Product Description Kids grown? Mortgage paid? Career topping out? What now? In My Time, best-selling author Abigail Trafford answers the questions more and more 50-somethings are asking themselves. Thanks to the longevity revolution of recent decades, today's 55- to75-year-olds are living and working longer and healthier than ever before. This generation is the first to experience the period of personal renaissance in between middle and old age-what Trafford calls "My Time." Defining this period as a whole new developmental stage in the life cycle, Trafford skillfully guides readers through the obstacles of My Time and offers them the opportunity to take full advantage of the bonus decades. With the same wit, compassion, and vivid storytelling that made Crazy Time one of the best-loved books ever written on the subject of divorce, Trafford blends personal stories with expert opinions and the latest research on adult development. From the psychoanalyst who gave up his practice to write self-help books, to the widowed mother of three who reinvented herself as a successful photographer, true tales of crisis and triumph sparkle on every page of this inspiring and insightful book. Like Gail Sheehy's Passages, My Time profoundly impacts the journey through our adult years.
Customer Reviews:
Worth Reading, But Missing Key Aspects November 22, 2006 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was (and am) a big admirer of Trafford's earlier book on divorce, "Crazy Time." Also, I was a long-time reader of her Washington Post health care column. I am a Baby Boomer, in my middle fifties, and I was delighted to find that Trafford had written a book about the "Second Adolescence."
But I have some concerns about "My Time." The people used as examples in this book are not Baby Boomers (who are the people currently entering their forties and fifties) -- the people in "My Time" are, as shown from details in their life histories, members of the preceeding generation, the Silent Generation. They are mostly talking to Trafford while they are in their 60s and 70s about how they experienced their 50s.
Now their "looking back on it" perspective provides much useful advice to those of us now entering our 50s or in our 50s. But their life stories are so different from those of Baby Boomers that there is not enough help for us on key issues.
For example, everyone in this book -- typical Silent Generation folks -- settled down to careers and married and had children very young. Nearly all the women in the book were traditional homemakers with children who did not start careers until much later in life. Nearly all the men went directly from college to jobs as lawyers and doctors.
So their "My Time" experiences are very different from those of Baby Boomers.
Her focus on the Silent Generation also ignores the major issues Baby Boomers face as we enter our fifties -- her interviewees all have secure pensions, paid-off homes, built-in medical insurance, and their worst problem is losing too much money from their 401ks during stock market crashes.
Baby Boomers have lost their social safety nets -- many of us will have to continue working the rest of our lives because we have been deprived of secure pension plans, and unlike the Silent Generation, we will have to fight for medical care and Social Security.
Which brings me to another problem with this book -- nearly everyone in it, even the people who were born into the working class -- are now upperclass professionals, and mostly white.
Where are the middle class and the poor? where are the racial minorities? where are the gay people? where are the Asians? where is everybody else? Not everyone reaches their fifties married, white, with kids, and well-off.
I kept feeling like Trafford and I were living on different planets.
Sure, there were a few -- maybe two -- interviews with people who had started out poor -- and who also happened to be African-American/Latino -- but that made the enormous "whiteness" and "moneyied" aspects of the other interviewees glaringly apparent.
Also, while her interviewees have a few problems, they don't seem to have nearly as many as the rest of the population. Her interviewees had some divorces -- a few cases of alcoholism -- but where were the druggie kids? the people with chronic illnesses? the people in wheelchairs? the mentally retarded or autistic children? The families all seem to have perfect, college-educated, married offspring who are producing grandchildren. Most of the people who become ill in Trafford's book don't linger -- they die quickly, within about two paragraphs.
Trafford mentions her mother's and siblings' illnesses -- but almost everyone else in this book -- until they drop dead of a heart attack -- seems set to keep playing tennis forever in, say, the wealthy Georgetown area of DC.
So why should Baby Boomers buy this book? I am reading it because it has useful discussions of the emotional turbulence that set in during the fifties, a second adolescence, and how Trafford's interviewees entered and left relationships, moved to new cities, coped with (a few) deaths in their families, and started new careers.
While Boomer life trajectories and problems are very different from those of her Silent Generation interviewees, we can learn from some of their coping stratgies.
Those aspects of the book were extremely helpful, and why I have given the book three stars instead of one.
So please, Ms. Trafford, if you see this review, please rewrite the book for its second edition, and include the Baby Boomers, and include people in dire straits where things aren't working out neatly -- people who have serious chronic illnesses, or are still workingclass, etc. I'm a big fan of the rest of your work!
Indispensable guide to those of us who have reached 50 September 17, 2006 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Trafford combines her own life experience, the personal stories of many typical Americans whom she has interviewed, and psychological research in constructing this guide for the later years of life. These days, age 50 is only the beginning of life for many people whose children are grown, whose careers are set, and whose health is good. Many Americans will have 30 years or more in this new stage of life. Not all of them will sail around the world or start a new career helping battered women, but most or all will make changes in their lives. This book is her guide to making the most of these years.
Trafford recognizes that for many people, these years will involve some difficult choices and even some anguish. She doesn't pretend that these years will be easy -- she even refers to them as a "second adolescence" with all the angst that that implies -- but she wants to tell her readers how fulfilling this time of life can be. Hardly anyone these days is retiring from work and settling into life on the front porch, nor should we. Life presents too many possibilities -- for helping others and ourselves and for establishing our legacy.
This can be a life-changing book.
Worth Reading August 27, 2006 A helpful short book which adddresses issues of middle age for both men and women. A good read...
A Must Read for People Even Thinking about Retirement October 17, 2005 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a glorius book about how and why to make the best of your "bonus years." Ms. Trafford has an easy yet humorous way of making us look at what we have before us. This is an important time in ours lives and needs the attention that this book speaks about. Those of us who are baby boomers need to be aware of this stage of life and put energy into designing what we wish. This is not a time to sit back and wait and see what happens. Ms. Trafford speaks to this honestly and to the point.
Excellent book on what to do next May 16, 2005 5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I'm turning 50 this year - this is the BEST book to read about the subject. She has great ideas on how to make your "bonus decades" (years after 50) better than your first 50 years! Very inspiring and insightful. I'm going to buy it as a birthday gift for all my friends that are turning 50.
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