TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041690/0416140.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 84

Getting Young and Old Together


A growing number of U.S. programs forge links between the ages
at a time when social patterns tend to separate them

By MELISSA LUDTKE/BOSTON


    Some call them the sandwich generation, that bulging
demographic cohort of thirtysomethings and fortysomethings who
face an onerous triple duty: caring for young children and
elderly parents while holding down full-time jobs. More than
one-third of the U.S. work force confronts this problem, a
number that is sure to rise as the population continues to age
and as more women, the family's traditional care givers, enter
the job market. What's a working couple to do with junior and
Granny between 9 and 5? Throughout the U.S., a growing number
of programs are now aimed at stimulating contact between young
and old at a time when social patterns tend to separate them.

    One such effort is a day-care center for young and old alike
set up by Stride Rite Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., the first
private company to establish this type of facility. The
$700,000 pilot program, which  opened last month after three
years of planning, consists of adjoining centers that allow
easy mingling and interaction between 55 children, from 18
months to five years old, and 24 elders over 60. Separated only
by windows and hallways, the old and the young have plenty of
opportunities to visit one another. Shared activities such as
cooking and birthday parties are planned by the staff, but
informal get-togethers happen spontaneously. "I tell my friends
what they are missing," says Eva DaRosa, a 79-year-old
great-grandmother whose smile brightens whenever children are
nearby.

    The program was initiated by Stride Rite Chairman Arnold
Hiatt, who pioneered on-site child care in the early 1970s. The
center attracts half its participants from families who live
near the company's corporate headquarters; the others are
related to employees who contribute on a sliding, income-based
scale to the annual $7,000 cost. Hiatt recruited faculty
members from Boston's Wheelock College to develop a curriculum
of shared activities such as storytelling and puppet plays.

    "It is a modern paradox that children are far more likely
to have living grandparents but much less likely to know them
well," says Fran Pratt, who directs the Center for
Understanding Aging at Framingham State College in
Massachusetts. Psychologists point out that old people and
youngsters, whether related or not, have much to offer each
other. An older person can fill a void for a child who does not
have a grandparent living nearby. And companionship with a young
child bolsters an elder against the isolation and loneliness
that often accompany old age.

    Such links also fulfill an important social function.
Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson invented the term "generativity" to
describe the necessary transmission of life experiences from
elder to younger generations. In the 1970s, anthropologist
Margaret Mead prophetically wrote that an increasing lack of
contact between old and young relatives would create a need for
surrogate grandparents.

    Efforts to connect generations are producing a host of new
programs across the U.S. Linking Lifetimes, a mentor program
that brings retirees together with at-risk teenagers, is being
launched in nine cities. In Omaha and seven other cities,
elderly volunteers visit regularly with chronically ill
children in a program called Family Friends. Generations
Together, a research group based at the University of
Pittsburgh, organizes phone links between older people and
so-called latchkey kids, who return to empty homes after
school. At the Point Park College Children's School in
Pittsburgh, some preschoolers are being taught about aging by
staff members, who are all over 55. The teachers use activities
like planting seeds to illustrate the stages of the life cycle.
The aim is to "foster a child's development of positive
attitudes toward the elderly," says Cheryl Mack, program
coordinator at Generations Together.

    Without such personal contacts, experts say, stereotypical
images emerge. A child can become afraid of older people
because he thinks they are going to die. But by spending time
with the elderly, kids learn to accept the frailty of the aging
while discovering their strengths. In one Pennsylvania program
toddlers from a local day-care center spend time with
Alzheimer's patients after being read such books as Grandpa
Doesn't Know It's Me. Youngsters also learn that death is a
natural component of life. Generations Together, for example,
is developing a curriculum dealing with separation and loss.
It will help children cope not only with an elder companion's
demise but also with other issues, like their parents' divorce
or the loss of a favorite pet.

    Such approaches do more than weave a few strangers' lives
together or provide a convenient way to occupy idle hours. They
can begin to change the way distant generations feel about one
another, which has important practical implications for an
aging society. Some public-policy groups are already starting
to think "intergenerationally" in seeking solutions to
community problems. Generations United, for example, a
Washington-based coalition of national organizations
representing old and young constituents, works to push goals
of mutual interest to the two age groups. The real test of
these efforts will come during the next few decades, as the
baby boomers turn geriatric and the rest of society has to bear
the enormous burden of caring for them in what is likely to be
an era of dwindling resources. At that point, the mutual
understanding gained from present-day initiatives may provide
a crucial buffer to bitter generational conflicts.