Which of the following does not typically happen to people who do not conform to the social clock?

Gerontologist. 2014 Feb; 54[1]: 127–133.

Abstract

Time is central to the study of aging, but multiple dimensions of time, especially its subjective sense, merit more systematic attention in gerontology. This essay honors the intellectual legacy of Karl Mannheim, Bernice Neugarten, Matilda Riley, and others for drawing attention to the social dimensions of time relevant for the scientific study of aging. I summarize major contributions of these social scientists for the study of aging and note points of overlap and distinction. Although their writings have led gerontologists to think more systematically about life course timing and trajectories, there is relatively little empirical research on temporal perceptions in such trajectories and the interplay of objective and subjective elements of time.

Key Words: Generations, Age norms, Age stratification, Future time perspective, Cohort flow

We owe an intellectual debt to numerous scholars who have advanced the scientific study of aging, especially those who have wrestled with topics that touch multiple disciplines. The concept of time is such a topic, essential for the study of aging, yet too frequently reduced to the simple notion of chronological time.

There is much more to time than its chronology, and many key figures in gerontology have argued on two fronts for careful attention to time in our research. First, as Birren [1959] noted long ago, time is largely a hollow independent variable—a crude index of many experiences and processes, but invariably a proxy for the real causal agent[s]: “Unless we can attach some significance to the role of time or age in the large array of facts in which it is imbedded, we might argue that the value of chronological age is limited to that of a pervasive filing index for data that we cannot otherwise classify” [p. 8]. Others, including Botwinick [1973], contend that “time does not ‘cause’ anything” [p. 307]. In short, time is indispensible to tracking the way we age, but it is unsatisfying as a causal variable.

Second, gerontologists evince the importance of the subjective experience of time because how the actor views the passage of time and time-related phenomena are legitimate independent variables. As Reichenbach and Mathers [1959] assert, “we must distinguish between the subjective experience of time in all of its ramifications . . . and the objective physical properties of time” [pp. 44–45]. Moreover, Baars [2007] maintains that meaning lies in the subjective experience of time; thus, when gerontologists limit themselves to chronological time, they inadvertently neglect the meaning of the experience under study.

Awareness of these two tenets is nothing new to gerontology, nor is it the exclusive domain of the field. From Achenbaum to Zerubavel, countless scholars have sought to explicate the importance of time to human development and the rhythms of social life [e.g., Baars, Baltes, Birren, Elder, Featherman, Foner, Hagestad, Hendricks, Kaufman, Kleemeier, Merton, McFadden, Riegel, Ryder, Schaie, Settersten, and Sorokin]. Although many fields of inquiry such as philosophy and psychology deal with these two tenets, I focus on the contributions of three social scientists whose work has stimulated others to explicitly incorporate dimensions of time in their theories and models of aging. In doing so, I focus on how “the social life of a group is reflected in time expressions” [Sorokin & Merton, 1937, p. 619]. Although the concept of chronological or astronomical time is in itself void of social or behavioral phenomena—quantum mechanics is not constrained by holidays or weekends—social time expresses “the rhythm of collective activities” [Durkheim, 1915, p. 11].

Although the work of each scholar merits an essay in his or her honor, considering Mannheim, Neugarten, and Riley as an intellectual triumvirate identifies their most notable contributions and reinforces the message of the others. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to highlight and celebrate their prescient writings about how social time is intricately woven into the aging process.

Of the three, Mannheim was born first [1893]; thus, I begin with his contributions. Riley and Neugarten were contemporaries, born, respectively, in 1911 and 1916, and each cited Mannheim’s essay entitled “The problem of generations” [originally written in German, when he was in his mid-20s, but published in English posthumously [1952]].

Mannheim: Generation as Social Location

Karl Mannheim was born in Hungary and educated mostly in Budapest and Germany. He emigrated twice because of political conflicts, first to Germany and later to England. He earned a PhD in philosophy but is widely known as a pioneer in the sociology of knowledge. This is important to gerontology because his analysis of generations was largely due to his efforts to better understand social and intellectual movements and the pace of social change. To Mannheim, generational dynamics are central to history.

In gerontology, the term “generation” is frequently used to refer to family lineage, but Mannheim’s [1952/1968, p. 290] focus was the study of cohorts to identify a social location [lagerung].

Generation location is based on the existence of biological rhythm in human existence—the factors of life and death, a limited span of life, and ageing. Individuals who belong to the same generation, who share the same year of birth, are endowed, to that extent, with a common location in the historical dimension of the social process.

Mannheim observed that a biological rhythm, beginning with fertility, is the engine of social location in generations. Yet, he also identified reciprocal relations between the two: social locations also influence biological rhythms. The concept of generation draws attention to the simple fact of how cohorts formed at birth experience historical events at the same age and many personal events at roughly similar ages [e.g., marriage]. Mannheim tempered this fact by stating that sharing a birth year or even “that their youth, adulthood, and old age coincide, does not in itself involve similarity of location; what does create a similar location is that they are in a position to experience the same events and data, etc., and especially that these experiences impinge upon a similarly ‘stratified’ consciousness” [p. 297].

With his interest in social and intellectual movements, Mannheim was acutely aware of how other factors such as social class, religion, and political economy shape social locations in the panorama of history. Moreover, the political turmoil that he witnessed, both in Hungary and Nazi Germany, made it clear that people born during the same period could have dramatically different ways of thinking [Mannheim, 1943/1950].

To systematically identify how ways of thinking take root in various groups, Mannheim [1952/1968] posited the stratification of experience. He argued that the contemporaneity of birth cohorts may have a strong influence on thinking, but it is an insufficient cause of generational consciousness. Rather, the experiences people accumulate are filtered and interpreted through other axes of stratification. Together, they shape the degree to which generational consciousness may emerge—a generational entelechy. Some generations have a shared identity; others are so differentiated by other axes of stratification that the generational identity is quite limited. Beyond Mannheim’s contribution to studying generational identity, his writings made age a vital component of overlapping systems of stratification. This idea was further developed by Parsons [1942] and more formally explicated by Riley, Johnson, and Foner [1972] in the age stratification perspective.

In Mannheim’s writings, the concept of generations takes center stage, not just to identify age groups but to nest those age groups within the social and historical context. In doing so, one also observes his use of many concepts that are central to the contemporary study of aging and the life course. For instance, the concept of generations implies cohort flow and selection processes as humans enter and exit history; generations are integral to social change and stability within a society. Who will transmit knowledge and experience to the next generation? Will generations develop a meaningful identity? Might tensions across the generations accelerate social change? These and other questions come alive in thinking about Mannheim’s “problem of generations”—and shaped scholarship on cohorts as a mechanism of social change [Ryder, 1965]. Indeed, Mills [1959] saw the intersection of biography and history as fundamental to a sociological imagination.

Although the concept of generations is Mannheim’s most recognizable contribution to gerontology, two other threads of his thinking are important to gerontology. First, Mannheim was interested in memories, not principally as cognitive processing but as the mortar of generations. He argued that a collective memory is essential to generations and distinguished between appropriated memories, principally received from others, and personally acquired memories, learned or internalized in the world of lived experience [lebenswelt]. Second, Mannheim saw the importance of diachronic analysis—awareness of past, present, and future—in his study of generational dynamics. Because of the succession of generations, people are propelled to think about the present in relation to the past they have experienced and the future they expect. So, although his focus was generations—a phenomenon that lies between age structures and individual aging—Mannheim also systematically considered related phenomena at the macro- and microlevels of analysis.

Neugarten: Social Clocks Reflected in Age Norms

Bernice Neugarten, born in Nebraska during World War I [WWI], flourished at the University of Chicago, both as a student and faculty member. With prior degrees in the humanities and educational psychology, she was the first person to receive a PhD from Chicago’s Committee on Human Development [during WWII]. Bernice Neugarten became one of gerontology’s most influential social psychologists.

One of Neugarten’s most heralded contributions was to elucidate how age norms constrain human thought and behavior. In a research note published in the American Journal of Sociology, Neugarten, Moore, and Lowe [1965, p. 711] identified age norms as shared expectations of age-appropriate behavior.

Age norms and expectations operate as prods and brakes upon behavior, in some instances hastening an event and in others, delaying it. Men and women are aware not only of the social clocks that operate in various areas of their lives but they are also aware of their own timing.

Based on data from the Kansas City Studies of Adult Life, they identified a timetable for when various life events and actions should ideally occur—optimal ages that people have in mind for major life events such as marriage, finishing school, and retirement as well as behaviors related to popular culture: Is there an appropriate age to dance the Twist? Questions asking about age appropriateness also define the boundaries of acceptability: Is there an age when a woman should not wear a bikini bath suit?

They found remarkable convergence in the ideal ages for these events and behaviors, positing age norms as a means of social control. Although age norms on many behaviors have been relaxed in recent decades, Neugarten and colleagues showed the potency of age norms to constrain thought and action. This does not necessarily mean that older people identify with being old. Rather, as Kaufman [1986] documents, there is tremendous continuity in identity despite the changes associated with aging. People are very likely to characterize others as old or young but refer to themselves as feeling old or young [see also Baars, 2007].

Neugarten also drew attention to the perception of time and age as underlying the age grading of societies. Mannheim saw this age grading in generations, but Neugarten stimulated inquiry about the age norms that support the age grading. Though principally interested in the social psychology of age norms, she nonetheless alluded to the structural elements of age-graded societies: generations are consequential to social order and change because of “an adhesive between the generations that results from the biological inevitability of the life cycle” [Neugarten, 1970, p. 18].

An even more highly cited article was psychometric in nature: how to measure life satisfaction [Neugarten, Havighurst, & Tobin, 1961]. Given gerontology’s long-standing interest in psychological well-being, Neugarten and colleagues offered two indexes to assess life satisfaction, and both are replete with references to a diachronic framework. Many items ask the respondent to reflect on the past and compare it with the present. Examples include:

• I am just as happy as when I was younger.

• As I look back on my life, I am fairly well satisfied.

• How happy would you say you are right now, compared with earlier periods of your life?

Beyond comparing the present with the past, they also privileged future time perspective:

• I expect some interesting and pleasant things to happen to me in the future.

• I have made plans for things I’ll be doing a month or a year from now.

• What do you think you will be doing 5 years from now?

Just as Mannheim saw temporal reflections as essential to understanding generational dynamics, Neugarten concluded that temporal thinking is fundamental to what it means to age and feel satisfied with life. She helped identify the social clocks that are a “prescriptive timetable for the ordering of life events” and how we use them to diachronically evaluate our lives [Neugarten et al., 1965, p. 711].

Riley: Age Stratification as a Perspective to Organize the Time of Our Lives

Matilda White Riley was born in Boston and spent most of her life on the U.S. East Coast, earning degrees from Radcliffe and Bowdoin Colleges, and working at Rutgers University and the Russell Sage Foundation; she also directed the Social Science Research program at the National Institute on Aging. Her intellectual interests spanned the life course and frequently dovetailed with those of her husband, John Riley, in studies of contraception, age integration, and age as an attribute of social organization.

Elements of age structures are clearly manifest in the writings of Mannheim and Neugarten, but Riley sought to systematically articulate how age structures influence both individual aging and generational dynamics. Her attention to individual aging was congruent in several respects to the writings of Neugarten, whereas her attention to generational dynamics was anchored in Mannheim’s writings. Her conception of age as an attribute of social organization is evident: “Age also serves as an important link, on the one hand, between the individual and his biological life cycle and, on the other hand, between society and its history” [Riley et al., 1972, p. 4].

She and her colleagues articulated age stratification with three foci: [a] individual aging; [b] changing age structures, or societal aging; and [3] cohort flow [Riley et al., 1972]. Their emphasis on age strata, however, was distinctive. The intersection of the two dynamisms [individual aging and cohort flow] meant that as societies change, there is also the possibility for asynchronization at each level. Consistent with Neugarten, Riley and her colleagues referred to individuals being “off-time” when their actions were not consistent with age norms, but she also identified how age strata could be influenced by asynchronization. By identifying structural lag as a form of being off-time, she showed that entire generations could feel the effects of being off-time, especially when swings in fertility create disordered cohort flow.

In her presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Riley [1987] also issued a call for multilevel analyses while studying age stratification processes. “In studying age, we attempt to retain the dynamic emphasis—not just at one level [either macro or micro] but at several interrelated levels: the larger society, institutions, groups, networks, strata, and individual actors” [p. 5]. Although Mannheim and Neugarten alluded to these multiple levels, Riley sought to make multilevel analyses much more systematic in the study of aging. Moreover, by proceeding from a multilevel framework, she felt that scientists would be well positioned to address the subjective aspects of age such as age norms, feelings, and one’s sense of life timing along with the more objective aspects of age such as age structures, cohort flow, and social change. Inasmuch as individual aging, cohort flow, and social change are linked in time, failure to acknowledge this link may lead to misguided interpretations of observed relationships.

Integration Points for Contemporary Gerontology

Mannheim, Neugarten, and Riley made unique scholarly contributions that continue to shape the field of gerontology; they taught us that social time is manifest in individual aging, generational dynamics, and social change. Neugarten emphasized the microlevel of analysis by focusing on individual aging, age norms, and the social clocks by which we judge our lives. Riley emphasized the macrolevel of analysis by focusing on age structures, age strata, and cohort flow. Mannheim spoke to the micro- and macrolevels of analysis but emphasized the meso-level analysis, focusing on generations, social location, and generational identity.

Although each scholar helped us to see connections between social time and aging in new ways, the intellectual overlap among them is also notable. All were emphatic that social time—not just chronological time—must occupy a central place in the analysis of human lives, and the import of their ideas is substantial for gerontology. Their scholarship is advancing the field in many ways, and I isolate five ways in which their ideas continue to shape gerontology.

First, Mannheim, Neugarten, and Riley advocated for greater attention to social influences on timing in human lives. Analyzing human life expectancy across or within societies provides a vista for seeing cross-cultural differences in the rhythms of aging. Indeed, the concept of weathering in the study of minority populations is a poignant reflection of this fact [Geronimus, Hicken, Keene, & Bound, 2006]. It is not that racial differences in biology determine the pace of aging but that racial differences in social conditions such as poverty or adverse living conditions can alter the pace of aging. The consequence of weathering is accelerated aging.

Beyond the time identified for the individual, there is also historical time, which complicates our sense of aging. Aging is experienced in history, and history imbues the experience of aging with distinctiveness. Being a contemporary involves much more than being born at the same time. Rather, Mannheim saw generation as tethered more tightly to shared consciousness than to year of birth [i.e., cohort].

Gerontology research has a rich history of incorporating chronological time. Beyond longitudinal data per se, there is a burst of activity incorporating information from earlier periods of the life course, whether through prospective data [Sayer, Syddall, Gilbody, Dennison, & Cooper, 2004], retrospective reports [Schafer, Wilkinson, & Ferraro, 2013], or record linkage [Lawlor, Davey Smith, Mitchell, & Ebrahim, 2006]. Life course analysis is boosting the integration of temporal elements into our study of aging, but Mannheim, Neugarten, and Riley called for more than greater articulation of chronological time.

Second, the three emphasized the subjective sense of time. Aging involves not only changes that occur along an axis of chronological time but the time of our lives may also be marked on an axis of perceived time. Neugarten’s contributions on age norms and social clocks brought this to the forefront; people have a sense of the appropriateness of actions for persons of various ages, yet they frequently do not identify with their age to the same degree that they project age norms on others. Her writings convey a sense of awe for these age norms, including how we socialize others to hold them, yet often hold them less tightly for ourselves [Kaufman, 1986].

Although Neugarten was principally interested in the discrepancy between one’s sense of aging in comparison with others, Riley’s conceptualization of asynchronized lives took this further by appropriating it both for individuals and cohorts. Her conceptualization fit nicely with the life course perspective [Is my progression through roles ahead, behind, or similar to others?] and also for cohorts [Is my generation facing structural lag?]. Thus, nonnormative life events may reference cohorts, not just individuals [Elder, 1998].

Mannheim also made subjective time explicit. Although the 30-year period is often used as a rule of thumb to define generations, he cautioned against routinely doing so. He argued that the “time interval separating generations becomes subjectively experienceable time” [Mannheim, 1952/1968, p. 282]. Many of us appreciate the beauty of equal intervals for defining generations based on birth cohorts. Mannheim, however, would ask us to ponder whether that is always the preferred approach. Perhaps, defining generations by historical events, even if not conveniently packaged in 10-year intervals, may help us to detect the presence of a generational entelechy and whether it is consequential to health.

Although subjective elements of time merit greater attention in gerontology, there are some promising developments. For instance, the longitudinal study of Midlife in the United States includes multiple measures of the subjective sense of time. With these data, we have learned that older adults are more temporally realistic than younger adults [Lachman, Röcke, Rosnick, & Ryff, 2008] and that early misfortune has enduring effects on how people diachronically interpret their lives [Schafer, Ferraro, & Mustillo, 2011]. Also, as discussed subsequently, recent theoretical developments incorporating the subjective sense of time are stimulating systematic attention to the topic.

Third, beyond incorporating a subjective sense of time into gerontology, we need diachronic analyses of the life course: awareness of past, present, and future. Philosophers such as Kierkegaard asserted that we understand our lives by reflecting backward and pondering the future. Am I better off now than 5 or 10 years ago? What will my lot in life be 5 or 10 years from now? Answers to these questions are critical to life satisfaction because it is judged simultaneously on social and temporal axes [cf. Neugarten et al., 1961].

People “take account” of their lives in order to evaluate their situation and develop lines of action. This may be for one life domain such as work or more generally for one’s life [“story of my life”]. Regardless, people judge the present by reflecting on the past and projecting to the future to create a narrative [Baars, 2007]. Gerontological practice has embraced the concepts of life review and reminiscence therapy, but the behavioral science of aging may profit by further integrating how people diachronically view their world. Recent findings reveal the power of temporal reflections: subjective life expectancy influences when people choose to retire [van Solinge & Henkens, 2010]; future time perspective is associated with more physical activity by older people [Stahl & Patrick, 2012]; and more negative views of the past are associated with rising expectations for the future [Schafer et al., 2011].

Fourth, it should be obvious that gerontology will prosper with greater use of longitudinal designs that explicitly incorporate various dimensions of time. Gerontology has long welcomed sophisticated analyses of rich longitudinal data, but most of the research to date examines only chronological time for individuals. Relatively few investigators make use of repeated cross-sections to examine cohort change or link cohort change to individual-level change. These are the types of analyses, however, that Mannheim and Riley would have warmly welcomed. Still, I sense that their enthusiasm would be even greater if we found a way to also embrace the subjective sense of time. No study can cover all of these elements. For the foreseeable future, it appears that we are doing better with longitudinal data and analytic methods than we are in actually listening to people diachronically evaluate their lives.

Finally, the intellectual heritage from Mannheim, Neugarten, and Riley suggests greater attention to the dimensions of time in theories of aging. Chronological time has long been a part of theories of aging, but two recent theories have forthrightly incorporated the subjective sense of time into their formulation.

First, socioemotional selectivity theory gives excellent attention to the subjective sense of time [Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999]. According to the theory, which flowed from developmental psychology, “constraints on time horizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals” [Carstensen, 2006, p. 1913]. Constraints on time horizons speak to future time perspective, which is not surprising for a theory of motivation. As gerontologists have seen before, what often is originally attributed to aging is actually due to something else. Aging does not invariably lead to emotion regulation, but a shorter time horizon predicts changes in emotion regulation [Carstensen et al., 1999] as well as one’s disposition to end-of-life care [Garrido, Idler, Leventhal, & Carr, 2012–2013].

Second, cumulative inequality theory focuses on how stratification unfolds over the life course and across cohorts [Ferraro & Shippee, 2009]. Although anchored in the structures that generate inequality, the theory gives explicit attention to the onset and duration of resources and risks, seeking to quantify both good and bad exposures over time. In this sense, it advocates for splining pieces of the life course together to understand the early origins of later life inequalities. In doing so, it also gives attention to selection processes because the magnitude of inequality is dependent on how selection operates in a population. But perhaps most closely related to this essay, the theory identifies perceived life trajectories as influential for the aging process, and posits that “perceived life course timing influences psychosomatic processes” [Ferraro & Shippee, 2009, p. 337].

Concluding Thoughts

This essay sought to highlight the works of Mannheim, Neugarten, and Riley as prescient thinkers regarding the role that time plays in human lives and history. Dozens of scholars have enhanced our understanding of the role time plays in the aging process, but I focused on these three scholars for their contributions to how social time influences the life course. In doing so, two overarching conclusions are apparent. First, their imprint on contemporary gerontology is substantial. Their writings have stimulated gerontologists to think systematically about social time and to incorporate it in our analyses. Second, although their influence is felt in contemporary gerontology, their writings give us guidance to more fully incorporate various dimensions of time in the scientific study of aging.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging [R01 AG033541] and the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF-2011-330-B00137].

Acknowledgments

I appreciate the comments of Nicholas Turiano, Megan Gilligan, Ann Howell, Linda Ferraro, and the anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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