Word: supportively
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...with these come other, less cheering images and prospects. Among them is the still haunting presence of the elderly poor, most of them widows, many of them black, collapsing into a safety net that cannot support their weight. The well-being of America's senior citizens, though far greater than 20 years ago, is by no means universal. Many are sick and getting sicker, as health care becomes prohibitively expensive. Every year, as the baby boomers age and the nation's center of gravity shifts upward, the allocation of resources becomes ever more difficult and the potential for conflict between...
...attitude is born out of a community + life that resembles nothing so much as their college years of half a century ago: a life of options, dates, lessons and sudden, surprising fellowship. Florida Gerontologist Otto Von Mering, 65, refers to the "fictive kinship," whereby older people acquire a new support system long after their families and friends have dispersed. Take Liz Carpenter. At 65, the twangy-voiced former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson started writing a book. At 66, she found romance -- with a man she had known when she was 20. Now 67, she has devised her cardinal...
...either a touching story of an aged parent or, in the case of Michael Dukakis, the real thing. Jesse Jackson, invoking Social Security's creator, tells voters that he "would rather have Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Ronald Reagan on a horse." Virtually all have come out in support of the long-term health- care bill now stalled in Congress, which, if it ever passed, would cost the Government tens of billions of dollars over the next five years. Only Republican Pete du Pont has proposed radically restructuring Social Security, a notion that George Bush boldly dismissed...
That prospect worries older people as well as the young. In fact the reason Social Security is unlikely to ignite an age war is that many elderly people acknowledge its flaws and admit the system needs to be changed, while many young people support its basic principles. Even some lobbyists for the aged privately accept the need to adjust Social Security, by raising the age of eligibility or taxing benefits for the wealthy, as part of a drastic deficit- reduction plan. While many retirees defend Social Security, they are horrified by the legacy of a $2 trillion debt they will...
That view is supported by opinion polls, which reveal that most children are grateful for Social Security because it relieves them of some of the responsibility for taking care of their elders. Some, but not all. Financial responsibility is only one of several kinds, and perhaps not the most burdensome. An ailing parent, even in a distant city, can take an emotional toll on adult children. In many cases the parent may be living in the same town -- or the same house. Already, says Fordham's Marjorie Cantor, former president of the Gerontological Society, "the family is the major source...