大象传媒

For the first time ever, in 2019 the U.S. has more people than under 18. That milestone brought with it little celebration. Indeed, there were abundant concerns that America would soon be awash in a gray wave, spelling increased health care costs for an aging population, greater housing and transportation needs, and fewer young workers contributing to Social Security. Some feared a generational conflict over shrinking resources, a looming tension between kids and 鈥渃anes.鈥�

Without discounting these very real challenges, I鈥檓 quite a bit more optimistic. I鈥檝e spent decades wondering what the increasing years beyond 50 mean for crafting more fulfilling lives, and how a more-old-than-young society can thrive. In that time, I鈥檝e sought to find new ways to match the untapped resource of older adults with the unmet needs of our nation鈥檚 youth. I鈥檝e seen intergenerational connection help children learn to read, graduate from high school, and go on to accomplish their dreams.

But I鈥檝e only recently come to realize some of the biggest benefits of bringing old and young together. As I recount in my new book,, when younger and older connect, the intergenerational relationships built are a route to success in early life and a key to happiness and well-being in our later years.

The benefits of intergenerational connections

Forty years ago, the eminent Cornell University professor and child psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner famously concluded, 鈥淓very child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.鈥� The benefits of a caring adult mentor on children鈥檚 well-being have been reinforced in 听after study, as well as from youth themselves鈥攊ncluding I was engaged with early in my career.

In the 1980s, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America served 70,000 children in the U.S., but 30,000 more were languishing on the waiting list for an average of 18 months. Our research team was able to take 1,000 kids on the waiting list and randomly assign mentors to half. The other half were promised mentors at the end of 18 months, the period they would have waited anyway. But first, during that year and a half, we compared the young people who had mentors with the young people who didn鈥檛 have them.

The contrast was staggering. There was a 46 percent difference in drug use, a 50 percent difference in school truancy, and a 33 percent difference in violent behavior. The conclusion was inescapable: Relationships with adults matter in young people鈥檚 lives.

But what do older adults gain from relationships with young people? One powerful answer comes from the , which began tracking more than 700 men in 1938 and continues to this day. Of the study鈥檚 findings, one towers above all others: Relationships are the critical ingredient in well-being, particularly as we age.

Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant led that study for more than three decades. In his book , Vaillant illuminates the importance not only of bonds with partners and peers but of ties spanning the generations. 鈥淚n all three Study cohorts,鈥� he wrote, 鈥渕asters of Generativity tripled the chances that the decade of the 鈥�70s would be for these men and women a time of joy and not of despair.鈥� Generativity means investing in, caring for, and developing the next generation; older adults who did so were three times as likely to be happy as those who did not.

听from Washington University in St. Louis and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine shows that intergenerational volunteering is good for older people鈥檚 mental and physical health. A by Hopkins professor Michelle Carlson found that, after six months of tutoring students with Experience Corps, older adults had 鈥渋mproved brain and cognitive function.鈥� According to Dean Linda Fried of Columbia鈥檚 Mailman School of Public Health, working with the students 鈥渄usted off the cobwebs in their brains.鈥�

Today, an accumulating body of research on purpose, generativity, relationships, and face-to-face contact suggests that engagement with others that flows down the generational chain may well make you healthier, happier, and .

Becoming masters of what matters

If these connections are so profoundly important for all involved, why aren鈥檛 armies of older people actively engaged in the lives of young people?

The answer lies in a wide array of societal changes鈥攕ome progressive, others less so鈥攖hat have taken place over the past century: The recognition of childhood as a distinct life stage, a viewpoint reinforced by innovations like universal schooling and institutions like orphanages, high schools, and even the Boy Scouts; the transformation of later life from being seen as a natural part of the life cycle to a medical condition, an incurable malady to be diagnosed, treated, and managed; the rebranding of retirement as an attempt to recapture one鈥檚 youth; the rise of age-segregated, seniors-only sunshine cities that have come to embody that new norm for the golden years. These cultural ideals and institutional arrangements have served to stymie ties between the generations and seed many of the challenges we face today.听