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Retiring Men
Manhood, Labor, and Growing Old in America, 1900-1960
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Publisher:
2012
Summary
As life spans expanded dramatically in the United States after 1900, and employers increasingly demanded the speed and stamina of youth in the workplace, men struggled to sustain identities as workers, breadwinners, and patriarchs—the core ideals of twentieth-century masculinity. Longer life threatened manhood as men confronted age discrimination at work, mandatory retirement, and fixed incomes as recipients of Social Security and workplace pensions. They struggled to somehow sustain manliness in retirement, a new phase of life supposedly defined by the absence of labor. Ironically, retiring men pursued ways to stay “productive”: retirees created new daily routines of golf and shuffleboard games, tinkered with tools in garages, attended social club meetings, armed themselves for hunting and fishing excursions, and threw themselves into yard work. Others looked for new jobs or business ventures. Only unending activity could help to ensure that the “golden years” would be good years for older men of the twentieth century.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2012
ISBN-Print
978-0-7618-5679-5
ISBN-Online
978-0-7618-5680-1
Publisher
Hamilton Books, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
268
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Tables No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction: Manhood and Its Discontents No access Pages 1 - 17
Chapter One. Growing Old at Work during the Early Twentieth Century No access Pages 18 - 58
Chapter Two. Old Age Poverty, Pension Politics, and Gender during the 1920s No access Pages 59 - 97
Chapter Three. Older Men and the Boundaries of Manhood during the 1930s No access Pages 98 - 139
Chapter Four. Postwar Manhood and the Shock of Retirement No access Pages 140 - 182
Chapter Five. Work, Play, and Gender: The Making of Retirement Culture No access Pages 183 - 224
Conclusion: Beyond the Masculinity of Youth? No access Pages 225 - 234
