Can Intergenerational Mentoring Prevent Ageism?

Abstract

Intergenerational mentoring is a way to break down barriers between different generations by utilizing mentoring. Intergenerational mentoring with older adults provides opportunities for activities and learning for young people. Various studies have suggested that providing opportunities for older adults and younger adults to spend time together could be an excellent opportunity to debunk many of the beliefs that young people may have about older adults. Stereotyping or discrimination of someone due to age is known as ageism. Empathy has been shown to be associated with ageism. Higher empathy scores were negatively correlated with total ageism scores meaning that the more empathy a person has, the less ageism that they possess. Therefore, it could be that providing opportunities for the generations to spend time together could increase their empathy for that group and reduce their ageism.

1. Introduction

The word mentor comes from the Greek word meaning enduring. It is defined as a sustained relationship between a youth and an adult. Intergenerational mentoring is a unique way of bringing two groups together to share their strengths while providing a mutually beneficial relationship. This social relationship that is mentoring has two main roles as experts and as role models. In its natural form, mentoring occurs because of friendships, teaching, coaching, collegiality and counseling; at the same time, it can also be planned. This planned mentoring occurs through structured programs in which mentors and participants are selected and matched through a formal process. For example, new teachers are paired with more experienced teachers to help them learn how to be an even better educator or students that start a new sport may be paired with someone who has been playing that sport for a while so they can learn what they need to know to succeed. Mentoring can be facilitated in so many different situations.

According to Butler, ageism is discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of their age [1]. This concept was patterned after sexism and racism. Butler later refined his concept of ageism to a “process of systematic stereotyping and discrimination against people because they are old” [2]. Regardless of the definition that is subscribed to, ageism has been shown to have a negative impact on a person’s physical and mental health; which in turn affects their quality of life. Since ageism is an increasing problem in society, it would be wonderful to find a way to eliminate it. To put this into perspective, is it possible that intergenerational mentoring is a way to increase empathy and value for older adults and, in turn, help prevent ageism? Most of the research discussed in this chapter supports this in the affirmative.

2. Defining mentoring

In the United States, older adults are the fastest growing subgroup of the population. Due to growth in this population, there are many societal concerns of which ageism is a major concern. Mentoring presents a unique opportunity for positive intergenerational interactions to reduce the gap between diverse generations [3]. Mentoring is a kind of activity that involves establishing an ongoing in-person relationship with another person. A mentor is someone who shares their knowledge, skills, and experience over a prolonged period of time. Intergenerational mentoring is a type of mentoring where older adults provide guidance to younger people by sharing their experiences and wisdom [4]. For instance, an older person can provide consistent support to a younger person going through a difficult situation or period in life. Intergenerational mentoring participants may vary in age from preschool through university students and settings such as older adults living in long-term care facilities or independent community dwellings [5]. This collaboration between younger people and older people presents many chances to interact in meaningful activities that can have mutual benefits.

The growing problematic behaviors in younger people, such as criminal activity and high-level drug use, has increased [3]. Older mentors, particularly those who have experienced similar situations as high-risk youth, have been found to be effective in reaching out and relating to those who feel misunderstood by family and community members [4]. It is important to create positive environments and to have engaging experiences despite their life circumstances in order to encourage the younger individuals to strive for their full potential. And, for some older adults, this results in having a reason to continue on and have a purpose in life. Mentor expectations are to serve as a guide for psychological support which can reflect positively on a young person’s self-esteem.

As previously mentioned, intergenerational mentoring is also beneficial for older adults. Older adult mentors who participate in intergenerational mentoring programs report an improvement in physical health, cognitive function, and psychosocial well-being [6]. Available evidence suggests that intergenerational mentoring and activities may improve older adults’ sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Overall, intergenerational mentoring is a promising approach to decreasing the gap between generations and increasing the understanding of the extent to which different generations can support one another.

3. Mentoring and intergenerational relationships

Intergenerational relationships prove themselves to be important as they are described as “lifelong, continuous, and dynamic parent-child relationships and family-based interpersonal relationships across generations” [7]. These relationships can bring forth positive feelings, provide an exchange of resources and support, and deliver opportunity and structure for intergenerational interactions, which can be applied to all generations involved [7]. A study, conducted by geriatric RNs, Wu and Chiou from Taiwan, enhanced these ideas through observing 158 older adults (ages 60 and above) who were described as having a low quality of life and having depressive symptoms. Wu and Chiou [7] determined that higher depressive symptoms were significantly associated with poor social support and intergenerational relationships, which shows how important mentoring is for all of those involved. However, it is important to note some limitations of the study: convenience sampling; a number of adults with severe depressive symptoms that denied participation, the number of children and grandchildren each older adult had, and causal inferences of risk factors like social support and intergenerational relationships, all may have affected the valid results of this study.

It has been determined that intergenerational relationships and mentoring may bring about many benefits to the older population. With relationships connected to the younger generations, older adults can establish a sense of self-importance by passing on knowledge to others, as well as improved cognitive function, physical health, and social activity [8, 9, 10]. Furthermore, mentoring provides a self-given purpose through spending time teaching and learning from those in other generations [10, 11]. On the other hand, intergenerational relationships can also help with the reduction of negative stereotypes that ageism promotes [10, 12]. Mentoring can provide an escape out of comfort zones that older adults may linger in, and provide feelings of joy and freedom from the impending process of aging [12].

4. Issues related to ageism

In this chapter, we have discussed mentoring and its benefits for so many different individuals and groups of individuals, in addition to many different settings. It seems that mentoring in its many forms is beneficial to so many. Let us take a look at the concept of successful aging.

4.1 What is successful aging?

Life expectancy has increased because we have better medical care and are starting to focus on prevention. Thus, people are better able to take care of themselves. However, what good is longevity if a person does not have their physical or mental health? Furthermore, one person’s idea of what is meant by successful aging may be different from that of another person. Successful aging has come to be equated with the quality of aging, but what does it really mean? High physical and psychological functioning in old age and being free from disease is how some define successful aging. For many people, successful aging brings about ideas of “life satisfaction, longevity, freedom of disability, mastery and growth, active engagement with life, and independence” [13].

As part of a research project, one of the authors was afforded an opportunity to ask a group of 50 older adults what successful aging meant to them [14]. See Table 1 for several of their responses.

enjoying life being gracious with myself staying in shape eating right and keeping my weight managed having fun in life being independent having a social life learning something new each day not taking myself too seriously plastic surgery

Table 1.

What is successful aging?.

As you can see from the responses, people have a vastly different idea of what successful aging is to them. All of these ideas denote positive attributes or things that most people want to ascribe to as we get older. But, where does that leave the person that is disabled or has limits to their independence? Does that mean that they are not aging successfully? By defining successful aging, are we excluding many older adults that do not fit the definition? Additionally, what would being excluded from that grouping do to the mental health of those individuals? Therefore, it seems that we, as a society, need to have some concept of successful aging to work towards. So, what is missing?

4.2 Ageism defined

Robert Butler coined the term “ageism” in 1969 [1]. His definition stipulates that ageism is a process of systematic stereotyping and discrimination against people because they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this for color and gender” [2]. According to the World Health Organization, ageism refers to stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination toward others or oneself based on age [15]. In other words, ageism refers to how we think, how we feel and how we act toward others or oneself based on age. Yes, a person can have stereotypes about themselves. If a person feels that older adults cannot benefit from exercise then they likely believe that about themselves and do not exercise – a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Could this discrimination affect our health and serve to prevent successful aging?

According to Allen et al., adults 50–80 years of age experience ageism every day [16]. The World Health Organization reports that 50% of the world’s population negatively stereotype based on a person’s age [15]. What are the implications of this phenomenon of ageism on the increasingly enlarging group of older adults?

4.3 Ageism and health

Ageism has many diverse but negative health effects for the older adult population. For example, the discrimination and community-perceived assumptions about the aging population can cause negative impacts on the mental, social, and physical health realms which can lead to a decrease in quality of life and eventually in longevity.

The mental impact of ageism, such as being seen as unimportant can cause negative self perceptions that can issue real self disvalue. Hence, why “the most frequently examined condition, depression, showed evidence that ageism was associated with onset of the condition and a lifetime of depression” [17]. Moreover, the impacts of ageism may cause cognitive decline. Individuals dealing with depressive symptoms over time that are being negatively affected by age stereotypes from society are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s-disease-related brain changes [17].

Ageism can also affect the social life of an older person, which may be one of the most determining factors of how deep the effects of ageism can be. To illustrate, older adults navigate a narrower life-space than younger people; life space refers to the spatial area in which a person moves about and interacts with the world. Upon retirement from the paid workforce, older adults spend more time in their immediate neighborhoods [18]. With that said, the older generation is comfortable to limit themselves to only expending time and energy to what needs immediate attention. This could cause them to neglect further social interactions with others in their age group and those in the younger population. As a result, they may not continue learning new skills on how to communicate and understand the always advancing generation. Perhaps with increased socialization, such narratives might stall perpetuation of age stereotypes and reveal the problem of ageism toward older adults [19]. Furthermore, socialization of older adults is important as it can lead to group identification that enables the application of self-compassion and empathy to motivate those to continue to search for a purpose in their lives, learn new things, meet new people and engage in activities that they find fascinating and rewarding. However, ageism can cause discrimination, causing attitudes of feeling out of place which could impede their pursuit of their definition of successful aging.

4.4 Prevention of ageism

The looming question here is - Can Ageism be prevented? According to the World Health Organization, in conjunction with the United Nations, there are three strategies that may lead us toward eliminating ageism. Those strategies include the following: policies and laws; education; and intergenerational experiences [15]. Policies and laws are necessary for regulating and prohibiting ageism in our workplaces and in healthcare. Education is vital to helping people understand and recognize ageism in our own worlds. And, finally, intergenerational mentoring is a strategy that intentionally brings together groups of different ages and creates a necessary dialog between people of different ages that does not exist in everyone’s world.

Figure 1 depicts four generations of Acadians passing on the vital aspect of life for them – fishing. The Acadians are a group of people of French descent who settled in the New France colony of Acadia when they were expelled from Nova Scotia. This culture is being kept alive in the daily activities of the people. This is intergenerational mentoring to help preserve a culture. Moreover, it is easy to imagine the benefits of this type of mentoring including and not limited to teaching young generations that older adults are valuable.

Figure 1.

Culture preservation through intergenerational mentoring.

In today’s society, many young people grow up without the benefit of an older person in their lives. This can be due to the fact that young families find it difficult to make a living where they grew up and have decided to relocate their family. Or, the older generation has passed away. Overall, there can be any number of reasons that older adults are missing from the picture, and this can cause the dialog between the ages to be missing as well. This creates a deficiency in the understanding of the richness of benefits that can be shared between the generations. Dialog among people of different age groups is one of the things that can help clear up misunderstandings related to getting older and help build empathy for older adults.

Recent research has shown that in young adults, gender and low levels of empathy were strong predictors of ageism. And, as a result, negative attitudes toward older adults [20]. Empathy is being able to put yourself in someone else’s situation. People that do not have the capacity to put themselves in someone else’s situation are more likely to have discriminatory thoughts and ideas about older adults. But, it was found that college students that have increased interactions with older adults showed less negative attitudes toward older adults [21]. These results are outstanding. They postulate that it is possible to increase empathy in young people by creating interactions between them and their older counterparts. Which, in effect, is intergenerational mentoring.

Figure 2 depicts a proud Grandfather holding his grandson. This is a natural intergenerational mentoring relationship. This little boy has been afforded the opportunity to learn many things from his grandfather; thus fostering a wonderful, rich and rewarding relationship. Unfortunately, many children grow up without this opportunity. While this is sad, we can compensate for it with programs in which young people and older people are matched up to create an artificial mentoring relationship. Furthermore, Leedahl, Brasher, LoBuono, Wood and Estus, also found that intergenerational interactions between college students and older adults was able to decrease many of the negative attitudes that the younger people had toward the older ones [22].

Figure 2.

Grandparent and grandson spending time together.

5. Conclusions

It is very easy to see how important intergenerational mentoring can be to prevent ageism by creating avenues for dialog between the generations and increasing empathy toward older adults, but most of this information is anecdotal. There is definitely a lack of empirical evidence that supports these ideas. This gap in the literature further warrants more exploration of intergenerational mentoring and the benefits to older adults and possibly the prevention of ageism. An exhaustive search of the literature was unable to produce research studies where intergenerational mentoring brought about any negative effects. And, since empathy seems to be something that can be changed; it is highly likely that it could prevent ageism, and turn this theoretical perspective into beneficial results.