Adulthood, a second time around

How baby boomers can turn career experience into a satisfying retirement.She's the author of Retired With Husband, Superwoman's New Challenge, VanderWyk and Burnham, $24.95.

By NANCY PARADIS
Published May 29, 2007

Mary Louise Floyd, a retired educator who remains involved in civic activities in Atlanta, sees retirement for the boomer generation as a wonderful opportunity to forge a second adulthood.

But retirement, she adds, is quite different for the sexes: Women typically have multiple identities through their jobs inside and outside the home. Men, by contrast, tend to identify themselves mainly by their jobs. After the first bloom of retirement wears off, men frequently find themselves lost and without meaning or purpose.

So a wife's new challenge can become re-engineering her life partner and their retirement years together.

If you can get past Floyd's choice of corporate jargon - re-engineer, mission statement, objective - her Retired With Husband is full of excellent insights and fun ideas for creating the best possible second adulthood.

In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Floyd outlined her thoughts on "retiring with husband."

Did you see the "problem" in your retiring husband before you took charge of him?

Six months after my retirement and shortly after my husband retired, I realized I needed to help him find a new identity in his new real time and answers to the questions: Who am I? Where am I going? Why am I here?

The book began as an effort on my part to help my husband with the next quarter of his life. When I realized that my contemporaries were experiencing the same challenge, the book became a strategy for all 78-million baby boomers.

How would you summarize the book?

As "Superwoman's" blueprint for the unprecedented second adulthood of her generation, it accomplishes 10 objectives, including taking charge of time, conquering new territory, communicating with heart, identifying and using creative gifts and redefining work and retirement.

What part of the restructuring of retirement do you think is most important?

Americans are historically bad planners - look at the Katrina catastrophe. Ninety-nine percent of retirement books deal with the financial aspects. None present a strategy for forging humanity's new frontier . . . which involves accepting that we can always get better and that our choices determine who we are.

Your language targets women who were engaged in the corporate world. What about those who weren't working in that environment?

Most baby boom women are well-educated. Of that group, an estimated 17.4-million are superwomen - wives, mothers and wage-earners.

I deliberately use the language of re-engineering strategy because it is a way to plan for positive change. We were all exposed to these concepts in the '80s when we catapulted into the global information age. Corporate language is now used universally, even in education. Every business has a mission or vision statement that comes from the company's core values, which sets the stage for its long-term goals and measurable objectives. It's workplace strategy . . . the boomer wife can use.

What one piece of advice would you give a boomer woman on the verge of retiring with her husband?

Be patient and not fault-finding. Remember, you married him for better or worse - and retirement. You're not serving him well in the long run if you're just serving him lunch.

In your experience, which challenges cause the majority of men to balk?

Sharing household chores, which don't go away with retirement. Besides achieving the level playing field of retirement, this sharing empowers the husband with the management of key home functions. He'll buy that approach.

Any final thoughts that were not included in the book?

The boom generation is the great changemaking generation. We've made our country the tolerant, inclusive society we are today. Now, though, we are living with the me-generation, no-fault-generation reputation.

But we can change that because we have . . . a second adulthood. But we have an obligation to leave a generational legacy beyond our first adulthood's resumes and net worth. What we do with our second adulthoods will redefine forever what it means to live, age and retire in modern America.

We must restore the concept of personal responsibility and setting a positive example. It means being all that we can be and haven't been yet.

And appreciate . . . the satire of boomer first-adulthood values. If we can't laugh at life, we can't fully appreciate it.

Nancy Paradis can be reached at (727) 893-8342 or nparadis@sptimes.com.

[Last modified May 28, 2007, 13:32:50]