Retirement: Bane or Blessing?

Myrna I. Baker, B.Sc.N., M.Sc., lived and worked in Toronto.

Dr. Morris Schnore, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., led a very active teaching and research career during his 27 years in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario. He was also very active in a number of professional organizations: Ontario Psychological Association, Canadian and American Psychological Associations, and the Canadian Association on Gerontology. Initially his research interest was in memory function, but this evolved later into a focus on the effects of aging on memory and competence and attitudes toward retirement. Retirement: Bane or Blessing? is a monograph in which he reports the theoretical framework, methodology, and findings of his last project, concerning retirement adjustment. Only the final stages of publication remained to be accomplished after his death in July 1984.

The book is organized into four sections — introduction, method, results, and general discussion — followed by supporting documentation in the form of references, appendices, and the index. The introduction provides a thorough review of the previous theories of adjustment to retirement and a description of the behavioral model he developed, which gave rise to the specific hypotheses to be tested. Furthermore, two very common areas of investigation were included as an integral part of his work: attitudes toward work and retirement, and sex differences in psychosocial aspects of retirement. The method section, although brief, describes the measures used for each variable included in the investigation, together with information on the reliability of each measure and how they were scored. This section also describes the sample of the population who volunteered to participate. The results of statistical analyses of the data are presented in a clear and detailed manner in the third section, and the results are compared to those of previous authors. The fourth and final section includes a distilled presentation of the results in relation to previous work in the field, an assessment of the theoretical model in view of the empirical findings, and suggested implications for policy makers as well as for those approaching retirement.

Dr. Schnore’s research serves to address the gap that exists in Canadian empirical data on the processes and consequences of retirement. The rationale for his work is that “the processes of retirement are culture-bound and, therefore, generalizations from data that have been obtained in other countries may not be warranted.” Furthermore, he notes that “the absence of theoretical frameworks hinders any meaningful organization of the findings and empirical data are obtained in an unsystematic, haphazard fashion.” This book presents a detailed and complex account of the conceptual foundation leading to the development of a model of behavior for predicting adjustment to retirement. It therefore provides a systematic formulation concerning retirement that can serve as a guide for future research. It is a must for social scientists, health professionals, policy makers, and those who have an interest in the processes and consequences of retirement.