For the last 15 years, Dawn Metcalf, L.I.C.S.W., has served as an MIT resource on aging—helping retirees and other older members of the community identify resources and presenting workshops in conjunction with the MIT Center for Work, Family & Personal Life.

Metcalf also consults with the adult children of aging parents, assisting them with the logistics of long-term planning and the far thornier issues of renegotiating and redefining the parent-child relationship. "It can be hard for a middle-aged child to navigate this role reversal, to feel like he or she can legitimately be in charge of a parent," Metcalf says. "The adult child may be a very high-level executive, but when she deals with her parents, she's still 'the kid.' All those executive skills just seem to vanish. Being able to talk with someone like me, who can act as a sort of coach, can be really helpful."

We're all living longer these days, emphasizes MIT Medical social worker, Dawn Metcalf, L.I.C.S.W. "Take the age of the oldest relative who lived and died during your lifetime, and add 13 years—six if you're a smoker," she instructs. "That's a rough estimate of your life expectancy. It's mind-boggling, but many of us could live well beyond 100."

For the last 15 years, Metcalf has served as a resource on aging for the MIT community, offering seminars and workshops, helping Institute retirees and other older members of the community tap into useful resources, and consulting with the adult children of aging parents.

Where's your community?

Metcalf sees two distinct populations of MIT retirees. "One is comprised of people—mostly faculty members and administrators—who came to live in this area in order to work at MIT. The other group are people who worked at MIT because they lived in the area." Most individuals in the second group have strong ties to their local communities, Metcalf notes, and as they age, they are more likely to find the resources they need without her help.

But for the first group, Metcalf says, the Institute often becomes their community, and even after retiring, their social and intellectual lives revolve around the MIT campus. "It's wonderful to be able to maintain those ties, to continue to have a kind of intellectual peer group," Metcalf comments, "but when these individuals get to be 85 or 90 years old, they need services. And the services are in their local communities. I try to encourage people in this first group, as they retire from MIT, to get more involved in their local communities while they are still relatively young, because it will make a big difference in quality of life as they age."

Family matters

Every year, Metcalf does about 125 consultations with adult children of aging parents—employees taking advantage of MIT's Personal Assistance Program, members of the MIT Health Plan, or children of MIT retirees who may have no personal Institute affiliation. "What happens initially is that people come to recognize that something is changing within their family," she says. "They may be having a hard time convincing a parent to see the doctor, or perhaps they've noticed an older relative having memory problems. Or it might be the inevitable 'home is not a safe place for the elder any more.'" Often, Metcalf adds, there's a great deal of geographic distance involved, which greatly complicates matters.

"People come in and tell me their stories," she explains. "What are they concerned about? What have they tried? What has worked? What hasn't worked? What are the needs? Who's available? And together we begin to devise some strategies."

Metcalf can help locate resources in a parent's local area. "We can find a geriatric care manager and consult local attorneys and accountants. We can talk to the parent's physician. And we can come up with an organized network of care providers." But she cautions individuals to think about informal supports as well. "It's people like the hairdresser, the taxi driver, and the grocer who are the first to notice when people start to change. So as the adult child of an aging parent, you want to identify and stay in touch with these people as well."

Beyond logistics

Aside from identifying resources, constructing care networks, and engaging in long-term planning, adult children of aging parents are dealing with "really tough relationship issues," Metcalf emphasizes. "It can be hard for a middle-aged child to navigate this role reversal, to feel like he or she can legitimately be in charge of a parent. The adult child may be a very high-level executive, but when she deals with her parents, she's still 'the kid.' All those executive skills just seem to vanish. Being able to talk with someone like me, who can act as a sort of coach, can be really helpful."

There are also the more pervasive issues of stress and lack of time, Metcalf adds. "Taking half a day off to take your mother to the doctor may not seem like much to your co-workers, but you're probably also getting three or four phone calls a day. You're stopping in to check on her on your way home from work. And on the weekends, you're probably cooking a few extra meals or running over to help with the housekeeping.

"It's an extraordinary amount of work that is never accounted for in this economy, never even acknowledged," Metcalf says. "People just tack on two more hours to the day—every day."

Ending the isolation

With so many people dealing with these issues, Metcalf wishes we could feel more comfortable talking with each other about this part of our lives. "We commiserate freely about childcare difficulties," she says. "But we don't talk about caring for our aging parents, because everybody thinks it's very depressing.

"It would be nice to be able to talk about it in a way that is not demoralizing and burdening," Metalf says. "We should be able to talk about the difficult times with each other, but we should also be able to talk about the good times—to say, 'You know, this is a pretty good thing that we are doing, to stay in touch with our elders and to care for them. We can enjoy it, and we can get something back from it."