The Coral Gables Times

Thursday, February 8, 1962, page 39 (of 46)

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What Is Good Enough for Grandma?

Older citizens enjoy a music hour in the Senior Day Center of their own community on the outskirts of Miami, Florida. A fresh look at a growing suburban problem—finding living arrangements for the older person that will satisfy everyone BY GEORGE FIELDING ELIOT NEARLY A WHOLE generation has been added to the life span of Americans since 1900, but the tragedy is that so much of the added time is being wasted or absorbed in a wearying struggle to find a decent place to live, peace of mind, and some sense of pride and usefulness. There are almost 16,000,000 Americans today who are 65 or over. Only about one out of four is gainfully employed. The majority are living on savings or retirement income of one kind or another. The median income is low—less than $1,000 a year. Many, who are not working but are willing and able, cannot find employment—"too old" is the automatic brush-off. At present, 69% of these older people maintain homes (owned or rented) either alone or with a spouse; three million live with relatives; and another million and a half, all told, live with other people, or in institutions, including hospitals. Wherever they are, the over-all problem is the inability of the purchasing power of most forms of retirement income to keep up with the rising cost of living. Outside the city, the problems of the senior citizen are especially severe. In hundreds of typical, bustling communities from Bellevue, Washington, to Natick, Massachusetts, the accent today is on youth. Youth—the schooling and happiness and welfare of youth—is their main reason for existence. Neither the average suburban home nor the average suburban community has been designed to provide a place for old folks. Stop for a minute and think this through before you rise up in righteous indignation and say our town is different. Suppose, suddenly, you had to find a place for an aging parent to live. (Most likely it would be your mother. The average American woman is widowed at 70; the average man who survives his wife doesn't lose her until he is 85.) What do you do? Make room in your own home? Don't, for the sake of all concerned, take snap judgment on this. Does your parent really want to live with you? Can you make an older person feel really needed rather than an added burden? Time was when both Grandpa and Grandma were very helpful family members; there were any number of little chores they could do and enjoyed doing. Modern labor-saving appliances and packaged gimmicks have done away with most of these. And where is your parent—or your in-law—going to sleep? If you have a bedroom that isn't being used, you're luckier than lots of suburban families. For old folks, one essential requirement is privacy, a place they can call their own. You probably can't compromise on this for very long, if at all. If there can't be a separate room, chances are the plan won't work. Even if you can make Junior move his multitudinous effects out on the sleeping porch, you're setting up a conflict that'll haunt you. Also what about dividing up bathroom time—a problem with which, if you have more than one active child, you are doubtless acquainted already? Better stop and think how an older member of the family will fit in with all the other demands on your time—your husband's commuter schedule, your nursery and social schedule, Junior's school schedule. "If only," says a harried housewife in Skokie, Illinois, "Mother didn't have that 'pushed around' look all the time, as though she were in the way and knew it and was being so patient about it." On the brighter side, a no-less-busy woman reports: "I can tell you one thing: It's a blessed comfort when I'm late getting home from the bridge club or a frustrating shopping spree to know that dinner's progressing right on schedule and on top of that Mother's going to be beaming because she's had the chance to do something for all of us." SOCIAL WORKERS who specialize in the problems of our senior citizens are becoming convinced that the "three-generation household" really works well only when there is a reciprocal need for it—when all concerned benefit from the arrangement and when there are no serious personality clashes among them. Medium-rent and low-rent housing space especially designed for—and restricted to—occupancy by older people is being provided in increasing quantities in and near many of our larger cities. Federal aid for "housing for the aged" now runs into many millions annually. States are helping, Continued on page 22 Suburbia Today, February 1962 21

MINWAX Tips on WOOD FINISHING

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