixie, his high school nickname; Homer, a college sobriquet referring to Winslow Homer; or Dick, as he is known around Mercer Island, Washington, where he and his wife, Susan, live today. A long conversation with Dick reveals him to be a man who carefully weighs his decisions, a caring individual and a modest one.

Professionally, he is known as “Doctor.” For some thirty-three years Dick has practiced psychiatry, evaluating and treating patients in public sector mental health clinics. They are low-income patients and the services are subsidized. He deliberately chose cross-cultural psychiatry over private practice because he gets to work with diverse, often immigrant populations, many of whom were severely traumatized in their countries of origin. “I have learned to help people who escaped with their lives from war-torn places, such as Southeast Asia, Bosnia, East Africa, and the Middle East, as well as American-born people of all ethnicities who are out of the mainstream.” He also enjoys being part of a multidisciplinary staff, sharing the patients with social workers and other therapists. “Then too,” he adds, “it helps to be an
older
clinician since many patients like to have a psychiatrist who is older than they are.”

Dick also holds down a second job reviewing disability claims for the Social Security Administration part time. He insists that it is not for the money—he likes the income, but does not need it—rather it is for the intellectual challenge. “I get to see thousands of medical records for patients whose psychiatric problems are often interwoven with physical problems. I can compare the quality of medical treatment available not only in the Pacific Northwest but also nationwide. That’s a real eye-opener.”

Until the summer of 2012, Dick had a third part-time job at a different public mental health clinic, an arrangement that suited him because he enjoyed the variety of options it afforded. However, his seventieth birthday that summer was the turning point. With the switch to electronic recordkeeping, the bureaucracy at the clinic had become more focused on documentation than patient care, and staff caseloads had increased. “I was expected to save time by typing in my notes as the patient was speaking, but I refused to be a transcriptionist. A patient deserves eye contact!” His supervisor had been hinting that it was time to go, and the department chair wrote about department priorities and questioned whether Dick would be rehired. Given the negative organizational climate, it seemed a good time to leave. The clinic did in fact promptly replace him with a woman half his age. He knows she will do a fine job, in part because he had supervised her during her training. Dick comments on the contrast between the cultures at the two clinics—the one he left and the one where he still works. “Where I am now, staff respect me; they elected me president of the medical staff, or ‘senior dude.’ It must be the white hair that makes me look so wise!”

Hearing about Dick’s life experiences and career moves, it is not hard to discern patterns. In 1964, his senior year at Harvard, Dick traveled with the Krokodiloes, the college’s a cappella singing group, on a trip to India. “I wasn’t the group’s leader. That was my talented friend, Jim Levinson. I was just the tallest! But, seriously, that trip opened my eyes to the wider world.” (Jim’s profile is in chapter 3.) Dick spent the next two years in the Peace Corps in the high mountains of Peru. “Among my accomplishments were acquiring proficiency in Spanish (which is useful to this day in my practice) and lending my height to a Peruvian basketball team.” Once back in the states, for the next three years he did graduate work in Russian language and literature at the University of Washington. By 1969, events at home and abroad—the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam—seemed more compelling than laboring over a doctoral dissertation. Dick decided to study Vietnamese intensively for a year so that he could do civilian community development work in Vietnam. “Aside from meeting some wonderful Vietnamese people and having the opportunity to speak the language, that was a disappointing experience—I did not get to do much humanitarian work; instead I was just a cog in the military wheel.”

Dick returned to the University of Washington to study for an MD. Late in the program he did a rotation with three family doctors who scheduled their patients in strict seven-minute intervals. A seriously ill patient would get twenty-one minutes, everyone else would get either seven or fourteen minutes. “I could see that a doctor could stay in good shape by running from room to room, patient to patient, but as a ‘people’ person, that did not fit my personality or my pace. I wanted to take as much time as needed with each patient, which is the reason I selected psychiatry as my area of specialization.” After his psychiatric residency, in 1980 Dick moved to Alaska with Susan and their firstborn child. Susan had been a special education teacher, but she retrained in Alaska to become a labor and delivery nurse (her profession today). Dick treated Native Alaskans, some of whom spoke little English, so he often worked through interpreters. “While I was amazed by the differences between their culture and mine, I was comfortable in the environment. That was the start of my interest in community psychiatry and working with people who lacked all sorts of advantages we take for granted.”

Dick wants me to be sure to identify him as a loving husband and parent, and now grandparent, in addition to being a psychiatrist. “I have been lucky in many respects. Now that our two children are grown and past the difficult stage, we have become even closer to them. I don’t even mind when they tease me about my idiosyncrasies, like my fashion sense and the way I comb my hair. And we adore our toddler granddaughter, who is the happiest, brightest part of our lives right now. My biggest regret is not being able to pick her up because of my bad back.”

Another impairment a few years ago was a rare neuro-ophthalmological disorder (blepharospasm) that made his blink reflex go haywire and his eyelids shut tight. He couldn’t drive and at work had to reassure his patients that he wasn’t falling asleep listening to them and he wasn’t on drugs. “Groundbreaking surgery has mostly fixed the problem, but I still get injections—it’s Botox of all things!” True to form, Dick sometimes goes to medical conventions to help staff the booth of the blepharospasm disorder foundation. “I try to educate other doctors about the disorder. Lots of doctors come from Latin America and I can converse about blepharospasm in Spanish with them.”

In his free time, Dick enjoys watching British television shows with his wife. He takes full advantage of Washington state’s policy allowing residents age sixty or older to audit college or university classes for a nominal fee. He has audited courses in history and in astronomy, a subject that has fascinated him since childhood when he became an amateur sky observer. He also participates in a book group composed of a dozen men who enjoy getting together every four to six weeks to discuss a book and talk about sports, politics, and the economy.

Ever modest, Dick asks me not to hold him up as an example for other men. “It is hard to give up one’s identity as a working professional. How would I spend my time? I am not trying to achieve anything—not fame, power, or a promotion. I just don’t wish to lose my role as a contributing person. That wish doesn’t make me anything special.” This point I have to refute. Dick (Dixie when I knew him) was voted “The Most Respected” boy in our high school class, and that vote was certainly prophetic.

Nineteen percent of my respondents are troubled by the decreased value of their investments or other financial setbacks experienced since the onset of the recession. For instance, the recession forced Neil Tift (profiled in chapter 5) and his wife to take a big loss on the sale of their home in 2007. Other examples are men who are providing financial support to grown children with families and a teacher who is depressed because he cannot afford to do the things that interest him. On the whole, however, most of the men would seem to be in good shape financially. Here again we find national statistics borne out—more women than men are worried about the declining value of their investments or other financial difficulties (one out of three women in my study compared to 19 percent of the men).