Retiring Men
Manhood, Labor, and Growing Old in America, 1900-1960
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7306868 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brian Gratton (Arizona State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 978-979 |
| Publication date | 2012-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jas340 |
| OpenAlex | W2320668804 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
While the history of old age had its salad days, it is rare to see new work in the field. Gregory Wood takes up the subject again, with a novel emphasis on masculinity. Where he treats the conventional themes of work, poverty, and discrimination, he repeats uncritically what the historical literature reports, a literature that repeated uncritically what the reformist literature of the 1920s and 1930s had reported. That approach yields the conventional view of grinding impoverishment and degradation of the elderly, even as they set out on the road to the affluence and leisure that they now enjoy. Wood's chapters rely on well-traveled primary sources (with rather few references to the historiography). In assaying men's old age and masculinity, however, Wood ventures on new ground. He argues, relying largely on secondary sources, that an old linkage between manhood and productive work faltered in the late nineteenth century and was replaced among some men by “an ambivalence toward modern industrial work discipline” and an embrace of “physical prowess ... the conquering of new frontiers, and homosocial relations” (pp. 2–3). In the twentieth century that culture was replaced by a renewed stress on having a job; thus, even as retirement grew to be common, work “productivity ... became more and more important as the core of male identity” (p. 232). Pursuing this argument in newspapers and other published sources, Wood takes an interesting look at the “Forty Plus Clubs” and other organizations of older men that emerged in the late 1930s (organizations oddly linked to union seniority clauses). He examines entertaining medical and pharmaceutical solutions to the problem of aging, complete with the promise embedded in Fleischmann's Yeast. Who knew? The chapter on the “shock of retirement” in the 1950s falls back into a story already told, but Wood profitably exposes the assumption in the old social gerontological literature that the retirement world was made up of white-collar workers. He explores the spread of retirement planning in companies and unveils the exotic rituals of the dreaded retirement ceremony. In this chapter, Wood does not ask this useful question: If retirement was so shocking, why were men and women flocking to it? As an aging industrial worker interviewed by Warner Bloomberg Jr. and quoted by Woods remarked, “‘There was so much to do in life besides work in a factory!’” (p. 203). We return uneasily to Wood's proposition that productive work had become reattached to manhood in the mid-twentieth century, just in time to be wrenched asunder by forced retirement
Aesthetics · Art · Historiography · Identity (music · Ideology · Masculinity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Retirement, Disability, and Employment
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,71 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2023 (5) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |