Navigating Aging and Masculine Identity - Insights from Adrienne Matei

Navigating Aging and Masculine Identity: Insights from Adrienne Matei

In this insightful episode of Peaceful Life Radio, hosted by David Lowry and Don Drew, journalist Adrienne Matei delves into the challenges aging men face with changing masculine identities. The conversation explores Adrienne's Guardian article, addressing how older men grapple with shifting roles and self-worth. The discussion covers topics like hegemonic masculinity, the impact of longer lifespans, and the importance of self-compassion and intergenerational communication. Adrienne shares experiences from her interviews and highlights psychologist Karen Skerrett's six tasks for positive aging. The episode concludes with a call for better family conversations and societal representation of elderhood.

00:00 Introduction to Hegemonic Masculinity
00:30 Meet Our Guest: Adrienne Matei
01:38 Discussion on Boomer Men's Identity
04:36 Impact of Longevity and Medical Advances
07:21 Six Tasks for Positive Aging
10:40 Intergenerational Communication
17:58 Jeremy's Story: A Personal Insight
23:57 Concluding Thoughts and Future Work

Visit the Peaceful Life Radio website for more information. Peaceful Life Productions LLP produces this podcast, which helps nonprofits and small businesses share their stories and expertise through accessible and cost-effective podcasts and websites. For more information, please contact us at info@peacefullifeproductions.com.

Transcript

Adrienne Matei: 0:29

We sometimes hear older men be down on themselves when they feel like they're no longer able to perform certain tasks that they used to do. Like I can't drive anymore, so I am useless. Hegemonic masculinity essentially tells men that being worthy means being useful, being strong, being self-sufficient, being in control, and when ability to be productive starts to change, it can feel like their sense of identity is changing in ways they might not be happy with.

David Lowry: 1:00

That was Adrienne Matei our guest on today's program. Welcome to Peaceful Life Radio. This is David Lowry, and with me today is my good friend Don Drew.

Don Drew: 1:10

Hello everyone.

David Lowry: 1:11

Don, I'm really excited about the show today. Why don't you introduce our guests and tell us a little bit about what's ahead.

Don Drew: 1:17

Absolutely David. We have with us today Adrienne Matei, who is a Vancouver based journalist with over a decade of experience in culture oriented reporting. She's a graduate of Columbia University's Master of Journalism Program. She was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Fellowship in Arts Criticism and her work spans a wide range of topics including wellness, technology, and identity. You can find her work in major publications such as The Guardian, the Atlantic Business Insider, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, among others. Adrienne offers her readers a fresh perspective on complexities in modern life. Today she joins us to discuss the article she wrote in The Guardian back in February entitled, He kept going until he couldn't. Why do Boomer men refuse to slow down? Adrienne, welcome to Peaceful Life Radio.

Adrienne Matei: 2:06

Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

David Lowry: 2:08

Adrienne, I really relate to that title because I think I'm one of those guys.

Adrienne Matei: 2:14

Well, I'm glad that you relate, David. You know, had a working title for this piece that was a little bit different. It was called, It's Entirely His identity to be a doer. When Aging Men Refuse to slow Down. So I don't think that this is something that is limited to boomer men, exclusively, but that is the demographic of some of the sources that I ended up speaking with for the piece.

Don Drew: 2:35

I'm so glad you opened with that because one of the things I wanted to ask you about is when you talk about identity, and that really comes out in your article, how did you picture that for these, men who are of boomer age, which, for our listeners is generally gonna be roughly over 60 at this point.

Adrienne Matei: 2:51

Yeah, this is a story about aging and masculine identities, traditional masculine identities, which are sometimes referred to as hegemonic masculinity. And that is an approach to masculinity where men are defining their self-worth through these ideals, like productivity, power, and control. Hegemonic masculinity essentially tells men that being worthy means being useful, being strong, being self-sufficient, being in control, and when ability to be productive starts to change, it can feel like their sense of identity is changing in ways they might not be happy with.

David Lowry: 3:29

When I hear this, all sorts of things go through me. Just so people will know, I came onto the planet in 1953, so I definitely qualify for the people that you're describing here. Career was really important. The first thing that men would say, Well, what kind of work do you do? And as we hit retirement, people say, now that you're retired, what are you going to do? And this whole question is like, you gotta have something amazing ahead for you and I'm sitting here going, I don't know. I'm not sure.

Adrienne Matei: 4:01

Absolutely. Yeah. There can be this association with identity and worthiness and productivity and achievement rather than a comfortable sense of value in who you are as a person.

Don Drew: 4:13

You make a great point, David. I've always noticed, particularly men who have been my age throughout my career, when we meet, the first thing we want to know is what do you do? And I think one of the reasons we do that is we're trying to understand somebody's identity based upon what they do. For instance, I have a career in university life, I've been a professor and that defines a lot of my identity and what I am. And I retired last year and I know that I really struggled trying to figure out what's next. It was only after I began to wrestle with the idea that I did not have to prove something that I started to relax a little bit and I'm enjoying retirement finally. I'm still very active, but not in a career. And men like me often struggle with that. And that's why when I read Adrienne's article, I was so impressed with her view of that. But she also brought in several other things. Adrienne. You brought up for instance rising longevity and advancing medical care and the fact that we're living longer and so forth. And how did you interpret those kinds of things impacting men's lives?

Adrienne Matei: 5:17

This is a story that's part of a bigger demographic shift. The Boomer generation really is entering a longer elderhood than any of their predecessors, and that is to do with modern medicine and all of these changes that have happened over the last century. But what it hasn't done is set this generation up with role models for positive aging into longer elderhoods, or a sense of what their elderhoods could look like. So, I talked to some older men after writing this article who were saying to me like you know, I almost never really realized that I was going to have so much time after retirement or what that time was gonna look like.

Don Drew: 5:59

You quote in your article from the University of Alabama Birmingham, a study that says this, and this is a quote says, masculine identity upholds beliefs about masculine enactment. When you say enactment, what do you mean by that?

Adrienne Matei: 6:11

Yeah, so that's how we identify ourselves through what we're able to do. Like, can you be the doer? Can you be the guy who fixes the hole on the roof? Can you be the guy who is able to drive, protect your family or do all of these things and how does that reflect upon your identity? And this study was really interesting because they were measuring all of these different ideas of how much people prescribe to hegemonic ideals. Like are you somebody who is very much in favor of the idea that bigger, stronger men are more attractive to women, and men shouldn't cry, and it's important for men to hide if they are having any pain? And what they found through the study is that people sorted themselves into three groups. People who were very keen on upholding hegemonic ideals, people who were sort of in the middle, and then people who dismissed them and didn't really relate to them. And the more you wanted to uphold these hegemonic ideals, or the more you believed in them, the worse health outcomes you had. So as men age, the study suggests that you need to rethink what it means to be masculine or suffer poor health outcomes, which I found really interesting.

David Lowry: 7:27

One of the things that I find interesting about this conversation is that we haven't had anyone really tell us, speaking for my generation what a retirement look like, where you had more years than the people before you to live and explore life in a different way. What would that look like? And I'm curious, as you think about this and did your research, what do you think that might look like?

Adrienne Matei: 7:51

So there was actually somebody who I interviewed for this piece named Karen Skerrett, who is a psychologist, and she proposed these six tasks to help people develop what she calls a realistic, accommodating, and hopeful perception of the future. And those tasks include acknowledging and accepting the realities of aging, normalizing angst about the future, active reminiscence, accommodating physical, cognitive and social changes, searching for new emotionally meaningful goals, and expanding one's capacity to tolerate ambiguity. I would definitely recommend looking up at Karen Skerrett and this research report if you're interested in learning more about that. I know that she has a book about navigating aging as a couple that might be really interesting for people. But overall, these tasks are aiming to help people recharacterize aging as a transition that is a phase of life, that is interesting in its own right, even though it requires adaptability and growth, and foresight, and to help people resist this concept that she refers to as premature foreclosure, which is this notion that their life stories have ended or that you are no longer valuable just because one thing or some things that you used to do might not be realistic for you anymore. I think that we sometimes hear older men be down on themselves in ways when they feel like they're no longer able to perform certain tasks that they used to do. Like I can't drive anymore, so I am useless. And the underlying self-perception of that is cruel to oneself because you have so much value as a human being, and especially in elderhood, the wisdom that you have accrued and the presence that you have cultivated. Our elders are so meaningful in our lives, and younger generations value your presence and we value you for who you are. And sometimes I think in situations when we have older men, especially who we love, in a position where we feel like we have to convince them that they are enough that's a sad and difficult thing.

David Lowry: 10:02

I'd like to think of the Boomer generation as the parents of Gen X, Gen Z and all the other ones that have come after them. So this is a personal question to you, Adrienne, as someone who's not in this Boomer generation, how would you like us to be?

Adrienne Matei: 10:18

I think that millennials and younger generations are coming of age or did come of age in a time with a very different outlook on the emotional inner self than Boomers did. I think it was very common for Boomers to be raised with some very pragmatic, no nonsense parenthood. Therapy was not necessarily normalized when Boomers were coming of age, especially Boomer men. And now we have Millennials who are maybe a little bit more conversant and used to concepts like self-awareness, self-compassion, empathy for yourself, also practicing certain positive habits, like the concept of practicing gratitude and practicing happiness, and having more aware and intentional relationship with how you feel and your effect on other people. Cross demographic communication is really important. Cross generational communication is really important and maintaining strong relationships with our elders, it's like a kind of diversity that is integral to people having a well-rounded sense of society and being able to imagine our own futures. I think young people just want to love our elders. We want to feel seen and heard. In these dynamics with older patriarchs in particular, there can sometimes be tensions that occur when somebody is used to feeling like they are in the role of the protector or the nurturer and the provider. And now suddenly, if there is a change in ability, or new limitations, a sense of, oh, the roles are being reversed, or all of a sudden my 35-year-old son thinks he can tell me what to do, or is telling me to stop doing something, that can feel really disturbing and unusual. When Skerrett talks about a capacity to tolerate ambiguity, normalizing some angst, think can factor into these more tense relationships.

Don Drew: 12:25

Adrienne, I appreciate your insight on that and I wanna talk about some of the examples that you give. Jeremy is one specific example. But before we go there, I'd like to go back to the six points for just a minute and address two of those that I think are particularly salient for our listeners. The first one was acknowledging and accepting the realities of aging. And partially, that's a shift in identity that you're talking about. We have to acknowledge and accept the realities of aging. Number two though, is normalizing angst about the future. Now, you used the term a minute ago about to normalize. And in psychology or in therapy, that is one of the best tools a therapist has when they're talking to somebody is help them normalize what they're feeling, because we all have a tendency to feel that what we're experiencing is unique to us. And it's a shock. Right? And if you were with a good therapist, one of the first things they'll do is to say, well, yeah, it's a shock, but it's not unusual. It's not abnormal. And in many ways that's a great psychological lift for people who are struggling with changes in themselves and in their identity. Would you agree with that?

Adrienne Matei: 13:27

Yeah, absolutely. I think that you make a great point. There is so much diversity to people that you can't really predict how people are going to respond to new limitations. You can't generalize how people are gonna respond to these changes. But it is a universal fact that we will all get older and while age does not necessarily denote decline, longer lifespans, can be linked to longer experiences with changes in our bodies and our minds and our abilities. And that is normal. It doesn't have to be a thing that you feel down on yourself about because it is something that is going to happen inevitably to everyone to some extent. So the idea of like, well, I can't do something that I used to be able to do, and so now I'm not as valuable as a person, I think we just need to have a sense of self-compassion. And self-compassion is something that is not always in the vocabulary or in the culture, even at the family level of every person. And I think that is something that can become this pain point. It can be hard to grapple with these amorphous or nebulous concepts like self-compassion in elderhood while you are also grappling with fear and some anger and some other kind of more negative emotions about your situation.

David Lowry: 14:49

Cross generational communication is really important, I think. Whether it be seniors talking to younger people, seniors talking among themselves and so forth, and I don't know that our society's done a really great job of that. When you interviewed all of these people and gathered all of this data, did you come across some ideas about how we might have this intergenerational communication?

Adrienne Matei: 15:13

I think that representation matters. Like I really enjoyed when I first got TikTok, you would find people at all stages of life. Like there was a TikTok house, maybe still is, called Retirement House that showed elder people living their best life. I enjoy reading stories about older people who have found fun and fulfilling ways to co-live with friends or build strong community in elderhood or who are even just sharing and reflecting their wisdom. Like, I want stories about older people, and I want to understand how they feel about their lives. On the family level, there are some kind of practical tasks that, can improve intergenerational communication and understanding. Especially things like trying to understand what the person in your family is maybe most concerned about with aging, if they're concerned about losing freedoms like driving or being able to tackle housework. Maybe listening carefully and trying to offer compromises. Like, we can do projects together or I can assist you with transportation. Something else that experts typically recommend is to have hard conversations before something has happened, before there's been a, an illness or a change in ability or an accident and talk about potential future preferences while everybody has full physical ability and full cognition and ask, like what would make you comfortable? What would make you embarrassed? How should we think about our future together? Adult children are adults and we wanna be part of the family and ensure a mutually fulfilling life together.

Don Drew: 16:54

it's difficult for anybody in a power difference to communicate and I think the generation before us, David, I know in my father's case for instance, and I know this is true of much of his generation, as his child, I knew almost nothing about his life. They didn't share information. That was adult stuff. I was a child. I'm now trying to piece together my father's life. He passed away a number of years ago. I'm trying to piece together his life, right? And I have hints, little things he said. I have some newspaper articles and so on, I have some old letters and I'm trying to piece this together, but I didn't know who he was and why, because he would not talk to me about certain things that he perceived were, he didn't want trouble me with it.

David Lowry: 17:32

Bingo. That is a really good point Don. And I'm hearing you say, Adrienne, that we really need to share these things and talk about situations that could involve all of us together at some point in the future and be very be open and transparent about that.

Adrienne Matei: 17:47

Yeah, and if that doesn't come to you naturally or if it is not the way that you were raised, it can be a challenge and something that needs to be developed as a skill. Communication is a skill and being willing to go there with yourself and be honest with yourself about how you're feeling about the situations that you're in. These things are challenging and difficult and they require a lot of strength. And I just even think that reframing some of these identity traits can redefine what you value about yourself and your way of expressing value at any point in your life.

Don Drew: 18:23

You told me the inspiration for this article was a fellow by the name of Jeremy, which we mentioned a few minutes ago. Can you tell us that story?

Adrienne Matei: 18:30

Absolutely. So this was an article that was born of a relationship that I've had for a really long time in a conversation that had been developing over the course of many years with a very close friend of mine whose father, he's now 80 years old and he has had Parkinson's disease for the last maybe seven or eight years. And over the course of those years, I would check in with my friend and we would talk about the various kind of challenges coming up in his father's life. The things that he wanted to still be able to do, many of which were very physical. He did wanna be the guy who fixed the hole in the roof. He had built their home, and felt very connected to creating changes around the house, doing yard work, getting up on a ladder with a chainsaw and cutting down the wood and, these things were causing my friend just so much stress. Nobody wants to watch their loved one in a dangerous situation where it feels like some very preventable harm is about to happen. But that dynamic is difficult because if my friend is like, dad, please get off the ladder, then his father feels very attacked and feels like don't tell me what to do. This is what I've done my whole life and this is who I am. And I'm the parent and you're the child. And I was observing this dynamic for many years and the kind of anger that was coming from his father was quite palpable. And then, it happened that I was having dinner with another friend of mine who happened to mention something about his own father become more angry and fixated on what he was not able to do as he aged. I've had my own experiences with my grandfather in this regard as well. And it clicked for me that this is a universal situation. A lot of people have an older patriarch who is having trouble with this transition in their life and that it would be an interesting topic to explore and hear more stories and to talk to older men about and hear from them directly, how does it feel, what you're going through? It seems like a pretty intense place to be with yourself.

David Lowry: 20:33

I think men have a lot of trouble owning that we're losing vitality, physical strength, endurance, all those things that defined our earlier lives. I look at myself sometimes and think, wow, three years ago, I was able to do more than right now. It comes at us at the speed of life, and creates this feeling of inward consternation, and we don't know what to do with it. We don't know whether to confess it and say, oh man, I think I'm losing strength here, or ignore it and plow through. I mean, it is a real thing to deal with. But being willing to be vulnerable, open, and transparent with those who love us is to own who we are in a very loving and unapologetic way. And just say, that's where I am right now.

Adrienne Matei: 21:16

I appreciate that you said in a loving way because I think that being affectionate and proud with ourselves is the hardest thing that we do, and it only gets harder. And we should have tenderness and compassion as we are going through that process.

Don Drew: 21:27

It's just sort of natural that we want to try and keep doing the things we're doing. I know that Christie and I hike a lot. and we are more conscious about the risks that we take on certain hikes. We still will do certain things, but we're aware that the risk and reward calculation is changing with time. And that does affect our identity and how we feel about ourselves and what we're doing.

Adrienne Matei: 21:47

These things are not unique to any one particular generation or demographic. We all have to think about the ways that our identity and reality collide. Like I think about should I be wearing my headphones on if I'm going for a walk at night? Should I be walking alone at night to begin with? There are unpleasant and challenging things about being any age and in any generation. There's this aspect where independence is a virtue and then dependence is seen as failure. When you are focusing on this as a weakness, you're not really seeing the people who are there to care for you and who are worried about you and who wanna help you. You're not really appreciating that is like love. And if you are refusing to acknowledge the people who are helping you, then it's hard to have gratitude for them.

Don Drew: 22:34

Masculinity is toxic because it ends up hurting the person themselves. It can hurt others, obviously, but it hurts the person themselves as well. Right. Any ideas on other things or approaches we might take?

Adrienne Matei: 22:45

It's always useful to take stock of how you're feeling yourself, and there are a lot of practices that can be valuable in doing that, including journaling, speaking to a therapist, even just chatting with friends openly about these kind of questions. Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years? If something happened, what would you feel most sensitive about? And if you had to have some help, how would you want that to look? What kind of support would you ideally be getting from your family members? What kind of support could you see yourself getting from other sources? Just having these hard conversations before they have to happen, I think is a big one and maybe even talking about your own relationship with your elders. Like that's something I'm always so curious about with older people. I don't really know what my dad's relationship with his dad was really like, what it felt like, or my grandfather's relationship with his father. I don't really know those things. I think that those early experiences can really inform your sense of self and your sense of where you're at in life. Self-awareness of how your behavior is affecting the people around you and how your words are affecting them, It's really important. And an awareness and gratitude that you are valued for who you are, not just for what you do. People can try as hard as they want to make you feel loved, but you have to feel worthy of love yourself to be able to receive that. And it just is really sad to me that there are these kind of forms of masculinity that don't really teach men to open themselves up.

Don Drew: 24:23

Adrienne, you wrote this article we've been talking about February, I believe, for the Guardian. What are you working on now?

Adrienne Matei: 24:28

So I just had a pitch meeting actually, with my desk at The Guardians US Wellness Desk and we were talking about some ideas about aging. No stories assigned quite yet, but I am hoping to maybe look into and learn a little bit more about older gamers, video game enthusiasts through the ages and maybe a little bit more about elder co-living facilities. It is more common in some countries as an older person to have roommates more of a friendship support model, which I think is really cool and beautiful. And I would love to explore how that looks for people, how people make it work. I just had a piece go up last week that was about orthorexia, which is a sort of fixation on the healthfulness and purity of food. So some food fears around things like pesticides and demonized ingredients like seed oils and food dyes and how those can really affect our relationship with what we eat and our bodies.

Don Drew: 25:26

That's great. Adrienne, thank you so much for being with us on Peaceful Life Radio.

Adrienne Matei: 25:29

Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful.