By Madelyn Iris (Northwestern)
 

Joseph Ragsdell Sr, 83, an appliance repairman who worked two full-time jobs much of his life so he could support his children as well as the nieces and nephews he raised for a sister died Sunday . [He] taught Sunday School for more than 40 years. Mr. Ragsdell cared for his parents when they were alive and when a sister died, raised her 9 children along with his own 9, said a daughter . He would walk 3 or 4 miles to work so he could take his bus fare and buy his children candy.

    Though brief, Mr Ragsdell’s obituary hinted at a life rich with relationships, filled with contribution and indicative of the sustaining role African American elders have played in the evolving life of the family. I didn’t know him, but his life exemplifies the values and characteristics of a lifestyle repeatedly encountered in life stories of the older adults who participated in my study of aging in Chicago.

Historical and Cultural Artifacts

    In a city like Chicago, which has undergone profound demographic shifts over the last half century, the older adult population represents an historical and cultural artifact of middle class working life. Although older adults represented less that 10% of the population only 20-30 years ago, conservative estimates predict that by 2050 more than 20% of the US population will be over age 65. In urban centers, the greatest growth will likely be among African American and Spanish-speaking elders. Although impressive, these numbers mask the extreme diversity found within the older population, and obscure the rich complexity of life and experience elders embody. As parents and grandparents, American elders have helped shape the values and lifestyles of today’s middle class working families, and in many instances still make direct and important contributions to the maintenance and functioning of these families.

    In 1990 the Chicago Community Trust, a major philanthropy, examined its funding priorities for older adult programs. The Qualitative Study of Aging in Chicago, part of the multi-disciplinary Aging in Chicago Project, was an ethnographic study of older adults living in 5 distinct communities in the greater Chicago area. As project director, I worked with a team of interviewers to collect 256 interviews from 50 participants (aged 55-91), exploring their life histories, social and family networks, health histories and beliefs about health and aging, and their unique philosophies about aging. We focused on change across time in each of these domains, and especially on the reciprocal relationships linking older adults to their communities.

Urban Pioneers

    A remarkable picture of how older family members continue to thrive within their communities emerged from our study, illuminating the many ways elders provide a "buffer" of stability for their children and grandchildren, their neighborhoods and larger community institutions, such as schools and churches. Stories told by 10 of our African American consultants were especially enlightening. These narratives not only gave life and reality to the statistics documenting demographic shifts, they provided in depth understanding of how family life has developed and changed in inner city environments. While most of these men and women were not what we would call "middle class" in terms of occupations or incomes, their values, lifestyles and attitudes place them solidly within a middle class zone of aspirations. Almost all owned their own homes and over half had sent their children through college, although they themselves generally had only 8-12 years of education.

    As William Julius Wilson points out (The Truly Disadvantaged, 1987), until recently, distinctions between middle and working class African Americans in inner city settings were blurred: professionals and factory workers lived side by side, restricted to particular neighborhoods and occupations by covertly institutionalized racial discrimination. Many of the African American men and women we interviewed illustrate this experience. Most lived in a south-side community in Chicago notorious for its high levels of poverty, crime and family instability. We chose this community specifically to interview lower and poverty level income elderly. Thus we were surprised by our participants’ stories about lives filled with work, family and service to community. Almost all represented two-parent working families, who balanced work and family responsibilities long before such a life-style became popularized as a distinctly middle class phenomenon.

    While some worked to meet basic needs, many whom we interviewed sought to enhance their incomes to achieve a higher standard of living--particularly home ownership--educational opportunities for their children and recreational outlets such as travel. They related their experiences as "urban pioneers," for these elderly African-Americans were among those residents who moved to this community in the late 1950s through the 1960s, when it was still largely populated by white, working and middle class families. Despite the prejudice and harassment many encountered, they sought a more stable neighborhood in which to buy their homes and raise their families. They were attracted by the tree-lined streets, solid brick bungalows and two-flats, and the neighborhood’s safe streets, parks, schools and churches.

    Little of this stable neighborhood remained at the time of our interviews. Many neighborhood streets were lined with abandoned properties, claimed by drug dealers and gangs, and parks were too dangerous to visit. Their own college-educated children had relocated to better neighborhoods, often in the suburbs, in keeping with their rising status as middle class professionals and white-collar workers. The elders we interviewed told us of feeling "stuck" in their communities--yet still committed to them--and described their participation in block clubs, local school councils and police district advisory committees, and churches.

Assets to Community Life

    Contrary to persistent mythology, many middle class, working families are not "stand alone" systems. Parents and grandparents are considered important family members and are often direct contributors to family resources. They represent assets, not drains, on community life. The African American elders we interviewed fulfill important roles within their family systems, providing material and non-material support: they may support their children’s financial and family stability, contribute to the education of grandchildren and assist with childcare. They also strive to maintain their own financial stability and independence, to ensure they will not become burdens to their children. Without them, their families and communities would lack the foundational bedrock on which they stand. These elders are indispensable to their social networks and life-styles they have engendered. To truly understand the issues and challenges now facing middle class working families in America, we cannot ignore their extended connections with older family members who created the very networks and webs of relationships from which these younger individuals have emerged. Anthropology’s focus on changing social structures, household and kin relations and functions, and particularly on the meanings of these across time and space, should not neglect the place of elders in their family networks. The elderly do not constitute a disjunctive, non-productive or non-functional sector of American life: rather, they are important players in the evolving dynamic of a multicultural society.

[Madelyn Iris is an Associate Director at the Buehler Center on Aging, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Northwestern U Medical School, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is also Director of Northwestern Univ. Ethnographic Field School. Her work focuses on qualitative methods in evaluation of social service programs for the elderly, and problem-based research in the clinical setting. The Qualitative Study of Aging in Chicago was completed in 1995. Co-project director was Rebecca L H Berman. Iris’ most recent research includes an investigation of the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse on the elderly, and a study of how families decide to seek early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, using qualitative decision modeling techniques. Relevant publications include: "Berman and Iris, "Approaches to Self-Care in Later Life" (Qualitative Health Research, 1998); and Iris and Berman, "Developing An Aging Services Agenda: Applied Anthropology’s Contribution to Planning and Development in a Community Foundation" (Practicing Anthropology, 1998).]