Generation X Is Helping Older People Age at Home

When Covid struck, Ms. Prunty and 30 fellow volunteers, many in their 50s with full-time jobs, organized soup deliveries and drive-by birthday parties. The goal was to assuage what she sensed was an epidemic of isolation and pride among locals in her father’s generation, in their 70s and 80s. “No one wanted to ask for help,” she said.

Now she is envisioning her own future, and the future of Generation X, in villages.

“We’re going to inherit this movement,” she said. With My Glacier Village now at 86 members, they might expand the movement, too. Ms. Prunty suspects that the pandemic accelerated her age group’s investment.

“My generation is one that had gotten used to going to work and going out for coffee and lunches,” she said. The lack of interaction brought on by Covid was, for some, a foreshadowing of what isolation could feel like in retirement, less than a dozen years down the road for many Gen Xers. “I think we’re going, ‘This movement has to work. We’re going to need it.’”

Ms. O’Kane, 55, of Lancaster Township, Pa., has been spreading the word about the Village Movement to peers since she started volunteering with Lancaster Downtowners in 2018. Now, she is vice president of the 204-member village; she and her husband pay annual dues ($175 for singles, $318 for households) and hope to reap the benefits down the road.

“When I first heard about it, I thought, awesome. Why doesn’t everybody know about this?” she said. Her background as a registered nurse added appeal. “Too many times as a nurse, I would discharge a patient in their 70s to an empty home, and they would end up back in the hospital a week later,” she recalled. “I thought, maybe if they had an ounce of help at home, they’d have a better quality of life.” The village, she found, was doing just that: letting older people remain home with lives they recognized — and peace of mind.

A late February hot dog roast at a park was typical of Downtowners’ social gatherings. And a “health buddies” program Ms. O’Kane started recently, in which volunteers accompany members to doctors’ appointments, provides members with informal advocates who can help ask questions and make sure members are clear on doctors’ instructions. The idea came from her nursing career: “You don’t hear everything when you go to the doctor,” she said. “You could leave not understanding what your medications are.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/business/generation-x-retirement.html