Winter 2014

Ah, Youth…

Older adults are healthier, happier when they have children in their lives

300WGrandparent

Little stress-buster. Photo: Ingimage.com

“Parents are often shocked when I tell them that children reduce our stress, but it’s true . . . particularly for grandparents,” Roger Landry, ’72, recently wrote in the online edition of U.S. News & World Report.

Without all the stress of imposing discipline and order that goes with parenting, older adults have a chance to experience what Landry calls “the juxtaposition of unbridled optimism and experiential skepticism, of boundless energy and growing fatigue, of curiosity and experience, and of innocence and wisdom. The result of this recipe is not always predictable, but it is healthy, satisfying and stress reducing.”

Landry, who is the author of the book Live Long, Die Short: A Guide to Authentic Health and Successful Aging (Greenleaf, 2014), lamented that the shrinking of village society in recent years has left many older adults disconnected, “either because they have no grandchildren of their own or they live too far away.”

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