We are living with hyper-change. Increasing polarization and precarity, an aging population, growing heterogeneity, escalating inequalities—all in the context of intensifying digitalization and a public health crisis—are challenging our norms and expectations. We can no longer take for granted fundamental assumptions about the courses of our lives.

Our January Forum speaker, U of M Professor Phyllis Moen, will lead us in discussing how these multilayered forces are affecting those of us in the later parts of our lives. Moen argues that we are witnessing the development of a new life stage, what she calls “encore adulthood,” in the space between the years of family and career-building and the onset of infirmities associated with old age. 

Retreat or renewal
Times of rapid transformation such as these can be stressful, but they also open up new possibilities, enabling people to experiment and to pioneer alternative ways of living. The new “encore” to adulthood can be either a time of anxious retreat or a time of personal and social renewal. What kind of encore will we choose?

Moen holds the McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Sociology. A prolific scholar, she also serves as the director of the Life Course Center for the Demography and Economics of Aging and is the founding director of the University of Minnesota Advanced Careers Initiative. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of ten books, including The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (with Patricia Roehling), Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose; and Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It (with Erin Kelly).

Please register for this Zoom webinar and join us at 12 noon on Tuesday, January 25. 

—Ron Matross, UMRA president-elect and Program Committee chair