SBS 200 Module 7 Late Adulthood Example

Fewer Friends, Closer Ones: My Grandmother's Move at Seventy-Eight and What Research Says About Late Adulthood

Student Name

Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University

SBS 200: Human Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Fewer Friends, Closer Ones: My Grandmother's Move at Seventy-Eight and What Research Says About Late Adulthood

My grandmother Ruth is seventy-eight. She and my grandfather ran a farm in central Iowa for fifty years, and when he died last spring, she stayed on alone. She still keeps a large garden, drives to her Lutheran church every Sunday and has coffee with three friends from church every Wednesday. Last winter she slipped on ice and lay on the porch for an hour before a neighbor found her. My aunt, who lives in Des Moines, wants Ruth to move into an apartment near her. Ruth says she does not want to leave her friends or her garden. My uncle says moving would make her old. The family has argued about it for months. This paper uses research on late adulthood to think through the decision. Ruth and the family described here are composites; the studies are real.

Late Adulthood: Losses and Gains

Late adulthood, from the mid-sixties onward, brings real losses. Physical changes include reduced strength, balance and sensory sharpness, and many older adults manage chronic conditions. Some aspects of thinking slow, such as the speed of processing new information, while knowledge and vocabulary often remain strong. Social losses accumulate as spouses and friends die. But late adulthood also brings gains that the stereotype of decline overlooks. Many older adults report greater emotional stability and satisfaction than younger adults, better ability to manage emotions and, in Erikson's terms, a search for integrity, a sense that one's life has had meaning. Development continues to the end of life.

Why Ruth's World Has Narrowed

Carstensen et al. (1999) proposed socioemotional selectivity theory to explain changes in goals and relationships with age. They argued that people's sense of how much time they have left shapes their goals. When time seems open-ended, as it does for most young people, people pursue knowledge-related goals, meeting new people and exploring new experiences. When time seems limited, whether because of age, illness or an approaching ending, people shift toward emotionally meaningful goals and put more of their time into the few people who matter most to them. Older adults' smaller social networks, in this view, reflect a choice to prune peripheral contacts while keeping close ones, not simply loss. Research supporting the theory found that the shift appeared in younger people too when their time horizons were shortened, for example by illness.

The theory describes Ruth well. Her circle has narrowed to her three friends, her children and a few neighbors, and she guards those relationships fiercely. Any move that cuts her off from them would cost her the relationships she has chosen to keep.

How Views of Aging Matter

My uncle's comment, that moving would make her old, raises a real question about how people think about aging. Levy et al. (2002) followed several hundred adults aged fifty and older who had answered questions about their views of their own aging, such as whether they agreed that things keep getting worse as you get older. Across twenty-three years of follow-up, the participants who saw their own aging more hopefully outlived the more pessimistic ones by roughly seven and a half years, even after the researchers accounted for age, sex, income, loneliness and health. The authors suggested that negative stereotypes of aging, absorbed over a lifetime, can affect health through stress and a reduced will to live.

For Ruth, the finding suggests that how the move is framed matters. A move presented as the beginning of decline could reinforce a negative view of her own aging. A move presented as her choice, made to keep doing what she values safely, would not.

The Weight of Relationships

Holt-Lunstad et al. (2010) combined data from 148 studies, involving more than three hundred thousand participants, on the relationship between social connections and mortality. Across those studies, people with stronger social ties were about fifty percent more likely to be alive at follow-up than people with weaker ties. The size of that link rivaled the risk tied to smoking and exceeded the risks tied to inactivity and obesity. The strongest effects appeared for complex measures of social integration rather than simply living with others.

This evidence cuts both ways for Ruth. Staying on the farm keeps her church friends but leaves her alone most days and at risk if she falls again. Moving keeps her near family but could cut her off from the friends who make up much of her social world.

Ruth's Own View

When I asked my grandmother what mattered most to her, she did not mention the house. She named her Wednesday coffee, Sunday church and her garden, in that order. She said she was not afraid of being old but of being useless and of losing her friends. Her answers fit the research closely: she has narrowed her goals to what is emotionally meaningful, and her view of aging is positive as long as she can keep contributing. Any arrangement that left her feeling useless or cut off would threaten exactly what the research associates with well-being and longevity in late life.

Weighing the Options

Considered through the research, the question is not simply safety against independence. It is which arrangement best protects Ruth's closest relationships, her sense of control over her life and her positive view of herself as she ages. Staying alone on the farm serves her relationships and identity but not her safety. Moving permanently serves safety and her daughter's peace of mind but risks her friendships and her sense of choice.

Reflection

When this argument began, I sided with my aunt; the fall frightened all of us. Reading Carstensen and Levy changed my view. Ruth is not clinging to the farm out of stubbornness; she is protecting the relationships that matter most to her, exactly as the research predicts. My family's eventual compromise reflects that. Ruth will spend this winter in an apartment near my aunt, and my cousin will drive her back every Sunday for church and coffee with her friends. In spring she will decide whether to return to the farm with a medical alert device or stay. The decision is hers.

Conclusion

Late adulthood brings losses, but research shows gains as well, including a deliberate focus on close relationships. Carstensen, Isaacowitz and Charles explain why Ruth's world has narrowed by choice, Levy and colleagues show that views of aging affect survival and Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton show how much relationships matter for health. A decision that keeps Ruth safe while protecting her relationships and her sense of choice fits what the research says matters most in late life.

References

Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54(3), 165-181. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.165

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Kunkel, S. R., & Kasl, S. V. (2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(2), 261-270. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.2.261