How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America by Mark Freedman - Book Report/Review Example

? The book Prime Time: How Baby Boomers will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America by Mark Freedman gives an interesting, if somewhat self-congratulatory history of retirement in the United States. It opens by tracing American perceptions of aging from puritan times to the modern day. In Puritan times, Freedman says, age made someone venerable and important, keepers of tradition who are remarkable for their wisdom and advanced age (37). This trend continued for much of American history; the founding fathers wore powdered wigs to make themselves appear older, suits were cut to emulate the “sloping shoulders” of old people (38). This trend, however, quickly reversed itself with the onset of the industrial revolution and more and more people aging into old age. In this period, people were told to live “quiet retirements” and some people even advocated suicide by chloroform for people who reach the age of sixty (40). This led directly to the retirement communities of the 1960s, which broke with the idea of a “quiet” lifestyle to instead experience an active lifestyle with lots of recreation, sports and activity; essentially a perpetual vacation (42). Freedman sets up the retirements of the baby-boomers, that is, people born between 1946 and 1964, and also the largest generation that has ever existed, as the next step in the change of how elderly Americans experience themselves and are experienced by their communities. Rather than being the ancient sages of the puritan times, the useless and disrespected octogenarians of the industrial revolution, or the aging active, self involved and isolated retirees of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Freedman contends that baby boomers are creating a revolution by retiring in a new and different way, by being actively involved in their communities and trying to use their retirement years in civically productive ways. Freedman uses the lived experiences of baby boomers themselves, in their own words, to demonstrate the ways baby-boomer retirement will be different. Freedman uses and interesting and useful methodology that is interesting, useful, but also somewhat problematic. He relies heavily on first hand accounts by baby-boomers themselves about what they imagine their retirements being, or what they are experiencing themselves in the process of their retirement. This, on one hand, is an incredibly useful way to examine the way baby boomers imagine their retirement. Aging people have persistently been examined as ‘others’ throughout the history of aging; people younger than them examine their worth, their lifestyles, and pass judgement on them. This leads to a skewed perception of the aging population, as others whose worth is determined by their relationship to the younger population; aging people are determined by their value to young people. By using first-hand accounts, Freedman reminds readers that retirees have worth in and of themselves, and that their lived experience is at least as important as their value to society, if not more so. This methodology does, however, also have its pitfalls. These problems mostly center around the fact that one’s perception of one’s self is not necessarily balanced, nor is what one says about oneself necessarily true. They may be skewed more towards what one wishes one acts like, rather than how one actually acts. This issue is exacerbated by the age of this book and the time of life baby boomers were in when contributing to it. This book was published in 1999, the oldest baby boomers were just barely approaching retirement, or experiencing a very young and early retirement. This means that most of their perceptions of retirement comes from hopes and aspirations rather than actions. This book says that there is/will be a revolution of aging caused by the baby boomers, yet this perception of revolution is based wholly on what they think or say they will do, rather than what they have actually done. This causes a false dichotomy, where the actual actions of past retirees are compared to the possible and hoped future of baby boomers. Who knows if other retirees might have said the same thing if they were interviewed about their impending retirement? The age of this book also causes a few other problems with its application to reality now that baby boomers are actually retiring rather than just contemplating retirement. This book was written in 1999, a time which was one of the more robust economies that the united states has experienced in the past few decades. The problem, as mentioned before, is that the baby boomers are actually retiring (or not being able to retire, at times) in one of the worst economies that has existed since the Great Depression. Retirees are now seeing their pensions cut, even in government sectors, and assets that have been saved for long periods of time, especially in the stock market, are worth substantially less than they were in 1999. This means that the hopes and aspirations they held in 1999 may be very different than the ones they hold now, and their ability to achieve these aspirations may be even more drastic. Despite all of these problems, however, this book does demonstrate some amazing things about baby boomer retirement. One is that their aspirations are, indeed, very different from the ways other generations have retired. They imagine themselves continuing to be in constant contact with the world, and balk at the idea of secluding themselves either in retirement homes or in private communities the way past groups of retirees have (175). They instead imagine lives where their great amounts of free time will allow them to give back to the communities around them, and to leave a legacy that they may not have been able to in their working life (176). They want to volunteer, to fundraise, and to help those who need help. This solves many of the problems associated with aging, such as loosing contact with those around you, loosing drive to accomplish things, and loosing skills, mental and physical acuity. The baby boomers have taken the “active lifestyle” of the 60s further, and managed to continue being active in a more constructive way to those around them than other generations. Baby boomers imagine a retirement that is as productive as their working life was, but possibly more fulfilling. Mark Freedman’s book Prime Time gives an interesting and ingenious take on the problem of defining what retirement may look like for the biggest and most important generation of retirees ever. It has a unique methodology of having retirees (or future retirees) writing what they imagine their retirement to be in their own words, a methodology that is both powerful and problematic. That methodology allows aging people, who rarely are able to actualize and voice their own desires for themselves to account their own hopes and dreams for their retirement and aging. This power, however, also has its pitfalls, in that measuring what a person says they want or imagine their retirement being and what they actually do are very different things. Furthermore, the age of this book combined with the changes in the economy and retirement since its inception means that the dreams recorded in it may never come to fruition. This is a powerful and evocative work, but must be taken with a grain of salt and would probably have been better and more informative were it written today. Freedman, Marc (1999). Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America. New York: Public Affairs. Read More