Summary
Dr. Cynthia Hancock, a gerontologist, discusses the broad scope of gerontology and its applications in various career paths. She emphasizes the importance of including gerontology-based education models in different fields of study to better serve older adults. Dr. Hancock also highlights the need to challenge ageism and recognize the diverse experiences and contributions of older adults. She discusses the implications of an aging society, including the opportunities for intergenerational connections and the importance of social connections in later years. Dr. Hancock calls for conversations and policy changes to combat ageism and create age-inclusive communities.
Takeaways
Gerontology is a broad field that can be applied to various career paths, and it is important to include gerontology-based education models in different fields of study.
Ageism is a significant issue that needs to be addressed, and there is a need for conversations and policy changes to combat ageism and create age-inclusive communities.
An aging society presents opportunities for intergenerational connections and emphasizes the importance of social connections in later years.
Recognizing the diverse experiences and contributions of older adults is crucial, and there is a need to challenge stereotypes and assumptions about aging.
Transcript
Leah Warnke (00:01)
I am so excited to speak with Dr. Cynthia Hancock on today's podcast. Dr. Hancock, thank you so much for being here with us.
Cynthia Hancock (00:10)
Oh, I'm super, super happy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to have a conversation with you.
Leah Warnke (00:15)
That's awesome. To get us started, do you mind telling us, explaining a bit, what does a gerontologist do?
Cynthia Hancock (00:23)
You know, I love this question. When students come to us and say, what is Garen, Garen? And they can't come up with gerontology. You know, my favorite conversation around this question is a gerontologist can do anything. The sky is the limit when it comes to gerontology. Gerontologists are really interested in how we age in communities, how we age within families, how we age in the work environment.
And they're very interested in the policies that frame all of those experiences. So gerontology is much more than say, kind of the narrow field of geriatrics, which is very clinical and focused on kind of health and well-being in a physical and mental sense, but it really is a broad perspective of what's going on in communities and are we engaging older adults in those experiences in a positive way.
You know, a lot of people think gerontology is just kind of frailty in nursing homes and it really can apply to any career. One of the things I wanted to share is that Dr. Tina Nussheim and I, Dr. Nussheim is my counterpart at UNC Wilmington. We do a lot of work together. She's wonderful. There was an existing website called Exploring Careers in Aging and
This is not a moneymaker for us, so just putting that out there first. It is a labor of love where we have actually revamped an existing website and we talk about all of the ways that gerontology should be infused into different careers. We actually have 29 career paths on our website. And if you'll indulge me in it, I wanna tell you some of those career paths because this kind of answers the question, what did gerontologists do, which is.
gerontologists can do anything. So here we go. Here's some of the career paths we have on there. And then I have a couple of examples to kind of talk a little bit more about it. But we have narratives about how all of the following fit into gerontology. Administration, advocacy, agriculture, animal care services, apparel manufacturing, architecture, salon services, construction management, education, financial and legal services, fitness and wellness, healthcare, housing and home modification.
human resources, insurance, leisure and recreation, manufacturing, marketing, museums, broadcasting, performing arts, postal service, product development, real estate, research, security, spirituality and religion, travel and transportation and waste management. And on our website, yeah, on our website, which is exploringcareersandaging.com, we have narratives that explain, well, how does this intersect with gerontology? And so,
Leah Warnke (02:56)
No.
Cynthia Hancock (03:07)
So can I give you a couple of examples?
Leah Warnke (03:10)
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like gerontology is a very diverse, multi-disciplined field. I can see it tying into a lot of different career paths. And so I guess, kind of to prompt your next response, what are some of the benefits that you envision stemming from including gerontology-based education models into other fields of study, like the 20-something you just listed?
Cynthia Hancock (03:34)
So, so if you think about it, older adults are everywhere, right? The elder adults are in every sector of our life. They go to the banks, they go to, they go shopping, they go to the post office, they walk down the streets of our neighborhoods, they go to church with us, they're part of our families. And so I really believe that everybody can benefit from a little bit of gerontology education. But when we look at these career fields, particularly, it's important to think about could this
work be enhanced if someone on the team knew about the aging experience, right? That's what we want to think about. So, for example, museums might not be something you would think would relate to gerontology, but the narrative we wrote on our website was, engaging in creative and educational cultural experiences has a positive impact on the physical and mental health of people of all ages.
Older adults contribute to museums through volunteering, philanthropy, gifting artifacts, and telling their stories. Professionals who appreciate these many connections between museums and aging and know how to communicate well with people of all ages are prepared to create age-inclusive experiences that positively impact people of all generations. So that's, you know, museums, whoa, what's that got to do with gerontology? Well, look at that. Look at the connections that we can.
when we think about how someone with gerontological understanding can benefit that career field. Joanne Grabinski wrote a book, 101 Careers in Gerontology, and she does much of the same where she lays out how gerontology really relates to anything that we're trying to do, journalism. If we're writing a story about older adults or the older adult experience, do we have the knowledge, do we have the language?
to be able to do that in a positive way. So really, I believe any field can benefit from having a gerontologist in its midst.
Leah Warnke (05:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, it sounds like it. I believe I would struggle to find a field that would not benefit from having a gerontological-based approach in it, or at least someone who is trained to study how to best bring older adults into the space and to help just, you know, everyone get the most out of it. So I think this will be increasingly important as we see an aging society. And so studies like this are
whether that be at the undergraduate level or continuing education. I'm interested a little bit more in your personal experience with gerontology. How did you first come into this field and what's something that you love about it?
Cynthia Hancock (06:18)
So like most people, my pathway to gerontology was very winding. Very few people go to college, study gerontology, and then are in the field of gerontology in terms of educators, particularly people in my cohort. I'm 61, so I've been doing this a while. All of my formal degrees are in sociology. So my master's, my master's, my doctoral degree are all in sociology.
And I focused on family, I focused on gender, I focused on life course in my studies. And then when I landed at UNC Charlotte, I was lucky enough to be asked to teach some of the gerontology related courses, aging in the life course, families and aging. And these were courses that really did tie into the kinds of things that I had studied and been interested in. But then soon thereafter, I was actually asked to be the undergraduate coordinator for the gerontology program.
which was really just something I loved for so long, working with the students in the area was, gosh, students who are interested in gerontology have a lot of empathy, have a lot of caregiving interests, are really interested in making the world better for people. So what better students to work with than students who fall into that kind of category? I have been with the program over 20 years. I've...
I just finished my fourth year of directing the program. So I oversee our grad certificate in gerontology. I oversee our minor. I work with all of our students. I work with 50 community partners who provide experiential placements for our students.
One of the fun things about that is a lot of our community partners are now former students. They're graduates of our program. So they have become the mentors, if you will, of our current students, which is fantastically fun to see that come full circle. So I really got kind of came to it that way, right? And I think, you know, if I want to talk about what I love about it, I do love
teaching about aging because it's it applies to all of us. It applies to every single one of us. You know, we think about gerontology is studying those old people over there and it's really not. It's studying the aging process and we all are aging from the moment we're conceived. You know, we're a day older today than we were yesterday. We're a year older today than we were a year ago. And so gerontology is...
Leah Warnke (08:46)
Right.
Cynthia Hancock (08:51)
is broadly applicable to every human being on the planet. And I think it just makes it fun and fantastic and interesting to be a part of. And I learned something new every day. I learned from my students, I learned from my own aging. My parents are turning 89 and 90 this year. I learned from their aging experience. And so there's always something new to learn and understand.
Leah Warnke (09:14)
Wow, I love that. It sounds like you have helped build an incredible program at UNC Charlotte and your career sounds really interesting and I want to ask you some more questions on that. But I also want to highlight something you just said about aging being something that is universally experienced. And you know, it's not experienced the same by any person, but it is something that we all share each day. We are older than the past. And so that is something that we don't put a lot of focus on. People I think...
kind of bifurcate young age and old age and think that's like all of a sudden you start aging. But in fact, it's something that we are each experiencing in our own different ways, but it is something we are experiencing. So learning how to best guide aging is something that's incredibly important. And I wanna ask you in your years of experience and with your background in sociology, is there any sort of insight that you've learned about aging that you'd want to share?
Cynthia Hancock (10:06)
You know, thinking about this question, it's kind of like, oh my goodness, what have I not learned about aging? I mean, 20 years, academically in the field, but then also those same 20 years, I've gone from 41 to 61, I've seen my parents go from 69 to 89. So the personal experience, the practical experience, I've learned so much. I think what I've really learned is kind of the basic stuff our students learn at first, which is...
Older adults are really amazing, interesting, knowledgeable human beings, right? I mean, they have so much to teach us. And I think we need to listen. I think we need to do a better job listening to the voices of older adults. So we need to, you know, one of the things I've learned is we need to kind of wipe away presumptions and assumptions about the aging experience, about older adults, and say just what you said a minute ago, which is everybody's different.
Everybody ages differently. And we need to keep that in mind when we come across that next older person or that family member who's older, or we work in the store and someone comes up to the cash register and they're an older person. Don't just look at them stereotypically as someone 65 plus, and this is what we think all old people are, but embrace the diversity that the aging experience brings and get to know that person, right? Have a conversation with that person.
Our students in our minor do 100 hours of experiential learning. And the first 10 of that is in our foundational class. And it's a lot of, all our gerontology students have to take it, but a lot of other students take it too. It counts as an elective for other students. And in that class, students are matched with an older adult in the community, someone they don't know. And they have 10 hours of conversations with them over the course of the semester. And we give them kind of.
prompts to have their conversation together. It's not an interview. It's not, let me get information from you. It's let's talk about each other. Let me learn about your experience. Let you learn about my experience. And I can tell you over and over again that students say how powerful that is. You know, they're graduating and they say the service learning was the best part because they could learn all this stuff in a book, but just getting to know someone who is someone they never knew before and particularly finding out they might have things in common.
is really powerful and really interesting. So I think one of the things I've learned is really just to slow down, listen to the stories, understand the diversity. But then also it's important to note, we tend to, gerontology started out as the study of the problems of old men. That's how it started out in 1903. And we've come a long way since the study of the problems of old men.
but we still sometimes have a problem focused lens and we do need to focus on problems. We do need to say, gosh, people have chronic conditions and we need to help them with those chronic conditions or support them or provide resources for them in those chronic conditions. But in our emphasis on the problems and the challenges, sometimes we forget the great opportunity that aging brings, right? We've got research that shows people are happiest in their seventies, you know, what's up with that?
Leah Warnke (13:25)
Yeah, yeah.
Cynthia Hancock (13:25)
And that we think older people are just depressed and dying and sad, but 70s is the happiest decade of life, according to the research. So I think those are some of the things that I would really take away.
Leah Warnke (13:38)
Wow, that's incredible. And I have to emphasize and agree with what you said about older adults having so many incredibly empowering and exciting, interesting stories to share. I had the pleasure of being a caretaker for a while. That's how I got started with Carey Yaya. And the people I met were incredible and really changed my perception on so many things. So I'm so glad that I got to build those relationships with older adults. And it's something that I wish.
so many more people had the opportunity to do or would seek out doing. So you've shared a lot about kind of the benefits of building these personal relationships with older adults and I want to shift us slightly to a more societal level. So what are some of the implications that you see that we are going to experience as we have an aging society? And I say implications not consequences because as you just mentioned I think we so often
chronic disease or illness and older adults have so much more to offer to society than consequences or drawbacks. So what are some of the implications that you see as we have an aging society?
Cynthia Hancock (14:44)
Yes.
your choice of the word implication rather than challenges because as you said so many people are focused on challenges and as I think about this question I kind of think about the word opportunity right and so so there are challenges there are going to be challenges we have more people aging into chronic conditions and and we know that we've talked about that for a very long time but there's opportunity too. Dr. Bill Thomas who is someone I wrote
his work, wrote a couple of books. One of his books is called In the Arms of Elders, which is a story of parables about how older people enhance community. And he wrote another book called What Are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World. And so his perspective is that we need older people amongst us. They are the ones with the wisdom, they are the ones with the know-how, they are the ones that keep community together in many ways.
So I think just in general, we need the knowledge base that older people have, not just knowledge about I know how to do this or I know how to do that, but cultural knowledge of why families are important and why, you know, sitting around the table together for dinner is important and things like that. Because social connection, one of the things I teach in my classes is that
that there's a lot that we think is gonna enhance our later years, enough money, enough health, enough ability to travel. But over and over again, the research shows that it's the social connections that make our later years the best years they can be. And I think older people sometimes have a greater sense of that than young people might, not pitting older people against younger people, but I think that's one of the things that intergenerational connection can bring.
to our communities. There's a lot of research out there that shows how children benefit from connection to older adults and how older adults benefit from connection to younger adults. And so it's a two-way street of benefit, if you will. I think one of the ways we have to be careful and cognizant to help older people provide for the community and be a part of the community is we have to give space for them to do so, which we're not very good at sometimes.
We don't provide a space for older people to find meaning in their life. Do you know, are we, are we keeping them in the workforce if they want to stay? Are we providing opportunities to volunteer if they want to, are we just doing things for them because we can't think they can't rather than letting older adults do things for themselves. And so when, when I think about the aging, you know, uh, I hate the word silver tsunami because it sounds like.
all these older people are a problem. And they're not a problem. If they're not a problem, we should not use that word. So when I think about the age wave, when I think about the large numbers of the aging population, I think, wow, what opportunity does this bring? And how can this benefit all of us? Because I think there is benefit.
Leah Warnke (17:30)
I'm going to go to bed. Bye.
I love that. Well, you have made me more optimistic for the future of society, so thank you for that. I do love that, and I specifically love the point that you highlighted about the benefits of intergenerational relationships. I think we all have so much to gain on both sides of that, and that's partially what Kari Aya does, the college students with older adults, and that's what I loved. So that's so important to build those relationships.
And I want to ask you now, where are there in the field of gerontology, where are there spaces where you feel that novel solutions are needed?
Cynthia Hancock (18:27)
So first off, we need gerontologists in every sector of society. I've already said that. We need gerontologists in banks and wherever. We need gerontologists everywhere. I think that's a novel solution. I think people don't think about gerontologists being in these other non-traditional sectors of society. I think another thing. So I want to talk maybe about technology for a minute. There's a lot of emphasis on technology and aging.
doing a lot of research and developing a lot of things that they think are going to help people age well. And I think what we need to do is carefully think about technology and how technology can enhance well-being and enhance social connection, not replace social connection. Right? So if we're working on a robot that's going to bring a pill to an older adult in a nursing home,
That's only great if the caregiving staff is freed up to sit down and have a conversation with that person. It's not great if no one shows up to spend time with that person, right? And so I think we have to think carefully and deeply about how we maintain social connection in the new approaches to helping and supporting and being with and bringing older adults into our community.
Does that answer the question?
Leah Warnke (19:59)
Yeah, yeah, it does. And I like your point. I mean, as we have exited sort of this pandemic time, the need for socialization has become increasingly apparent. And so I completely agree that this sort of human connection is what is going to sustain us and what is going to help us age gracefully. And I also agree that in the field of gerontology, there is a huge space for technology to provide a benefit as we are dealing with
caregiving shortages and limited access to resources that are often too expensive and price lots of people out. There is a huge space for technology to come in and aid this socialization, this personal interaction. There is huge room for innovation and advancement through technology as well. So.
Cynthia Hancock (20:45)
long as we remember the social piece, as long as it's not replacing human interaction, but enhancing the opportunity to have human interaction. I think that's really important. I'll give you an example. My own father has advanced Parkinson's and Parkinson's dementia, and we bought him a phone that's got big buttons, and we put everybody's name on a button, and he can, it's a fantastic phone. When he first moved into the
long-term community that he lives in, he couldn't use a traditional phone, but he can use this phone and he can call everybody. And so that piece of technology has enhanced his social connection. That's where I think technology can play a really positive role.
Leah Warnke (21:27)
Yeah, absolutely. So it's great to have support sources out there that help these older adults connect to the technology and get the most out of it. So are there any areas that you are already seeing, and I guess you kind of just listed one right there, but any other areas where you see promising developments for the future of gerontology? Well, I think,
Cynthia Hancock (21:46)
Well, I think, so let me talk about ageism a little bit. Ageism is one of the areas that I'm pretty passionate about. And I think we're having more conversations about it, which I'm really happy to hear. I mean, the World Health Organization now has an initiative around ageism, right? The voices of scholars who write about ageism are being amplified. Ageism, I don't...
Other isms still exist. We still have sexism. We still have racism. We still have all of the challenges that come with those things. But we don't have birthday cards in Hallmark celebrating things in ways that are racist so much or sexist so much. But we got a whole rat of cards that are ageist when they talk about all of the terrible things that come when you turn 40 and 50 and 60. And so I think...
I think the voices are starting to be heard, at least in my circles, I hope beyond, in terms of how damaging ageism is and how we can just make positive changes for people if we can recognize that aging isn't necessarily so bad. People all age very differently. We shouldn't be scared of it because when we internalize ageism, Becca Letty's done a lot of work on this. When we internalize ageism,
at a young age and go into our later years with those internalized negative stereotypes and attitudes, we actually shorten our own life expectancy by seven and a half years. I mean, that's a public health crisis. That's a problem. Her research is solid and she's done this research for years. So again, I think ageism is something that will affect, once we have that conversation and really talk about it more broadly, I think it will...
will kind of have an implication for a lot of other areas related to aging that are challenges.
Leah Warnke (23:48)
Yeah, so I guess to tie in the promising developments, are there policy changes that you are seeing happening or how do you see ageism being improved in society, I guess? Is it a need for policy changes? Is it a need for structural changes? Is it something on an individual basis we should all be doing every day to kind of combat this ageism?
Cynthia Hancock (24:12)
Gosh, that's a big question. I think the first thing is the conversation. What is ageism? Because most people don't understand what ageism is. To throw another name and book out, Tracy Gendron just wrote a fantastic book called Ageism Unmasked. It just came out either 22 or 23, breaks down what ageism is, kind of exposes where we're ageist in our culture and talks about what we should do about it. So I think...
The first thing is we need to have conversations and then we need to have an understanding of what ageism is. And then beyond that, we need to look at our structural landscape and see where our policies and our systems are set up in an ageist way. So I'll give you any, and this goes to big organizations, this goes to little organizations. And I'll give you an example without naming a company. Over the pandemic, my parents,
bought one of these grocery delivery subscriptions, right? And it was auto-renewed. Well, by the time it came around for auto-renewal, my father could no longer check his email. And he would send an email, we're gonna auto-renew this in a month, let us know if you don't want it, or we're gonna charge you $150. We didn't get the email. And so I called the company and I said,
you know, what can we do? This is a problem. And they would do nothing for us because dad hadn't replied to his email. And so they didn't understand the ageist nature of that policy, right? How that discriminated against not just not older people in general, because some older people certainly do check their email, but older people who are dealing with situations where I can't, I can no longer check my email, right? I can no longer answer a phone. So
I think we have a long way to go, but I think the conversation has been started. And I think organizations like the World Health Organization, placing an emphasis on it, AARP placing an emphasis on it, the Gerontological Society of America placing an emphasis on it, the Southern Gerontological Society placing an emphasis on it. These are all good places to start. I know the American Society on Aging at their conference this year,
plenary session was ageism and they had all the big hitters on their panel talking about ageism and that's a conference of several thousand people, both educators, direct care workers, caregivers, so forth and so on. So we've got a long ways to go, but I think it's better than it was five, ten years ago.
Leah Warnke (26:56)
Yes, certainly a long ways to go, but glad we seem to hopefully be headed in the right direction. Well, Dr. Hancock, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us on today's podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and I'm sure our audience will benefit from your insight. So thank you so much.