The Benefits of Cross-Generational Relationships

Do your friendships span the generations, or are they narrowly limited to your own age group? Do you socialize regularly with people of varied ages, or only rarely?

As increasing research shows, this issue may directly affect your daily well-being. This was aptly anticipated by the three major founders of humanistic psychology: Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May, who all decried growing age segregation around us.

Maslow pioneered our understanding of happiness in many ways, catalyzed by his fieldwork with the Canadian Blackfoot tribe in 1938. It convinced him that Ruth Benedict’s critique of American culture as fostering isolated, insecure individuals was accurate. Over the next few years, he wrote several unpublished papers on this theme, arguing, for example, that, "[The dominant American] family is organized hierarchically... It is much too small in the social sense... There is too much dependence upon one or two individuals: that is, the mother or father. In a word, too many eggs are put into one basket."

How to change this damaging situation? Maslow specifically urged parents to "create many warm emotional ties outside the home so that there is not too complete dependence upon the parental tie. This would involve (for the child) more visiting, more sleeping in other homes, much more camping out."

As Maslow's biographer, I was intrigued to discover that during those Great Depression years, he was himself involved in a communal experience with relatives of diverse ages. Residing in the same apartment building near his office at Brooklyn College, this group apparently shared household chores and meals. In mock anthropological terms, he called this endeavor his “cliff-dwelling” period, which provided him practical lessons on how to sustain intimacy and warmth among members of a group.

As a result, Maslow regarded the contemporary nuclear—or, increasingly subnuclear—family as essentially a prescription for individual loneliness and unhappiness, He commented, “I have no doubt that… present-day youngsters… suffer from having been deprived of grandparents; for that matter, they (have) often been deprived of parents, too.” The end result? Emotional insecurity and meager self-knowledge.

Later in life, Maslow discovered that intergenerational solidarity provided an important benefit for older adults too--a finding that emerged from his research on core features of peak experiences: namely, playfulness. He came to view playfulness itself as a trait of self-actualizers and insisted that it's "an integrator [like] beauty… or love... It is a resolver of dichotomies, a solution to many (personality) problems.”

Recent studies clearly link adult playfulness to mental health benefits. These include enhanced creativity, better social relationships, and greater resilience and life satisfaction. In this light, Dr. Steve Tuber recently reported how grandparents gain psychologically from playful interactions with their grandchildren.

Late in Carl Rogers’s life, he reflected on the value of cross-generational bonds. “I feel a great pity for those persons I know who are growing into old age without the continuing stimulation of younger minds and younger life-styles,” he wrote. In extolling the benefits he had reaped from relationships with younger colleagues and students, Rogers identified both intellectual stimulation and heightened creativity. “It has, I hope, been a fair exchange,” he mused, “though I often feel I have gained more than I have given”

Six years later, Rogers addressed the issue of old age from his own experience. Though acknowledging reduced physical stamina, he again praised cross-generational ties as a source of personal fulfillment.

For example, he identified satisfying, significant collaborations with younger colleagues and graduate students, as well as the fact that he and his comparably-aged wife Helen had a “continuing and growing closeness with our younger circle of friends.” In view of Rogers’s enjoyment of intergenerational solidarity, it's not surprising that his large body of psychological theory is now attracting researchers seeking to optimize cross-generational relationships.

Finally, Rollo May devoted considerable attention to the issue of cross-generational closeness in his last major book, The Cry for Myth. In his view, America’s overall mental health was collapsing due to its “barrenness of myths”—that is, the absence of meaningful myths to sustain a sense of community and mutual responsibility. “Myths are passed on chiefly by the family… this is where we get our first acquaintance with the myths of our society,” May asserted.“ Without a myth that makes a child part of a community, a home which gives warmth and protection, the child does not develop in true human fashion.”

Friends Essential Reads

When Friends Miss the Mark: Social Support and Friendship

Friendships: A Profound Part of Life, But Sometimes Not All Roses

In addition, as Kirk Schneider recalled of his collaboration with May on their clinical book The Psychology of Existence, he “lamented that young people didn’t study history as much as they should, particularly the great myths. He spoke emphatically about how historical events and myths teach us how to handle our current anxieties.” Like Maslow and Rogers, May as a cofounder of humanistic psychology felt it essential that age segregation be decisively reversed in American society.