The Baby Boomer generation is facing a time of heightened uncertainty. Blessed with unprecedented levels of education, health, and life expectancy, many hope to contribute to society after their retirement. Yet they must also navigate ambiguous career exits and retirement paths, as established scripts for schooling, parenting, and careers continue to unravel. In Encore Adulthood, Phyllis Moen presents the realities of the "encore" life stage - the years between traditional careers and childraising and old age. Drawing on large-scale data sets and interviews with Boomers, HR personnel, and policymakers, this book illuminates the challenges that Boomers encounter as they transition from traditional careers into retirement. Beyond data analysis, Moen discusses the personal impact for Boomers' wellbeing, happiness, and health when they are unable to engage in meaningful work during their encore years, as well as the potential economic loss that would occur when a large, qualified group of people prematurely exit the workforce. Moen concludes with proposals for a range of encore jobs that could galvanize Boomers to take on desirable and sought-after second acts, emphasizing meaningful work over high-paying jobs and flexibility over long hours. An important analysis of an understudied and new life stage, Encore Adulthood makes an important contribution to the existing scholarship on careers, work, and retirement.

Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose

Politics & Social Sciences

Moen, Phyllis

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next

A group of social science researchers compiles statistics on crime, the economy, changing family structure, poverty, education, changing attitudes, and other issues facing America today

History

McClelland, Peter D.

BRONFENBRENNER, Urie

Ceci, Stephen

Wethington, Elaine

Americas

Free Press

Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It

Why too much work and too little time is hurting workers and companies--and how a proven workplace redesign can benefit employees and the bottom line Today's ways of working are not working--even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem. But this unhealthy and unsustainable situation can be changed--and Overload shows how. Drawing on five years of research, including hundreds of interviews with employees and managers, Kelly and Moen tell the story of a major experiment that they helped design and implement at a Fortune 500 firm. The company adopted creative and practical work redesigns that gave workers more control over how and where they worked and encouraged managers to evaluate performance in new ways. The result? Employees' health, well-being, and ability to manage their personal and work lives improved, while the company benefited from higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. And, as Kelly and Moen show, such changes can--and should--be made on a wide scale. Complete with advice about ways that employees, managers, and corporate leaders can begin to question and fix one of today's most serious workplace problems, Overload is an inspiring account about how rethinking and redesigning work could transform our lives and companies.

Business & Money

Kelly, Erin L.

Business Culture

Princeton University Press

Review\n"Co-Winner of the Max Weber Book Award, Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the American Sociological Association"\n"Winner of the Silver Medal in Business Theory, Axiom Business Book Awards"\n" 
There’s much we can learn from Overload to help make work work for everyone―both now and in the future…. Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen have shown us through their dual work-redesign experiment that it’s possible not only to reimagine how we work to make it work for everyone, but also to execute on this ideal together, so that everyone benefits ― including the organization. It’s giving people a choice about how, when, and where they work and a greater sense of control. In the pandemic, we all have an opportunity to step back and examine what’s going well and what’s not and envision how work can change for the better."---Rebecca Zucker, Forbes\n"Someday soon, when the economic engines of the world are running again, leaders will reflect on what the COVID-19 pandemic revealed about the ways and means of work in their companies. As they do, they should read Overload."---Theodore Kinni, Strategy+Business\n"In their recounting of a five-year field experiment conducted within a Fortune 500 company, two professors show how dual-agenda work redesign can reduce the high levels of chronic stress and ill health, feelings of powerlessness, work–family conflict, and burnout that attend employee overload―without negatively affecting corporate productivity or performance." ― Strategy+Business\nWhy too much work and too little time is hurting workers and companies―and how a proven workplace redesign can benefit employees and the bottom line\nToday's ways of working are not working―even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem. But this unhealthy and unsustainable situation can be changed―and Overload shows how.\nDrawing on five years of research, including hundreds of interviews with employees and managers, Kelly and Moen tell the story of a major experiment that they helped design and implement at a Fortune 500 firm. The company adopted creative and practical work redesigns that gave workers more control over how and where they worked and encouraged managers to evaluate performance in new ways. The result? Employees' health, well-being, and ability to manage their personal and work lives improved, while the company benefited from higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. And, as Kelly and Moen show, such changes can―and should―be made on a wide scale.\nComplete with advice about ways that employees, managers, and corporate leaders can begin to question and fix one of today's most serious workplace problems, Overload is an inspiring account about how rethinking and redesigning work could transform our lives and companies.

The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream

The Career Mystique shows that most Americans-men and women-continue to embrace the myth that hard work, long hours, and continuous employment pay off, even though it is out of date and out of place in twenty-first-century America. Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling argue that the lock step arrangements around education, work, family, and retirement no longer fit the realities and risks of contemporary living, yet the roles, rules, and regulations spawned by the career mystique remain in place. This books shows that ambiguities and uncertainties about the future abound in boardrooms, in offices, and on factory floors, as Americans face the realities of corporate restructuring, chronic job insecurity, and double demands at work and at home. Moen and Roehling show the career mystique for what it is: a false myth standing in the way of creating new, alternative workplaces and career flexibilities. Based on research funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Institute on Aging.

Roehling, Patricia

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

The Career Mystique examines takenforgranted rules of the career game that continuous, fulltime, hard work pays off deeply embedded in the American Dream. Possibilities of fulfilling the career mystique are dwindling, given insecurities and risks of a global economy, strains and double demands on the job and at home, uncertainties and ambiguities around retirement. This outdated myth stands in the way of fashioning innovative policies more in keeping with life in st century America.

Women's Two Roles: A Contemporary Dilemma (Studies; 60)

Phyllis Moen describes the meshing of work and family roles not only as the private dilemma of individual women and their families but also as a public dilemma for the nation. This is an issue linked to deep apprehensions about families' and children's well-being, to demands for gender equality, to the outcry of some for a return to the traditional wife-as-homemaker role, and to growing concerns about labor market needs, productivity, and economic competitiveness.
Moen addresses the following central question: What are the major implications--for society, families, husbands, children, and women themselves--of the substantial and progressive movement of American women into the labor force? The dominant focus is on employed mothers of young children (those under the age of six) since it is these women who have experienced the greatest change and who encounter the greatest difficulty in reconciling employment demands and family responsibilities. An overriding theme is the unevenness of social change: American mothers of young children may be moving into the labor force in unprecendented numbers, but husbands, employers, and public policies are slow to accommodate this emerging reality. The issues raised are of concern to a broad spectrum of the educated public, but the book should be no less valuable to social scientists seeking to extend their knowledge of issues in this area of growing concern and can be used in courses relating to the sociology of the family, social problems, gender roles, and social policy.

Praeger

Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological approach to studying development has transformed the ways many social and behavioural scientists approach human beings and their environments. In the research presented in this volume, the experience of change over the life course is illuminated by the simultaneous examination of person, process, context, space and time. Among the areas explored by leaders in the field are: individual differences in environmental risk; transgenerational perspectives on resiliency; nature/nurture and culture; bioecological models of intellectual development; gender differences in socialization; authoritative parenting; and turning points in adult lives.

Examining Lives in Context: Perspectives on the Ecology of Human Development

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Elder, Glen H.

Luscher, Kurt

Psychology & Counseling

Amer Psychological Assn

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Moen, Phyllis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Moen, Phyllis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Moen, Phyllis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose

Encore Adulthood: Boomers on the Edge of Risk, Renewal, and Purpose

The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next

Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It

Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It

The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream

The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream

Women's Two Roles: A Contemporary Dilemma (Studies; 60)

Women's Two Roles: A Contemporary Dilemma (Studies; 60)

Examining Lives in Context: Perspectives on the Ecology of Human Development