Harnessing progress: Gender, sexuality, and positive self-perceptions of aging in midlife

Abstract

Drawing on interviews, this article analyzes how lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men construct positive views of aging during midlife, a life course period when negative perceptions of aging are salient. Interviewees engaged in harnessing progress—a process of crafting personal aging narratives that emphasize growth and improvement—which helped them to feel positively about their own aging. All interviewees shared these progress narratives, but reports differed across gender and sexuality groups. Men’s narratives focused on the wisdom they gained and how that made them more relevant to older and younger generations. Regarding the latter, straight men viewed their children as beneficiaries of their progress and gay men viewed younger LGBTQ people as beneficiaries. Women’s progress narratives focused on self-improvement. Whereas straight women described becoming more self-reliant with age, lesbians described learning to stand up for themselves. Overall, findings reveal how gender and sexual identities—and the lifelong benefits and burdens that accompany those identities—influence how people create positive perceptions of aging.

Introduction

People’s interpretations and evaluations of their own age and aging, or self-perceptions of aging, influence how they move through the life course. Aging research has found that individuals sometimes view aging through a lens of deficit and decline, and thus harbor many negative perceptions about their aging (e.g., Barrett & Barbee, 2022; Diehl et al., 2014). Scholars have attributed negative perceptions of aging to cultural and ideological systems, including individualism and “enhancement culture” (e.g., Barbee, Moloney, & Konrad, 2018), that construct aging as a process of irreversible and universally bad losses (Gullette, 2004). Namely, they argue that media, public policy, health care, and medical research overemphasize a narrative of decline that encourages people to fear and problematize their aging. However, the emergence of positive gerontology—a subfield that analyzes how aging can produce positive outcomes like resilience, adaptability, financial success, and community engagement (Johnson & Mutchler, 2014; Wozniak & Jopp, 2012)—has shifted scholarly attention to people’s positive perceptions of aging (e.g., McGrath, Rudman, Polgar, Spafford, & Trentham, 2016; Miller, 2019; Padilla & Chávez-Hernández, 2020). Within aging research, studies increasingly find that gender and sexual identities influence people’s perceptions of aging (e.g., Barrett & Barbee, 2017; Slevin, 2010), but this scholarship often focuses on negative perceptions rather than positive. This article addresses this gap in aging research by analyzing how middle-aged lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men construct positive views of aging.

Middle-age, or midlife, provides an important vantage point to analyze positive perceptions of aging. Scholars typically conceptualize midlife as the period that spans ages 40 to 59, which accounts for about one-fourth of the U.S. population (Giasson, Queen, Larkina, & Smith, 2017; Lachman, Teshale, & Agrigoroaei, 2015). Although people tend to focus on more positive information as they age—an outcome known as the “positivity effect” (Carstensen, 2021)—changes that occur during midlife regarding cognitive function, emotional development, social relationships, work, biology, and physical appearance can make aging anxiety salient (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001; Karp, 1988; Lachman, 2004; Lachman et al., 2015)—a finding that is true across gender and sexual identity groups (Barbee, 2020; Slevin, 2010). Describing midlife, Neugarten (1968, 94) wrote: “Chronological age is no longer the positive marker that it was earlier in life, when to become older means to become bigger, more attractive, or more important; neither is it the positive marker that it becomes again in advanced old age, when each additional year lived increased one’s distinction.” Building on scholarship that has examined self-perceptions of aging in midlife, this article asks two research questions. First, how do people generate positive perceptions of aging during a life course stage when aging anxiety is salient? Second, how do positive perceptions of aging vary for middle-aged people of different gender and sexual identities?

Drawing on in-depth interviews, I propose the concept harnessing progress to illustrate a social process by which people generate positive perceptions of aging in midlife. Unlike other conceptual frameworks, harnessing progress does not focus on positive depictions of aging at the cultural level (Gullette, 2004) nor “objective” positive outcomes in later life, such as health, physical activity, social engagement, and financial resources (Johnson & Mutchler, 2014). Instead, harnessing progress involves people’s construction of personal aging narratives whereby individuals explain their aging as a story of experiencing progress throughout their lives. Specifically, I argue that middle-aged people craft personal aging narratives that centralize self-perceptions of growth and improvement to feel positively about their own aging. I also demonstrate how gender and sexual identities influence how people harnessed the progress in their lives to craft positive personal aging narratives. Overall, by comparing the progress narratives of lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men, I reveal how gender and sexual identities—and the lifelong benefits and burdens that accompany those identities—influence how middle-aged people develop positive views of aging.

A narrative approach to positive gerontology

Earlier conceptual frameworks in gerontology portrayed aging as a process of physical, mental, and social decline, but that trend has been changing for numerous decades. The field of positive gerontology has sparked interest in how people can enjoy or benefit from aging. Frameworks like “successful aging,” “productive aging,” and civic engagement theory, strive to offer positive visions of later life and even mechanisms that seemingly “optimize” one’s aging experience (Johnson & Mutchler, 2014). But scholars have identified key limitations of these frameworks. Despite their welcomed focus on positive aging, frameworks like “successful” and “productive” aging tend to construct narrow parameters of “normal” and exclude the aging experiences of entire populations, particularly those that are historically marginalized (Beard, Fetterman, Wu, & Bryant, 2009; Holstein & Minkler, 2003; Liang & Luo, 2012; Mendes, 2013; Pace & Grenier, 2017). Moreover, although these frameworks sometimes incorporate subjective later life outcomes (e.g., self-reported levels of health, happiness, and social engagement) as evidence of people’s “positive aging,” these outcomes are typically framed as objective or universal criteria and take for granted the possibility that people define and create their own criteria for “successful,” “productive,” or “positive” aging.

I analyze personal aging narratives to identify how people construct aging in their own terms. Personal narratives are the stories that people tell to signify a “truth” or “fact” about the nature of their lives (Plummer, 1995). They are “a sense-making activity in which the act of storytelling is part of the construction of the self’ (Dunn, 2017, 66). In this article, I use the concept harnessing progress to represent how people marshal examples of growth and improvement to craft personal aging narratives and construct their aging in their own positive terms. These progress narratives stand in contrast to the decline narratives that often take up space in cultural discourses about aging. Progress narratives offer a focus on growth and “a personal relationship to time and aging, a willingness to get on the life course as on a train, for a lifelong journey… because the future seems worth it” (Gullette, 2004, 16). Whereas decline narratives define aging as a process to be dreaded and evaded, progress narratives define aging as a rewarding process to be embraced.

Life improvement is the essence of progress narratives. As an illustration, a study by Pew Research Center (Taylor, Morin, Parker, Cohn, & Wang, 2009) found that 70% of respondents ages 65 and older reported upsides of aging, including spending more time with family, volunteering, working on hobbies, and traveling. They also listed feeling financially secure and less stressed as benefits of aging. In an interview study of women and men ages 45 to 65, interviewees framed aging as gaining independence to choose their daily routine, including volunteer or leisure activities (Craciun & Flick, 2016). Questionnaires from college students across 26 cultures reveal that participants associated aging with gaining more knowledge, wisdom, and respect (Löckenhoff et al., 2009). McWilliams and Barrett (2018) interviewed members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, who were ages 54 to 86, and found that participants countered negative beliefs about later life by constructing positive identities as “lifelong learners.” Similarly, McGrath et al.’s (2016) interview study revealed how older adults with age-related vision loss crafted personal narratives that characterized their aging in positive terms—they described themselves as maintaining independence and autonomy despite their disability. Taken together, these studies suggest that people may craft progress narratives to resist association with decline (Caddick, McGill, Greaves, & Kiernan, 2018) and generate positive feelings about their own aging.

Women’s and men’s progress narratives

A growing body of research suggests that gender affects people’s self-perceptions of aging, but scholars know more about gender’s effects on negative perceptions than positive ones. Social inequalities appear to be a fundamental source of people’s negative perceptions. For example, feminist scholars have long argued that women endure a “double standard of aging” whereby “[m]en are ‘allowed’ to age, without penalty, in several ways that women are not” (Sontag, 1972, 31). They argue that older men are rewarded for their age while older women are punished (e.g., Carpenter, Nathanson, & Kim, 2006; Lauzen & Dozier, 2005; Lincoln & Allen, 2004). Although this line of research makes important observations about aging inequalities between women and men, it risks reproducing a deficit perspective on aging that renders invisible how women enjoy and benefit from their aging. In contrast, analyzing people’s experiences of aging through the lens of harnessing progress—that is, examining how different gender groups craft personal aging narratives that center examples of growth and improvement—could reveal people’s positive experiences of aging while also sensitizing analysts to the social factors that create aging disparities across gender groups.

Numerous studies have provided evidence of women’s progress narratives. For example, as women get older they may increasingly view their age as an opportunity to explore new horizons. Analyzing travel articles, researchers found that those catering to older women conveyed more messages of “letting go” and self-discovery compared to those catering to younger women (Barrett & Douglas, 2020). Similarly, interviews with women ages 50 to 85 revealed how they constructed later life as a time of reduced responsibility and accountability (Barrett & Naiman-Sessions, 2016). Other studies have documented women’s positive perceptions of aging surrounding issues of reproduction and sexuality. One interview study of 98 midwestern women ages 38 to 65 found that participants associated aging with freedom from reproductive burdens like childbirth and worrying about contraception (Dill-away, 2012). Miller (2019) interviewed single women ages 35 to 91 and found that they reported higher levels of comfort and openness with sex, increased sexual assertiveness, and more sexual pleasure as they aged. Although Miller only interviewed single straight women, her findings reflect scholarship that has focused on lesbians (Slevin & Mowery, 2012) and married women (Lodge & Umberson, 2012), who also report improved sexual quality as they age.

There is also evidence of men’s progress narratives. For example, men may develop stronger body acceptance as they age. In an interview study of men ages 67 to 90, a majority of the men said they felt good about their body and downplayed the importance of appearance, even when they were classified as overweight (Hurd & Mahal, 2019). Another study found that men ages 65 to 83 felt grateful for their aging bodies (Bennett, Hurd, Pritchard, Colton, & Crocker, 2020). There is also some evidence that men welcome later life as an opportunity to give back to their communities. Interviewing Canadian men ages 60 to 70, Liechty and Genoe (2013, 445) found that participants viewed leisure time in later life “as an opportunity to use skills and knowledge gained during working years in order to benefit family members or the community at large.” Importantly, most of this research has focused on later life. Men’s aging is strongly influenced by masculine expectations to be emotionally and physically autonomous, but it is not clear how men of different sexual identity backgrounds adjust to these expectations in midlife—decades before reaching later life—when ideological imperatives to problematize and take personal responsibility for one’s aging have already taken root (Calasanti, 2004; Marshall & Katz, 2002).

In sum, there is evidence that women and men have different positive views of aging but, given the dearth of qualitative research that compares women’s and men’s views of aging, it is unclear how gender dynamics contribute to these differences. This article helps to clarify this issue by examining personal aging narratives in a sample of middle-aged women and men. Specifically, by comparing how women and men describe aging as an experience of lifetime growth and improvement, I demonstrate how gendered life experiences influence women’s and men’s different perceptions of aging.

LGBTQ progress narratives

Researchers know little about how progress narratives differ across gender and sexuality groups. One theoretical perspective—the crisis competence perspective (Kimmel, 1978)—suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people may enjoy the progress narrative in ways that are unavailable to straight cisgender people. Reflecting concepts like resilience or grit (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007), which are often conceptualized as individual characteristics, crisis competence posits that LGBTQ people experience hardships early in life that prepare them for the challenges they face in later life (Berger, 1996). De Vries and Croghan (2014, 12) explained that earlier struggles produce “a sense of hardiness and competence out of a lifetime of surviving…in a heterosexual environment.” Although this perspective was initially developed to explain older lesbians’ and gay men’s positive perceptions of aging who are presumed to be cisgender (e. g., Friend, 1991), more recent studies have linked it to the aging experiences of bisexual and transgender people (e.g., Fredriksen-Goldsen, Jen, & Muraco, 2019; Kimmel, 2014).

The crisis competence perspective treats progress as an objective outcome that LGBTQ people gain by navigating marginalization. As an illustration, many LGBTQ people experience rejections from their biological families which, according to crisis competence, may prompt them to develop more robust support networks among friends (Barker, Herdt, & de Vries, 2006; de Vries, 2013). Further, in a nationally representative study of over 1200 LGBTQ people, 74% reported that being LGBTQ helped prepare them for the future (MetLife, 2010). Respondents noted benefits of being LGBTQ, such as being more accepting of others, not taking things for granted, having more resilience and self-reliance, being more careful with legal and financial matters, and coping better with discrimination.

Despite emphasizing the resilience of LGBTQ people, crisis competence may not fully explain how people develop positive self-perceptions of aging. First, the crisis competence perspective was developed to explain how disadvantages experienced by LGBTQ people—as a broad community—can promote growth and improvement. It does not, however, explain how non-LGBTQ people navigate the burdens of their aging and how those experiences may promote growth and improvement. Second, because crisis competence treats progress as an objective outcome that emerges from the marginalization people encounter in early life, it implies that disenfranchisement is a primary pathway by which people come to appreciate and enjoy aging in later life. The current article departs from this framework by focusing on how middle-aged people—including lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men—subjectively construct progress narratives and how those narratives reflect broader systems of gender and sexuality.

Methods

This article is part of a broader qualitative investigation of how gender and sexuality shape middle-aged people’s experiences of and attitudes toward aging (Barbee, 2020). After receiving IRB-approval, I began collecting interviews with lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men. At the outset, my goal was to understand how middle-aged people navigate aging in their everyday lives. Interviews are useful tools for exploring this issue because they allow participants to convey how they perceive, interpret, and cope with the world around them (Weiss, 1994). In this project, interviewees shared stories about how they perceived aging—including positive and negative perceptions—and how their aging unfolded in their day-to-day lives. This article focuses on one aspect of interviewees’ stories—their narratives that portrayed aging as a process of growth and improvement.

I recruited individuals ages 50 to 59 because midlife is an under-studied yet dynamic period of the life course. In particular, scholars have described the 50s as a decade of age-related changes that remind people about their aging and future mortality (Karp, 1988). Some of these changes are physical, including changing appearance, experiencing worsening health, or witnessing poor health in others. The changes are also generational, such as managing the needs of younger people (e.g., children) or older people (e.g., parents). Finally, changes are contextual, such as being the oldest person in a social setting (Karp, 1988). Although scholars agree that midlife is an important life course stage (Lachman et al., 2015), we know little about how different gender and sexual identity groups experience it.

I employed several recruitment strategies. First, I advertised my project to personal connections, which produced initial contacts. As people agreed to participate in interviews, I used “snowball sampling,” wherein initial participants made referrals (Charmaz, 2014). As a self-identified queer person, I have many personal contacts who identify with the LGBTQ community, and I drew on those connections to recruit lesbian and gay participants. I also shared my study details on social media and announced that I was searching for people ages 50 to 59 who would participate in confidential interviews.

Being “out” as a queer person influenced my data collection process. For example, in my experience, recruiting participants from the queer community meant that “gatekeepers,” or key informants, were more eager to participate and share my study details with their peers, compared to straight women and men. Knowing that I was a queer person appeared to encourage a sense of trust among my queer participants (see Moore, 2018). I also noticed that my queer participants—particularly gay men—adopted a kind of “teacher” mentality during the interviews. It seemed that they wanted to share their stories with me because they believed I would benefit from hearing them. Although a shared queer identity allowed for seamless rapport building, it also risked framing the interviews around sexual identity—which was not necessarily my goal—and thus limiting what queer interviewees shared or how they shared it (e.g., Connell, 2018). As such, for all interviewees, regardless of sexual identity, I asked open-ended questions that centered aging—an experience about which all interviewees could speak—and allowed interviewees to make connections to gender and sexuality when they felt appropriate.

The sample consists of 41 women and men of different gender and sexual identity backgrounds. In total, the sample includes ten lesbians, ten gay men, ten straight men, and eleven straight women. One of the straight women is a transgender woman. One of the men in my sample said, “I mostly consider myself gay, but sometimes I tell people I’m bi [sexual]. I feel better calling myself gay, though.” I classify this man as “gay” in this study because that is how he self-identified, but I make this note to acknowledge the complexity of his identity. Importantly, I acknowledge that the four groups I sampled (i.e., lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men) do not represent a full spectrum of gender and sexual identities. For example, I could have also sampled individuals who explicitly identify as bisexual, asexual, transgender, and nonbinary—four groups who experience aging in ways that are both similar to and different from the groups I chose to sample (e.g., Fredriksen Goldsen, Jen, & Muraco, 2019). I sampled lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men because at the outset of this project there were virtually no studies that compared the aging experiences of different gender and sexuality groups (for exceptions, see Barrett & Barbee, 2017; Slevin, 2010), and I believed the four groups I chose would establish an appropriate starting point from which other research projects could expand.

My goal was to sample for range (Weiss, 1994), or to have a roughly even split between gender and sexuality groups so that no group was oversampled and so I could observe clear similarities and differences across the four groups (Small, 2009). The majority of the sample was white (34 of 41). Five interviewees identified as Black, one as Latina, one as Latino, and one as Native American. I also tried to construct an even distribution of single and partnered participants. Nineteen interviewees were single and twenty-three were married or in committed partnerships. A majority of the participants lived in the U.S. South, especially in Florida (28 interviewees). However, the sample includes participants from across the United States.

Interviews ranged from 1.5 to 2 h, were audio-recorded, and transcribed using Rev.com transcription service. I discussed potential interview settings with participants to assess where they would feel most comfortable. Interviews took place in public settings, such as parks and libraries. Eleven interviews took place online through video chat due to geographic distance. Despite not being in person, these interviews were equally open and frank as the in-person interviews. During interviews, I asked participants open-ended questions regarding their attitudes toward aging and how they experience age and aging in everyday life. Topics included aging bodies, hopes and fears about the future, how their lives have changed over time, and how they coped with the changes brought on by aging. In this article, I draw heavily on responses to the following questions: “Do you believe there are positive aspects of aging? Can you tell me about that?” After completing each interview, I made audio recordings wherein I reflected on observations that I made during the interviews. I concluded recruitment after 41 interviews because clear similarities and differences were emerging among the four groups.

I analyzed interviews upon completion using ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software package. The entirety of my dataset totaled approximately 1100 pages of transcripts, reflecting its depth and breadth. I employed an inductive approach, beginning with “open coding” (Charmaz, 2014) which involved applying labels that summarized interviewees’ statements. As I continued to collect and code interviews, I engaged in memo writing, wherein I reflected on observations and emerging themes, and how those themes connected to existing literatures (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). For example, during interviews, I noticed that men often spoke warmly of their aging as providing them with resources to support younger people. This observation prompted me to return to my data and parse out if there were differences in how gay and straight men discussed this aging benefit.

My second stage of coding, or “focused coding” (Charmaz, 2014), involved assigning new thematic codes intended to capture broader social processes. During this coding phase, I used gerunds to sensitize me to the specific ways that participants were creating progress narratives. Examples include “supporting younger generations,” “supporting older generations,” “standing up for myself,” and “developing self-reliance.” Like the first phase of coding, I memoed about my codes and reflected on what they suggested about the relationships among gender, sexuality, and aging, and how they related to the literature. This process allowed me to become more familiar with my data, develop stronger empirical claims, and clarify my overall contributions.

Harnessing progress: differences across gender and sexuality groups

Findings demonstrate how middle-aged people construct personal aging narratives that center growth and improvement, a process I call harnessing progress. Interviewees’ characterizations of progress differed across gender and sexuality groups and revealed how intersecting identities influence aging narratives. Men described their aging as a process of gaining experience, wisdom, and social relevance that they used to support older and younger generations. The former often took the form of providing social support to their parents or older friends, which made the men feel valuable. The latter took the form of improving the lives of younger generations. Whereas straight men focused their mentorship on their children, gay men focused on LGBTQ youth. Women’s progress narratives underscored their increased independence. Straight women emphasized becoming more self-reliant, which made them feel more confident. Lesbians focused on sticking up for themselves, which made them feel brave.

Men supporting older generations

Male interviewees, regardless of sexual identity, said that caring for older generations made them feel valuable. Many described instances supporting their parents, especially with stereotypically masculine tasks. Neil said he helps his mother with chores when he visits her: “She usually has a list of things she wants me to do, like changing lights that are too high for her to reach, cleaning out closets, or repairing stuff around the house.”¹ Neil believed this time was well spent: “I’m happy to help her. She’s done a lot for me, and she allows me to visit her at her beach house. I’m glad I can repay her.” Lucas, who recently moved from California to Florida, considered being closer to his mother: “I thought about Tampa, maybe Fort Myers. I wanted to be close to my mom. I want to keep an eye on her now that she’s getting up in age. She also really enjoys having me around. I’m able to make her laugh, which is good for her.” Alan said he visits his parents every two weeks to hangout, make them lunch, or take them on drives:

We’ll go for a drive. They love to drive. Neither can drive anymore. We just drive and talk. Something I’ve learned is that when an old person is telling you a long rambling story about their past, it’s like they’re actually reliving that moment. And for just that brief moment, it’s like they feel young again, parts of their mind open up that were functioning back then. I’ll ask dad to tell me stories, even though he has told many of the same ones dozens of times. He just lights up.

It is clear that Alan felt like he was improving his parents’ lives by his engagement with them.

Male interviewees often spoke of these relationships as being mutually beneficial. In addition to feeling valuable, men also acknowledged that they acquired new skills by spending time with older generations. Luis described visiting an assisted-living facility: “I walk around and talk to the folks. They’ll tell me stories. I know it means a lot to them that I’m there to listen. But they also teach me a lot about life and prepare me for my future.” Joseph said, “I’ve worked with Atlanta Pride for many years, and there are many people who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. I try to involve them and talk to them, and they appreciate that. I love hearing their stories because I’m able to learn lessons from their lives.” Terry described a friendship he has with a 93-year-old man with whom he speaks “two or three times a week,” including when he drives him to and from church. He described the many lessons he has learned: “It’s sort of a tradeoff. I drive him to church, and he teaches me about life. He’s taught me a lot about marriage and parenting.” In short, these men were able to give and receive. Terry gained tips on marriage and parenting, and Luis and Joseph gained insights about aging and felt better prepared for their own futures.

Men supporting younger generations

Men implied that their ability to support younger generations reflected progress they had made in their lives. Interviewees said they derived a sense of value from their relationships with younger generations. While both straight and gay men exemplified a commitment to younger generations, some differences appeared. Straight men emphasized supporting their children, and gay men said their “elder” status within the gay community demonstrated the progress they had made in life. The gay men harnessed their wisdom to support emerging generations of LGBTQ people, which they perceived as a political act.

Straight men’s relationships with their children provided them a sense of worth—they derived value from their ability to pass on knowledge and help prepare their kids for the future. Seven of ten straight men had children (compared to one gay man). Kendrick felt “personally invested” in his daughters’ lives: “Supporting my daughters involves passing on my passions and visions in the form of teaching. I can achieve some of my goals indirectly by projecting my hopes and dreams onto them. And maybe they will take them and do something that my lifetime may not allow for me.” Kent said he offers his son advice, even if he “does not always listen”:

Sometimes I think he pauses and thinks about what I have to say. I know he values my advice because he’ll sometimes call me up and say, “I want to run something by you.” I’ll tell him the truth as I know it based on my age and experience, and how I made mistakes and recovered.

Kent’s relationship with his son allowed him to see himself as mattering and his age as a tool he could use to support his son.

Todd’s relationship with his daughters included a slice of advice-giving. Todd was once in a band and loves introducing his children to music. He said, “I love getting them excited about music. It feels good to teach them something that they might not otherwise discover. Getting them hyped about it makes me feel a lot younger.” Todd explained what he meant by “feel younger”: “They can listen to the music, and I can say, ‘Isn’t it cool?’ I feel really vibrant and alive, like I did back then when I was actually really excited about everything.” Todd valued these interactions because he could offer his children advice and because it was a way for him to “feel younger,” which temporarily eased the sadness of abandoning his band several decades ago.

Gay men perceived their generational vantage point as offering an opportunity to support younger LGBTQ generations. Joseph, who is a Black nonprofit administrator, said,

I embrace the elder role that comes with age in the gay community. We have so much experience to offer younger gay people. At the university, I would go to the Gay Straight Alliance every month and tell the kids that if they ever have an issue, I’m a resource. It’s a way to give back to gay people who are coming up behind me. It is really personal and political because I’m helping to ensure the continuity of my people.

Robert, who works in a university affairs office, said he has mentored many LGBTQ students, often helping them come out. He said, “I remember what it was like to come out. I can help a lot of the young gay guys who are struggling.” He went on to say that “wisdom” is the most important thing he could contribute to the lives of young gay people:

I work with young students. When their world seems to be crashing down, I can give them a perspective that it can get better. I understand. I can empathize. But you’re also going to experience challenges. Use my experiences as a guide. I really try to impart that wisdom. You may be going through dark times, but we can get you out of this together.

Gay men like Robert and Joseph crafted aging as a process of growth and improvement by highlighting how their experience and wisdom were useful to others.

Many said that coming of age during the AIDS epidemic prepared them to mentor younger gay people. Miles said the epidemic “played a really important role” in shaping his commitment to mentoring younger LGBTQ people. He said, “I did not have many gay mentors when I was growing up, and I think that’s partly because of the crisis. I feel especially motivated now to make the most of mentorship in my career. I want to help the young people struggling with their identity realize that they can be who they are.” Six gay men shared stories of people they knew who did not survive the AIDS epidemic. Dustin, who lost his cousin, said, “So many gay people my age lost friends and family. It’s a devastating loss. But those experiences gave us the ability to change the future and not let it happen again.” Lucas, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, at age 26, said, “A lot of the lessons my generation learned from AIDS help us to be good teachers for younger gay people. You take the difficult parts of life as lessons to make the world a better place.”

Gay men emphasized how their traumatic experiences of the past prepared them to thrive as mentors in midlife. The crisis competence perspective may explain why gay men valued mentorship of younger gay people. Living through the AIDS epidemic, the gay men believed, helped them develop “competence out of a lifetime of surviving as a sexual or gender minority in a heterosexual environment” (De Vries & Croghan, 2014, 2) that they could share with younger LGBTQ people. The gay men viewed their mentorship as a political act—it was a response to the injustices they experienced in their lives and a strategy of ensuring younger LGBTQ people would not endure the same hardships. Overall, living as a gay man shaped how interviewees constructed and applied their progress narratives.

Both gay men and straight men crafted progress narratives in relation to their mentorship relationships with older and younger generations. They were proud to give back to younger and older people, and it made them feel valued. They harnessed their “wisdom,” as some put it, in service to others. Many men felt that they were recipients, and not just givers. According to Kendrick, young people carried with them older generations’ “hopes and dreams” into their futures, and at the other end of the spectrum, older generations taught these men valuable life lessons. Overall, however, the main theme is that men perceived their lives as made better because of their age and their ability to share the gains it had brought them.

Straight women developing self-reliance

Straight women described gaining more self-reliance as they aged, and that made them feel more confident. Kelly said, “I have come to realize my worth and what I’m capable of. I didn’t always have that sense. I’ve been able to cultivate value through my work and accomplishments.” Lisa emphasized the wisdom she gained and how that has made her more confident: “With age comes more knowledge that I didn’t have before. I like being able to walk into work and people respect me and know that I’m competent. It’s like, ‘Yeah, I am smart. I can handle situations. I have power, too!’” Gail associated aging with her professional accomplishments: “I created a business. I did that! When I was younger, I didn’t have clear goals. But now, I want certain things. I want security and to make my own money. I managed to get that.” Rebecca said,

Since getting into midlife I’ve noticed a new energy. I’ve been through so much bullshit in life. I lost a kid. I had a horrible divorce. I was depressed and suicidal. But I worked hard to learn from my struggles. I feel like superwoman. I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I got this!

Straight women perceived themselves as gaining a sense of independence and confidence in their capabilities as they aged. They were proud of their achievements, and they recognized those accomplishments as an indicator that aging came with benefits.

Many straight women described how constraining relationships with men catalyzed their journey to self-reliance. Several spoke about overcoming their fathers’ expectations. Abby said her father “never trusted that I could take care of myself. He always undermined me and tried to control me. But once I turned 18, I moved out of that house. I swore I was never going to ask him for anything, and I didn’t. I learned to manage my money, pay the rent and the light bill. That freedom felt so good.” Kelly also discussed her relationship with her father: “So much of my self-growth may have been in opposition to my father. I saw how he badly he treated women of his generation, my mother. I never wanted to be in a position that a man could treat me that way.” Other women cited husbands—current and previous—as catalysts for their self-growth. Rebecca described her previous husband as an “enormous drag” on her life. She said, “I completely allowed him to control me. Mustering the self-power to leave him put me on a journey of self-discovery that now seems endless.” Virginia described an emerging sense of self-reliance with age, but she related it to issues with her current husband:

It’s interesting to be thinking of lessons I’ve learned with age because I think I’m coming to grips with one now. I’ve spent 20 years with my husband and I feel like he could pull the rug right out from me at any time. I feel so devalued. My husband has recovered from alcoholism. He had a terrible couple years. We lost a lot of money. Sometimes I’ve had to go back and ask him “Are you thankful to me? I saw you through this, I didn’t kick you to the curb.” When I see myself in the future, I don’t see myself with him. I know I am stronger than this. I can take care of myself if I had to. I should be living life on my terms, not by his.

Straight women’s progress narratives often positioned contentious relationships with men as significant inflection points. From childhood through midlife, women identified relationships with men that brought awareness to their self-worth. That Virginia, at age 51, considered leaving her husband to live an independent life shows that her belief in progress was enhanced with age.

Lesbian women sticking up for themselves

Lesbians’ progress narratives focused on sticking up for themselves, which made them feel brave. Anna said, “When I think about aging, I think about the courage I’ve gained to push back against things I don’t like.” She gave a workplace example: “I had a job that involved loading 75-pound packages of dry ice into trucks. The guys always teased me and said that I couldn’t handle it because I’m a woman. One day I just snapped and said ‘No, I’ll do it myself, thanks.’ I whipped those boxes up there! It felt so good to stand up to them.” Heidi explained that she felt “more and more liberated as a queer person with every passing year. I’m less afraid to confront something that I feel is wrong.” She shared an experience of standing up for herself at work. While working at a radio station, she served on a “discrimination committee.” During one committee meeting, “someone asked about gay employees. I was the only gay person in the room. Someone said, “Oh, we don’t have any of those!’ People started laughing. I decided to pipe up and say, “Well, actually, I am gay. And I think we should take this conversation seriously.” Erica also shared a work-related example: “I used to work Search and Rescue. I led cops through the woods, taught them how to shoot guns. I once had a guy tell me, ‘Well women, that’s kind of hard on you.’ Before, I would let that go. Not now. I said, ‘Bullshit. Women shoot better than guys. Screw you!”‘ Pam said she has “developed a tougher shell” as she has aged. She described standing up to what she perceived as an injustice:

I was arguing with a company about an incorrect delivery. I deserve to have my order correct. I didn’t let it go. They called back a day later and offered me a refund. My son was sitting next to me and said, “Mom, you’re a badass. You just don’t let anybody get away with anything.” Then, I got a sales call again about senior benefits and I said, “For Christ’s sake, get me off your call list,” and hung up. My son is like, “Here she goes.” But I want him to understand it’s just sticking up for what you think is right.

Overall, lesbian women drew on the hardships they endured over their lives to produce a sense of courage in midlife that they believed was not previously available to them. They felt responsible to call out injustices when they saw them. In many cases, these perceived injustices were linked with their gender and sexual identities.

Discussion

How do people develop positive perceptions of aging during midlife, a life course stage when negative perceptions are salient? Harnessing progress involved constructing personal narratives that centered the perceived life improvements brought on in midlife by one’s own aging. In this study, lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men developed heterogeneous progress narratives. Comparing these narratives demonstrates how gender and sexual identities—including the lifelong benetifs and burdens that accompany those identities—structure perceptions of progress.

Men harnessed progress by emphasizing their increasing usefulness to other people, and both gay and straight men described their pride in acting in supportive roles to older and younger generations. Men of both sexual identity groups said they enjoyed helping and spending time with older people, including parents and older friends, because it made them feel valued. Most of the tasks men performed for older people were stereotypically masculine, such as repairing damages around the house or driving. This finding raises the question of whether stereotypically feminine tasks would also constitute men’s progress narratives. Regarding providing help to younger generations, straight men’s narratives focused mostly on supporting their children, whereas gay men’s narratives focused on helping younger LGBTQ people. The straight men were more likely to have children, which could explain their focus on their children. Gay men’s focus on younger LGBTQ people may be related to their own shortage of gay mentorship in early life. In living through decades of social change surrounding LGBTQ lives, perhaps gay men felt equipped to activate their life lessons and impart them to younger LGBTQ people. Thus, they could feel a sense of personal progress in being able to “pass it on.”

Women harnessed progress by emphasizing personal growth, although straight and lesbian women defined it differently. Straight women described developing self-reliance as they aged. They spoke about feeling more independent and autonomous, especially in their professional lives, and underscored how constraining relationships with men, including fathers and husbands, spurred their journey to self-reliance. It is noteworthy that straight women did not describe positive aspects of their relationships with men—they only described developing self-reliance in spite of men. This does not necessarily mean that women’s relationships with men were all contentious, but rather the ones that were contentious resonated with women’s narratives of developing self-reliance. Some research suggests that divorced women are more likely to report these positive changes than non-married women (e.g., Miller, 2021; Montemurro, 2014), but that was not the case for my interviewees. Instead, straight women developed their progress narratives around the achievements they had made up to midlife, despite the sexism they endured in earlier life stages. Lesbians’ progress narratives involved learning to stick up for themselves. They described becoming braver with age and feeling more comfortable calling out injustices. Previous research has found that lesbians describe occupational experiences as major turning points in their lives (Muraco & Fredriksen-Goldsen, 2016). My findings add nuance to this research in that many lesbian interviewees’ examples of standing up for themselves took place in work environments. Lesbians are likely to have faced homophobia and sexism in earlier life for being queer women—especially in the workplace—perhaps leading them to value their sense of fortitude that now serves a protective function. They can thus experience this strength that they gained over time as representing personal progress.

Harnessing progress illustrates a social process by which intersecting identities shape how people construct their aging in terms of growth and improvement. The theoretical advantage of analyzing people’s progress narratives is that it 1) emphasizes positive aspects of aging—and thus eschews reifying the construction of aging as a process of deficit and decline—and 2) examines “positive” aging as a subjective construction rather than an objective outcome. The intention of highlighting positive aspects of aging is not to render invisible inequalities or ageist stereotypes that people confront as they age, but instead to demonstrate how people experience aging in heterogeneous ways, and to demystify how people can enjoy and benefit from their aging. Several theories have emerged in the “positive gerontology” subfield that focus on positive aspects of aging (Johnson & Mutchler, 2014); however, these theories tend to focus on a limited set of “objective” outcomes in later life, such as health, income, or levels of social support, that take for granted people’s ability to create their own criteria for what constitutes “positive” aging.

The conceptualization of “positive” aging as an objective outcome is also apparent in the crisis competence perspective—which contends that LGBTQ people develop resilience as they age in response to the hardships they endured earlier in life (Kimmel, 1978). In other words, crisis competence treats progress as an objective life outcome that emerges from experiencing marginalization. This framework could in some ways be applicable to the findings in this study. For example, living through the trauma of the AIDS epidemic appears to have prepared gay men interviewees to serve as mentors to younger LGBTQ people in later life. Similarly, lesbians’ willingness to stand up for themselves in midlife appears to be driven in part by the marginalization that they faced earlier in life. However, the crisis competence framework does not help scholars understand how individuals piece together experiences from their life to construct aging in their own positive terms. As such, the harnessing progress framework moves beyond the crisis competence framework by emphasizing the social construction of “positive” aging and demonstrating how people craft personal aging narratives that portray aging as a process of growth and improvement.

Harnessing progress also helps sensitize analysts to how multiple identities influence personal aging narratives. Black feminists have long argued that researchers must consider how intersecting identities shape life outcomes (Collins, 1990), but aging research has not fully answered that call when it comes to the intersection of age, gender, and sexuality. My study helps to fill this gap by demonstrating how the gendered and sexual inequalities people face earlier in life affect perceptions of aging in later life. In this study, women of both sexual identities created a positive narrative of aging as about finding a voice they had once lacked—as an experience of becoming more of an actor in their own lives, more willing to take control than in the past. For example, straight women shared stories about overcoming their fathers’ and husbands’ expectations and learning to be self-reliant. Lesbians talked about dealing with gender-based discrimination and learning to stand up for themselves, but they also described their sexual orientation as a piece of their progress, which straight women did not do.

The intersection of gender and sexuality played out differently for men. Unlike women, men of both sexual identities did not describe their gender as a source of hardship they had to overcome to experience progress. This disparity is possibly a reflection of the “double standard of aging” whereby women are socially marginalized for their aging while men are rewarded (Sontag, 1972). However, like lesbians, gay men did incorporate their sexuality into their progress narratives. Gay men described lacking mentors as they came of age during the AIDS epidemic and developing tools they now use to mentor younger LGBTQ people. Straight men’s progress narratives did not involve overcoming gender- or sexuality-based obstacles and developing resilience, but instead illustrated their midlife realizations of the privileges they had accrued with age. Namely, they felt a sense of fullness and accomplishment in accumulating resources that they could now give back to the other generations, and this constituted their positive aging narrative. That straight men did not perceive gender or sexual inequality as contributing to their lifetime progress highlights their privilege relative to gay men, lesbians, and straight women—three groups who did view their personal growth as being engendered, at least in part, by the marginalization they had experienced in life.

Analyzing progress narratives also sheds light on how different groups use their agency (e.g., think about, respond to, or manage their aging) in relation to, or in spite of, broader structural patterns (Settersten & Gannon, 2005). People are socialized to think about aging as a process of deficit and decline, and so many of them come to fear aging (Gullette, 2004). Yet, despite these negative cultural narratives, interviewees across gender and sexual identity backgrounds created personal aging narratives that centered growth and improvement—the antithesis of decline. Moreover, lesbians, gay men, and straight women’s personal aging narratives all incorporated stories about their gender or sexuality. Despite being members of marginalized groups who face gender and sexual inequalities as they age (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001), these interviewees suggested that their experience of aging was positive because of their membership in their respective groups. Perhaps these personal aging narratives allowed interviewees to feel better about their aging in a society that devalues aging. This coping strategy might be especially advantageous during midlife, a life course stage when the pressure to fear aging may increase (Lachman, 2004). These progress narratives could also reflect broader cultural narratives or ideologies in the United States, such as “rugged individualism” or “enhancement culture” (Barbee et al., 2018), that create a moral imperative to always improve as one moves throughout the life course.

Investigating how and why people develop progress narratives has implications for understanding LGBTQ people’s resilience amidst persistent social injustices. Over the last decade, researchers have revealed many disparities that LGBTQ people endure relative to the general population (Emlet, 2016). Yet, despite these disparities, LGBTQ people have also demonstrated profound resilience (Fredriksen Goldsen et al., 2019). As an example, in this study, lesbians and gay men felt proud that they could overcome gender-and sexuality-based marginalization. But now, in midlife, they felt compelled to do more work so that others would not experience these challenges—lesbians felt called to stand up to injustices and gay men felt called to mentor younger LGBTQ people. In other words, lesbians’ and gay men’s progress narratives reflect not just the perceived growth and improvement they experienced over their lives, but also their perception that the barriers they once had to overcome still persist for others. These perceptions may be explained by a kind of “queer generativity” (Rosati, Pistella, Giovanardi, & Baiocco, 2021), or a hope of middle-aged lesbians and gay men to produce a better world for their queer posterity. Moreover, given lesbian and gay interviewees’ goal to challenge systems of inequality, perhaps it is more useful for scholars to make sense of their work as a form resistance rather than resilience, a term that has traditionally emphasized LGBTQ people’s ability to contribute to and assimilate into “a heteronormative, capitalist society” (Robinson & Schmitz, 2021, 2). Future research could analyze the progress narratives of marginalized populations to better understand how they have coped with and resisted inequalities and to reveal how and to what extent those disparities persist.

This project has several limitations that warrant attention in future research. Findings reveal that gender and sexuality are two types of identities that shape people’s positive self-perceptions of aging, but my analysis is largely limited to the experiences of cisgender lesbians, gay men, straight women, and straight men. Future scholarship could focus on the aging experiences of other communities—including transgender, nonbinary, bisexual, and asexual people—who navigate the world against a backdrop of distinct inequalities (e.g., Barbee & Schlock, 2019; Fredriksen Goldsen et al., 2019; Sumerau, Barbee, Mathers, & Eaton, 2018). Additionally, this article focuses on how gender and sexuality influence progress narratives but does not analyze how other social locations shape perceptions of growth and improvement. In particular, race and class are important factors that influence people’s aging (e.g., Barrett, 2003; Yan, Silverstein, & Wilber, 2011) and researchers could investigate how these social locations affect personal aging narratives. Finally, the goal of this study was to analyze how people construct their aging in their own positive terms, but I am unable to identify the extent to which my findings are driven by period or cohort effects, rather than simply being the product of aging. As an illustration, it is possible that the women in this study reported becoming more self-reliant and courageous due, in part, to changing perceptions of women over time (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001). It may also be true that lesbians feel more empowered to stand up for themselves due to changing attitudes about sexual minorities (Roberts, 2019). Similarly, the gay men in this study may feel empowered to mentor younger LGBTQ people because of a safer and more welcoming social climate that has allowed them to be “out” and vocal about navigating queer life. Future research could apply different methodological techniques—such as longitudinal studies—to examine how constructions of progress differ and change across cohorts and life course stages.

Individuals confront myriad social forces in midlife that depict aging as a process of decline (Barbee, 2020; Lachman et al., 2015; Neugarten, 1968), but this article reveals that middle-age people also construct their aging as a process of growth and improvement because it makes them feel valued, relevant, confident, and brave. Thus, scholars could examine harnessing progress as strategic agency—a deliberate effort to feel better about aging in a culture that devalues it. But this study also suggests that gender and sexual identities affect peoples’ self-perceptions of aging because those identities are linked to myriad social inequalities. Critically examining these inequalities could help engender a culture where progress narratives are not individual forms of resistance, but instead the dominant way cultures frame aging.