Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020) do an excellent job outlining the proactive process that drives successful workplace aging, including multiple levels of distal antecedents such as the job, work group, organization, and society within which the worker is nested. However, just as a worker is nested within those levels, they are also nested within a social context outside of work—that is, a family nested within a community nested within society. This broader social context will likely also affect the self-regulatory processes associated with successful aging at work. In this commentary, we extend the discussion in the focal article by examining the nonwork factors that might influence the processes underlying successful aging at work.
Similarly to Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020), researchers have used the motivational theory of lifespan development (Heckhausen et al., Reference Heckhausen, Wrosch and Schulz2010) to describe retirement decisions. Briefly, workers are posited to compare their work role with their nonwork role in terms of the factors that push them out of the workplace and pull them toward retirement as well as the factors that push them out of their home or community role and pull them toward the workplace (Barnes-Farrell, Reference Barnes-Farrell, Adams and Beehr2003). Similar to Kooij et al., this research has described decisions about work and retirement as reflecting the weight a person puts on obtaining a sense of control in their life. If the home or the workplace provides that sense of control, then that role will be more favorably considered in the retirement decision.
We postulate that the balance between the work and nonwork role is not only relevant for retirement decisions but also has implications for successful aging at work. That is, the processes of proactive goal (dis)engagement, adaptive goal (dis)engagement, and thus successful aging at work will be significantly influenced by nonwork demands. Although this idea is not new—it is reflected extensively in the research on the work–family interface (Dahm et al., Reference Dahm, Glomb, Manchester and Leroy2015)—very few researchers examining successful aging at work have identified the nonwork variables that are most likely to affect older workers. Examining these factors is critical because an older worker might have all of the ingredients for successful workplace aging outlined by Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020); (i.e., high levels of ability and motivation for work) but still experience lack of success due to factors outside of the workplace. These factors can be sudden and acute in nature, such as a spouse’s sudden illness, or they can be the result of a lifetime of events, such as a desire to retire in order to care for grandchildren. The nonwork context does not only consist of the family; it also consists of community roles (Leslie et al., Reference Leslie, King and Clair2019). Similarly, the family context doesn’t only consist of caregiving; it also consists of family relationships, as well as nonwork life goals (Kanfer et al., Reference Kanfer, Beier and Ackerman2013). Of these factors, one of the most pressing issues currently facing aging workers in the United States is family caregiving, unpaid work done mostly by women and people of lower socioeconomic status (Blustein et al., Reference Blustein, Kenny, Di Fabio and Guichard2019). We use caregiving as an example of how nonwork factors can differentially affect the ability of workers to age successfully at work and how this difference often falls along the lines of already marginalized identities.
Family caregiving
In the United States, population aging combined with a lack of a social safety net and an increased desire to age in place leads to a reliance on informal caregiving arrangements. These arrangements have a significant influence on the caregiver’s engagement in paid work: parental caregiving is associated with accelerated retirement (Stoiko, Reference Stoiko2015) and reduces the chances that a woman will be working for pay at and beyond the age of 50 (Fahle & McGarry, Reference Fahle, McGarry, Goldin and Katz2018). Spousal caregiving is usually seen as a consideration among couples who are past retirement age, but not all couples’ lifespan ages are in sync. Often, women are younger than their spouses, and when this age differential is relatively large, wives may be called upon to leave paid work to provide caregiving for an aging spouse. Moreover, older workers do not just provide caregiving to their aging relatives; they might also have caregiving responsibilities for their children or grandchildren. What these caregiving roles have in common, however, is that they are likely to fall on women and people of lower socioeconomic status (Fahle & McGarry, Reference Fahle, McGarry, Goldin and Katz2018; Maestas, Reference Maestas, Goldin and Katz2018).
Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020) describe the various types of primary and secondary control strategies that are related to self-regulation and successful aging at work. We anticipate that caregiving would directly affect a worker’s ability to engage in selective secondary control strategies, particularly as related to avoiding attention to non-work-related goals. We would also anticipate that caregiving would affect a worker’s ability to engage in any of the primary or secondary control strategies outlined by Kooij et al. via the time that caregiving takes and its mental toll. For example, someone who is providing informal care might otherwise have engaged in a primary control strategy of attending an optional developmental opportunity provided outside of work hours; however, they might not engage in that strategy if caregiving is required during that time. In one study, perceptions of organizational support by informal family caregivers were shown to buffer the effects of strain caused by caregiving demands on the caregivers’ work engagement (Zacher & Winter, Reference Zacher and Winter2011). This lends credence to the idea that caregiving influences workplace processes through its effect on psychological processes, not solely through other nonpsychological factors such as available time.
Conclusion
Although we focused on the illustrative example of caregiving, we posit that a multitude of nonwork considerations might affect successful aging at work in ways not fully explored by existing research. Given that we expect nonwork factors, such as caregiving, to negatively affect worker abilities to exercise control strategies of all types, people with these nonwork demands will be less able to age successfully at work. Importantly, this lack of successful aging would not be a function of any of the elements of the model laid out by Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020). Not incorporating nonwork factors that may differentially affect marginalized groups of people will present a distorted view of successful aging at work. That is, it may appear that women and marginalized groups are not successfully aging due to issues related to self-regulation, when, in reality, they are navigating an incredibly complex balance between their work and nonwork roles.
An expansionist view of the work–family interface asserts that the benefits derived from different domains of work and life are not mutually exclusive and that engaging across domains will expand a person’s resources, not deplete them (Barnett & Hyde, Reference Barnett and Hyde2001). However, even those researchers who advocate this expansionist viewpoint acknowledge the curvilinear nature of these benefits. We are not arguing here against the benefits of engaging across domains; instead, we simply assert that the playing field is not level for successful aging at work and that we can push to better understand the ways in which this influences the processes outlined in the focal article.
Directions for future research
Research on aging workers often treats older workers as a relatively homogenous group; however, older people hold multiple, complex identities that inform the way that they engage with the workplace, and this intersectionality (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989) is an area that is ripe for future research. However, if researchers continue to rely heavily on samples that are largely white, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (Henrich et al., Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010), we will continue to miss—and therefore misattribute—the effects of the nuanced experiences of older workers of different races, education levels, socioeconomic statuses, family structures, disability statuses, sexualities, gender identities, and other salient identities.
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Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020) do an excellent job outlining the proactive process that drives successful workplace aging, including multiple levels of distal antecedents such as the job, work group, organization, and society within which the worker is nested. However, just as a worker is nested within those levels, they are also nested within a social context outside of work—that is, a family nested within a community nested within society. This broader social context will likely also affect the self-regulatory processes associated with successful aging at work. In this commentary, we extend the discussion in the focal article by examining the nonwork factors that might influence the processes underlying successful aging at work.
Similarly to Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020), researchers have used the motivational theory of lifespan development (Heckhausen et al., Reference Heckhausen, Wrosch and Schulz2010) to describe retirement decisions. Briefly, workers are posited to compare their work role with their nonwork role in terms of the factors that push them out of the workplace and pull them toward retirement as well as the factors that push them out of their home or community role and pull them toward the workplace (Barnes-Farrell, Reference Barnes-Farrell, Adams and Beehr2003). Similar to Kooij et al., this research has described decisions about work and retirement as reflecting the weight a person puts on obtaining a sense of control in their life. If the home or the workplace provides that sense of control, then that role will be more favorably considered in the retirement decision.
We postulate that the balance between the work and nonwork role is not only relevant for retirement decisions but also has implications for successful aging at work. That is, the processes of proactive goal (dis)engagement, adaptive goal (dis)engagement, and thus successful aging at work will be significantly influenced by nonwork demands. Although this idea is not new—it is reflected extensively in the research on the work–family interface (Dahm et al., Reference Dahm, Glomb, Manchester and Leroy2015)—very few researchers examining successful aging at work have identified the nonwork variables that are most likely to affect older workers. Examining these factors is critical because an older worker might have all of the ingredients for successful workplace aging outlined by Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020); (i.e., high levels of ability and motivation for work) but still experience lack of success due to factors outside of the workplace. These factors can be sudden and acute in nature, such as a spouse’s sudden illness, or they can be the result of a lifetime of events, such as a desire to retire in order to care for grandchildren. The nonwork context does not only consist of the family; it also consists of community roles (Leslie et al., Reference Leslie, King and Clair2019). Similarly, the family context doesn’t only consist of caregiving; it also consists of family relationships, as well as nonwork life goals (Kanfer et al., Reference Kanfer, Beier and Ackerman2013). Of these factors, one of the most pressing issues currently facing aging workers in the United States is family caregiving, unpaid work done mostly by women and people of lower socioeconomic status (Blustein et al., Reference Blustein, Kenny, Di Fabio and Guichard2019). We use caregiving as an example of how nonwork factors can differentially affect the ability of workers to age successfully at work and how this difference often falls along the lines of already marginalized identities.
Family caregiving
In the United States, population aging combined with a lack of a social safety net and an increased desire to age in place leads to a reliance on informal caregiving arrangements. These arrangements have a significant influence on the caregiver’s engagement in paid work: parental caregiving is associated with accelerated retirement (Stoiko, Reference Stoiko2015) and reduces the chances that a woman will be working for pay at and beyond the age of 50 (Fahle & McGarry, Reference Fahle, McGarry, Goldin and Katz2018). Spousal caregiving is usually seen as a consideration among couples who are past retirement age, but not all couples’ lifespan ages are in sync. Often, women are younger than their spouses, and when this age differential is relatively large, wives may be called upon to leave paid work to provide caregiving for an aging spouse. Moreover, older workers do not just provide caregiving to their aging relatives; they might also have caregiving responsibilities for their children or grandchildren. What these caregiving roles have in common, however, is that they are likely to fall on women and people of lower socioeconomic status (Fahle & McGarry, Reference Fahle, McGarry, Goldin and Katz2018; Maestas, Reference Maestas, Goldin and Katz2018).
Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020) describe the various types of primary and secondary control strategies that are related to self-regulation and successful aging at work. We anticipate that caregiving would directly affect a worker’s ability to engage in selective secondary control strategies, particularly as related to avoiding attention to non-work-related goals. We would also anticipate that caregiving would affect a worker’s ability to engage in any of the primary or secondary control strategies outlined by Kooij et al. via the time that caregiving takes and its mental toll. For example, someone who is providing informal care might otherwise have engaged in a primary control strategy of attending an optional developmental opportunity provided outside of work hours; however, they might not engage in that strategy if caregiving is required during that time. In one study, perceptions of organizational support by informal family caregivers were shown to buffer the effects of strain caused by caregiving demands on the caregivers’ work engagement (Zacher & Winter, Reference Zacher and Winter2011). This lends credence to the idea that caregiving influences workplace processes through its effect on psychological processes, not solely through other nonpsychological factors such as available time.
Conclusion
Although we focused on the illustrative example of caregiving, we posit that a multitude of nonwork considerations might affect successful aging at work in ways not fully explored by existing research. Given that we expect nonwork factors, such as caregiving, to negatively affect worker abilities to exercise control strategies of all types, people with these nonwork demands will be less able to age successfully at work. Importantly, this lack of successful aging would not be a function of any of the elements of the model laid out by Kooij et al. (Reference Kooij, Zacher, Wang and Heckhausen2020). Not incorporating nonwork factors that may differentially affect marginalized groups of people will present a distorted view of successful aging at work. That is, it may appear that women and marginalized groups are not successfully aging due to issues related to self-regulation, when, in reality, they are navigating an incredibly complex balance between their work and nonwork roles.
An expansionist view of the work–family interface asserts that the benefits derived from different domains of work and life are not mutually exclusive and that engaging across domains will expand a person’s resources, not deplete them (Barnett & Hyde, Reference Barnett and Hyde2001). However, even those researchers who advocate this expansionist viewpoint acknowledge the curvilinear nature of these benefits. We are not arguing here against the benefits of engaging across domains; instead, we simply assert that the playing field is not level for successful aging at work and that we can push to better understand the ways in which this influences the processes outlined in the focal article.
Directions for future research
Research on aging workers often treats older workers as a relatively homogenous group; however, older people hold multiple, complex identities that inform the way that they engage with the workplace, and this intersectionality (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989) is an area that is ripe for future research. However, if researchers continue to rely heavily on samples that are largely white, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (Henrich et al., Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010), we will continue to miss—and therefore misattribute—the effects of the nuanced experiences of older workers of different races, education levels, socioeconomic statuses, family structures, disability statuses, sexualities, gender identities, and other salient identities.