September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years

by Maggie Scarf

Overview

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, thirty years have been added to the normal human life expectancy. In September Songs, the follow-up to her bestselling Intimate Partners, Maggie Scarf investigates the surprising and profound evolution marriage has undergone in these "bonus years." In a series of intimate and provocative interviews, she delves into the lives of couples married for more than two decades and uncovers the welcome news that most couples are more satisfied in their marriages today than in their early years together. By giving voice to both their struggles and their triumphs, these husbands and wives reveal how they've balanced their emotional and physical needs with those of their partner's, and how the lessons they've learned over time have helped them find new opportunities to love, cherish, and live alongside each other in the extra years they have together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594483998
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.72(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Maggie Scarf is a journalist and the author of the bestselling Intimate Partners, among other books. A visiting fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, and a fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, she is also a contributing editor for The New Republic. Scarf and her husband live in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Preface 13

1 Lynn and Carl McBride: A Gift of Time 49

2 Does Divorce Make People Happy? 77

3 Liz and Jeff Dennison: Classmates 111

4 Taking Time Seriously 138

5 Jean and Ned Donaldson: The Simple Life 165

6 Jackie and Steve Winston (1): Transitioning: A Foot in Each World 202

7 Jackie and Steve Winston (2): Retirement Myths, Retirement Realities 243

8 Claudia and Douglas Hamilton: An Uncertain Future 270

9 Nancy and David Sternberg: In Sickness and in Health 316

Epilogue 343

Acknowledgments 359

Selected References 363

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"[An] engrossing investigation into enduring marriage...unexpectedly candid"
-The New York Times Book Review

"Scarf is good...a probing but tactful questioner, an active listener, and even, on occasion, a quasi-therapist."
-The Washington Post

"A journalistic book...the clearest message, both from the research and the couples, is upbeat."
-The Economist

"Scarf wonderfully captures those insights that give meaning and joy to life even as the clock ticks."
-Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of How Doctors Think

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION
“It is the awareness of mortality that makes life’s afternoon so ripely poignant and so sweet” (p. 228).

A few years after Maggie Scarf first published Intimate Partners, her groundbreaking bestseller on the new mechanics of marriage, she began to notice that the institution was again undergoing some profound changes—largely due to the fact that the normal human lifespan has increased by as much as thirty years over the course of the twentieth century. Couples today are more likely to live longer and have more time together. Scarf wanted to know how these marriages and individuals have evolved as a result.

As we all have seen, a host of issues—from infidelity to health problems to disagreements about childrearing or money—can shatter a marriage. But statistics show that divorce rates plummet after the first eight years of marriage. In September Songs, Scarf integrates frank and detailed interviews with baby boomer couples who have been married for at least two decades with the most up-to-date gerontological research to reveal the surprising, good news about marriage in “the bonus years” of age fifty and beyond.

Profoundly informative and eminently readable, September Songs offers a revolutionary and sorely needed celebration of long-term marriages. Scarf’s discoveries are both eye-opening and encouraging for anyone in a committed relationship—whatever their age.

ABOUT MAGGIE SCARF

Maggie Scarf is a journalist and the author of the bestselling Intimate Partners, among other books. A visiting fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, and a fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, she is also a contributing editor for The New Republic. Scarf and her husband live in Connecticut.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• What is your definition of the word “elderly” and how has it changed over the years?
• What inspired your decision to read September Songs? Did you read this book on your own or with your mate? If not, would you recommend that he/she read it and why?
• Is there a particular couple whose story held special resonance for you?
• Were you surprised at the overall level of these couples’ contentment given their various health or financial challenges?
• How honest did you feel the interviewees were being with Scarf? With themselves?
• Is there a question you wished Scarf had asked the participating couples? What is it and why is its answer important to you?
• Scarf cites research that challenges the notion that divorce makes people happier but also profiles the Donaldsons and Hamiltons who both left behind unhappy marriages to find happiness in their second marriages. Do you think that sticking it out or moving on is the best route?
• Have you witnessed the “positivity effect” in either your own life or those of older friends and relatives?
• If you have already reached your bonus years, what would you name this phase of your life? Explain. If you have not yet reached them, what would you hope to name this phase?
• How much discussion and thought have you and your mate put into planning your post-retirement years? What do you anticipate your greatest challenges and joys will be?
• How would you compare American support systems for retirement (e.g. Medicare, Social Security, retirement funds, etc…) to those in other countries?
• In what ways will your post-retirement years be different from that of your parents? Is this a conscious change or merely circumstantial?
• Has reading September Songs altered your expectations of life in the bonus years? In what ways?

Editorial Reviews

"[An] engrossing investigation into enduring marriage...unexpectedly candid"
-The New York Times Book Review

"Scarf is good...a probing but tactful questioner, an active listener, and even, on occasion, a quasi-therapist."
-The Washington Post

"A journalistic book...the clearest message, both from the research and the couples, is upbeat."
-The Economist

"Scarf wonderfully captures those insights that give meaning and joy to life even as the clock ticks."
-Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of How Doctors Think

From the Publisher

Scarf is good. A journalist and the author of several well-received nonfiction books including Intimate Partners and Unfinished Business, she is a probing but tactful questioner, an active listener and even, on occasion, a quasi-therapist. She enriches her material with research on aging and marriage and seeks insight into the marriages of her own interviewees by provocatively asking, "If you were going to give a title to a movie or a book about this time of your life, what do you think it would be?" The answers—"The New Beginning," "Harvest," "Peace" "Life in Bloom"—could convince the most cynical reader that "Grow old along with me!/The best is yet to be" is not a romantic's foolish dream but, for some fortunate couples, a real possibility.
—The Washington Post

Judith Viorst

[Scarf's] a gifted and discreet interviewer, knowing what to ask and when to back off. Her gently probing questions—about retirement, health, sexual activity, finances, children, religion, disappointments and regret—lead her subjects to some unexpectedly candid answers. They speak with ease, separately and together (in what often seem like twin soliloquies), about their shared histories and their hopes for and concerns about the future.
—The New York Times

Hilma Wolitzer

In this well-researched and eminently readable study, journalist Scarf (Intimate Partners) plunges into the lives of married people between the ages of 50 and 75, inquiring how their partnerships have changed, been renegotiated, reframed and refreshed as increased longevity has added up to three decades to the span of an average marriage. Conducting in-depth interviews with seven couples, the author poses perceptive and challenging questions to her subjects, asking how they have weathered difficulties, affairs, health problems, how they have "disappointed or surprised each other over time" and what are the "major sexual issues that emerge at this time of life." The results, though hardly surprising (financial worries, lack of sexual desire and compromise are all recurring themes), are nonetheless stimulating, not least because these couples are so open, a testament to Scarf's skills as an interviewer. Her case studies are interspersed with chunks of data and interpretations that lend welcome empirical backup to her claims and add authority to this fascinating overview of an unexplored topic that should appeal to couples of all ages. (Sept.)

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