How Elder Naggers Impair Men's Self-Confidence

If breadwinner roles are reversed, the opposite outcome may result.

Courtesy: financiallyconsumed.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - After 33 years as a professional counselor on both East and West Coasts, I have seen literally hundreds of elderly clients sharing their agonies. One pervasive issue keeps cropping up. It involves the return of the male breadwinner to the homefront, for which he is often unprepared. Thus, conflict erupts. Unless the woman in the couple has also worked full-time, she is usually the chief of household dynamics, an unofficial but accurate title. She has maintained the home and largely run the show. With the return of the male species to the lair, the status quo is upset. Whatever power and prestige that said male may have held outside does not automatically accrue to the home. He finds himself naked, stripped of his cloak of the self-confidence he had at his work site. He is suddenly made vulnerable.

His new adjustments are many.  Let us enumerate:

• Work peers no longer on the scene;
• Daily work routine has evaporated;
• Former timelines no longer exist;
• Banter safety valve is gone.

How do many wives respond to this turn of events? Usually with profound hurt that turns to anger. Then the Elder Nagger Syndrome kicks in and the returning hubby begins to feel attacked. He views this as intrusion and manipulation. In a sense, it is rejection of the vision for himself he carried home with him. Nagging has likely been around since Adam and Eve got expelled from the garden for sampling a forbidden apple. Fingerpointing may well be normal but often not productive. It lets off steam but also fogs up the windshield. The road ahead is anything but clear. Maybe as a society we need to set up workshops in Retirement Transition Training. Senior centers and Y's are two possibilities. We can hire retired social workers and counselors to run such seminars. I say seminars because they must not be strictly lectures. Open discussion among the enrollees adds to the reality factor.

This is not to suggest that all naggers are female, but they may well predominate. If breadwinner roles are reversed, the opposite outcome may result. Revisiting any long-enduring practice requires patience to alter the equation. Rome was not built in a day, it is said. We cannot change the Elder Family in one fell swoop. But it's time to make amends and retool the machinery needed to make it happen, before we rust out spinning our wheels.

NOTE: Lee Coyne served as a counselor to the elderly and disabled from 1975 to 2008, covering five states along the way.  In his Polk County position his focus was in pain management for chronic pain sufferers.  He can be consulted at luckycoyne@yahoo.com

He also launched the nation's first tele-conference on health education for shut-ins, created the Eldermentors project in VA to pair retirees with immigrant students needing role models, and was the main catalyst behind CCTV's "Public Public" panel show here in Salem. Lee received his BA in International Relations and an MSW in community organization. He currently serves as a member of Salem's Library Advisory Board. To send Lee an email, please write to this address: luckycoyne@yahoo.com