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60 on Up: The Truth About Aging in America
The Golden Years? You've got to be kidding . . . Part serious, part comic, these words reflect our ambivalence about aging in the twenty-first century. Is it a blessing or a curse? With refreshing candor and characteristic wit, best-selling author Lillian Rubin looks deeply into the issues of our graying nation, the triumph of our new longevity, and the pain, both emotional and physical, that lies right alongside it.
Through thought-provoking interviews, research, and unflinching analysis of her own life experience, Dr. Rubin offers us a much-needed road map for the uncharted territory that lies ahead. In a country where 78 million baby boomers are moving into their sixties and economists worry that they are "the monster at the door" that will break the Social Security bank and trash the economy; where 40 percent of sixty-five-year-olds are in the "sandwich generation," taking care of their parents while often still supporting their children; and where Americans eighty-five and older represent the fastest-growing segment of the population, we cannot afford to pretend that our expanded old age is just a walk on the sunny side of the street, that "sixty is the new forty," "eighty is the new sixty," or that we'll all live happily ever after.
In this wide-ranging book, Dr. Rubin examines how the new longevity ricochets around our social and emotional lives, affecting us all, for good and ill, from adolescence into senescence. How, she asks, do sixty-somethings fill another twenty, thirty, or more years post retirement without a "useful" identity or obvious purpose? What happens to sex as we move through the decades after sixty? What happens to long-cherished friendships as life takes unexpected turns? What happens when, at seventy, instead of living the life of freedom we've dreamed about, we find ourselves having to take care of Mom and Dad? What happens to the inheritances boomers have come to expect when their parents routinely live into their eighties and beyond and the cost of their care soars?
In tackling the subject of aging over a broad swath of the population, cutting across race, class, gender, and physical and cognitive ability, Lillian Rubin gives us a powerful and long-overdue reminder that all of us will be touched by the problems arising from our new longevity. Our best hope is to understand thoroughly the realities we face and to prepare-as individuals and as a society-for a long life from sixty on up.
Through thought-provoking interviews, research, and unflinching analysis of her own life experience, Dr. Rubin offers us a much-needed road map for the uncharted territory that lies ahead. In a country where 78 million baby boomers are moving into their sixties and economists worry that they are "the monster at the door" that will break the Social Security bank and trash the economy; where 40 percent of sixty-five-year-olds are in the "sandwich generation," taking care of their parents while often still supporting their children; and where Americans eighty-five and older represent the fastest-growing segment of the population, we cannot afford to pretend that our expanded old age is just a walk on the sunny side of the street, that "sixty is the new forty," "eighty is the new sixty," or that we'll all live happily ever after.
In this wide-ranging book, Dr. Rubin examines how the new longevity ricochets around our social and emotional lives, affecting us all, for good and ill, from adolescence into senescence. How, she asks, do sixty-somethings fill another twenty, thirty, or more years post retirement without a "useful" identity or obvious purpose? What happens to sex as we move through the decades after sixty? What happens to long-cherished friendships as life takes unexpected turns? What happens when, at seventy, instead of living the life of freedom we've dreamed about, we find ourselves having to take care of Mom and Dad? What happens to the inheritances boomers have come to expect when their parents routinely live into their eighties and beyond and the cost of their care soars?
In tackling the subject of aging over a broad swath of the population, cutting across race, class, gender, and physical and cognitive ability, Lillian Rubin gives us a powerful and long-overdue reminder that all of us will be touched by the problems arising from our new longevity. Our best hope is to understand thoroughly the realities we face and to prepare-as individuals and as a society-for a long life from sixty on up.
- GenresNonfiction
208 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2007
12 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 23, 2019
Well, I love that she started with, "Getting old sucks!" instead of " Getting old ain't for sissies." Because...it does. Suck, that is. Dr. Rubin, though, gives a lot of insight into aging that made me sit up and take notice. Maybe it isn't so great to live super long. And here I was doing everything to elongate my life....it makes you think! Upon reflection, I do think this book should be read by anyone who has parents or is getting up there in years. Aging is the great denial. She definitely covered all the important things that sit in the back of your mind about aging. This book is 12 years old, but current, nonetheless. The part about children taking care of their parents and still, maybe their own children, was nothing less than scary, thought provoking, and eye opening. Who hasn’t talked to someone who had to take car keys away?
I highly recommend this book for helping people see the future of their lives.
I highly recommend this book for helping people see the future of their lives.
August 7, 2019
I went in search of books to help understand aging. This one was excellent. I am going to suggest my kids read it since their generation will be caring for us when we are old. The bottom line is that society is not prepared for us to live so long, on many levels.
August 13, 2010
Social researcher Lillian Rubin is back. She is old and she is pessimistic. The opening sentences of the book: "Getting old sucks! It always has, it always will." Well, her first several dozen pages convinced me that she would have nothing to say to me, a committed geezer with a pair of 90 year old parents. But the book is short and I am generally committed to finishing most books that I start. Just like I habitually will watch a movie to the conclusion regardless of what I find to be a bad beginning.
"How, then, does one find meaning in a society where dignity and respect are so closely associated with work and productivity?" Now she had me hooked. We don't exactly venerate the elderly in the U.S., do we? Your world is probably not filled with the "esteemed elders" that we hear about in other cultures.
Lillian Rubin came into my life with Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-class Family, Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together, and Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives. I had gone back to school in the 1980s to get an MSW, and Lillian's books were there waiting for me. But this book, 60 On Up: The Truth About Aging in America, is practically brand new, published in 2007. Lillian had retired from being a psychologist, researcher and writer several years ago to become a painter, something she had always wanted to do. But a friend asked her to write a book about aging. So she agreed and put back on her researcher hat, just recently discarded. The book is based on 52 face-to-face interviews with women and men between the ages of 65 and 92. She also talked with adult children, sometimes those of the elderly person she had interviewed. And she includes a good deal of her personal experience in her writing along with dozens of informal conversations she had had in the recent past with friends and colleagues.
Ms. Rubin's case histories and observations, based on much source material that is referenced in the back of the book like any good research paper, rings true for me. She surely does not focus on the positive aspects of old age: "the freedom, the ability to finally to do what you want to do, the time for yourself, reflection..." She does say, "I don't mean to dismiss the experience of others in favor of psychological interpretation," but she IS a psychologist. And she admits that "I, like most Americans, have an aversion to the old." This does seem like this researcher might have a tendency to stack to deck.
Rubin, who looks young for her age of 85, is a bit focused on Staying Younger While Getting Older, one of her chapters. She also writes about the role of society, the "golden" years, sex, economics of an aging population, taking care of mom and dad, and more. She, as any good teacher would admit, learned a lot by writing the book. Maybe she would say that getting old is not good or bad, but certainly complex. And she touches on many of the complexities in a short 184 pages.
If you believe in the golden years, you may not find your view shifted by reading this book. In fact, you might not get by the first chapter if you even pick it up. But it does ultimately ask some good questions, provide real-from-life examples and some potent facts. Be careful. And be sure to complete your living will and be sure your children know what you want in your end of life days if you become unable to decide for yourself.
"How, then, does one find meaning in a society where dignity and respect are so closely associated with work and productivity?" Now she had me hooked. We don't exactly venerate the elderly in the U.S., do we? Your world is probably not filled with the "esteemed elders" that we hear about in other cultures.
Lillian Rubin came into my life with Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-class Family, Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together, and Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives. I had gone back to school in the 1980s to get an MSW, and Lillian's books were there waiting for me. But this book, 60 On Up: The Truth About Aging in America, is practically brand new, published in 2007. Lillian had retired from being a psychologist, researcher and writer several years ago to become a painter, something she had always wanted to do. But a friend asked her to write a book about aging. So she agreed and put back on her researcher hat, just recently discarded. The book is based on 52 face-to-face interviews with women and men between the ages of 65 and 92. She also talked with adult children, sometimes those of the elderly person she had interviewed. And she includes a good deal of her personal experience in her writing along with dozens of informal conversations she had had in the recent past with friends and colleagues.
Ms. Rubin's case histories and observations, based on much source material that is referenced in the back of the book like any good research paper, rings true for me. She surely does not focus on the positive aspects of old age: "the freedom, the ability to finally to do what you want to do, the time for yourself, reflection..." She does say, "I don't mean to dismiss the experience of others in favor of psychological interpretation," but she IS a psychologist. And she admits that "I, like most Americans, have an aversion to the old." This does seem like this researcher might have a tendency to stack to deck.
Rubin, who looks young for her age of 85, is a bit focused on Staying Younger While Getting Older, one of her chapters. She also writes about the role of society, the "golden" years, sex, economics of an aging population, taking care of mom and dad, and more. She, as any good teacher would admit, learned a lot by writing the book. Maybe she would say that getting old is not good or bad, but certainly complex. And she touches on many of the complexities in a short 184 pages.
If you believe in the golden years, you may not find your view shifted by reading this book. In fact, you might not get by the first chapter if you even pick it up. But it does ultimately ask some good questions, provide real-from-life examples and some potent facts. Be careful. And be sure to complete your living will and be sure your children know what you want in your end of life days if you become unable to decide for yourself.
December 8, 2011
This was a very depressing book for a 59-year-old to read! Not much to look forward to acccording to Rubin. I did learn that most "old" old folks felt that their 50's and 60's were a good time for them, so I plan to make the most out of the next decade!
April 24, 2013
If middle age is the time when the first real signs of physical change and decline appear, old age is the culmination of the process.
In old age, we rethink ourselves yet again, figure out who we are now that the roles and life tasks that consumed us and formed the center of our sense of self are finished.
Nothing is better than great sex because it’s great only when it’s an expression of love, intimacy and relatedness that fills every corner of desire.
Maybe you could work toward a less tortured acceptance
In India, people prepare for death. That’s what the last 20 years of life is supposed to be about, preparing to withdraw from worldly attachments. People are in an active process of withdrawing from maya, which means this world, and moving toward the spiritual world.
They search for nothingness, non-being.
I told her that I loved her very much, that she’d been a wonderful mother and I’d never forget her, and that I’d miss her. I assured her that my brother and I would be fine, and if she wanted to die, we’d be right there with her.”
In old age, we rethink ourselves yet again, figure out who we are now that the roles and life tasks that consumed us and formed the center of our sense of self are finished.
Nothing is better than great sex because it’s great only when it’s an expression of love, intimacy and relatedness that fills every corner of desire.
Maybe you could work toward a less tortured acceptance
In India, people prepare for death. That’s what the last 20 years of life is supposed to be about, preparing to withdraw from worldly attachments. People are in an active process of withdrawing from maya, which means this world, and moving toward the spiritual world.
They search for nothingness, non-being.
I told her that I loved her very much, that she’d been a wonderful mother and I’d never forget her, and that I’d miss her. I assured her that my brother and I would be fine, and if she wanted to die, we’d be right there with her.”
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August 22, 2009Rubin tells it like it is about being old. At last a truthful book about the issues of aging instead of the glut of "Ain't old age grand?" hypes written by people who haven't been there yet. I'm 77 and I can tell you that for most people old age isn't much fun.
January 30, 2011
Refreshingly candid! A great primer for my middle aged self. Lillian Rubin is a great writer. She is brazenly honest but also funny and wise. This book lives up to its subtitle: The Truth About Aging in the Twenty-First Century.
November 28, 2008
Generic
Little new information
Little new information
December 7, 2008
Depressingly honest and open. OMG.
March 10, 2011
Not so great. A review of the assorted problems of aging with no suggestions for relief--depressing.
March 7, 2013
A very sobering, insightful look at aging.
October 11, 2016
This is, a self absorbed woman, seems a very negative person.. The book basically told me that this is NOT the kind of person I ever want to be: whiney , regretful, snobbish. she grew old... NU?
March 3, 2018
Honest, hard news from the front lines. Rubin is pissed off and indignant, but she speaks truth to lifestyle advertising.
March 29, 2017
Not great research to support ideas but a great memoir from a wonderful sociologist.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews