William Bergquist and Gary Quehl
[Note: The complete book (Caring Deeply: Engaging the Four Roles of Life-Fulfilling Generativity) is available for purchase. Use the following link: Caring Deeply.]
Generativity is about caring for that which should be cared for, and this includes the ongoing presence of critical societal values. It is about caring not just for a specific person, organization or community. It is about caring for an idea, for the history of action and achievement, for a particular artifact (e.g., painting, building) that represents a lingering value or exemplifies an ideal of beauty. In Generativity Three we are guardians of something that already exists – or existed in the past. McAdams (McAdams, Hart, and Maruna, 1998, p. 15) hints at this third generativity role when identifying the way in which cultural demands serve as an external motivating source of generativity.
Specifically, like us, McAdams and his colleagues suggest that the extension of time places an important role in generativity: “In its linking of generations, generativity links past and future time.” Like Kotre (1984), McAdams believes that generativity is about our desire to outlive our self. It is about stretching time beyond the boundaries of our own lives. We specifically suggest that this extension of time often takes place by honoring our heritage and preserving that which we most value and about which we most care.
We guard that which is still valuable. We care for that which may no longer exist but should be renewed, re-appreciated, and re-engaged. Generativity Three is about visiting the graves and placing flowers near the headstones of our great grandparents. It is about scrapbooks, telling tales around a campfire, and Veterans’ Day parades. It is about the birthdays of Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. It is about Jackie Robinson, and why many of us still root for his baseball team, the Dodgers.
One source of inspiration for us came from a version of Generativity Three that was proposed by George Vaillant in his important book about the unprecedented longitudinal study begun in 1938 of 200 Harvard graduates: the Grant Study of Adult Development. As with Erikson, Vaillant sets aside our first role of generativity (parenting and conducting projects):
Generativity, of course, may . . . include community building (our fourth role) and other forms of leadership, but not, in my mind, such pursuits as raising children, painting pictures, and growing crops. [Vaillant, 2012, p. 164]
Vaillant also associates himself with most of what Erikson has to say about our second role of generativity:
Generative people care for others in a direct, forward-oriented relationship—mentor to mentee, teacher to student. They are caregivers.” [Vaillant, 2012, p. 165]
However, Vaillant (2012 p. 165) is critical of Erikson’s Generativity Two because he believes his analysis is too restrictive in setting the stage for Generativity Three: “Erikson sometimes fails to distinguish between the care that characterizes Generativity and the wisdom that characterizes Guardianship and which he ascribed, I believe incorrectly, to Integrity (one of Erikson’s other stages of life.)”
It is here where Vaillant offers significant insights into the stage of generativity and contributes to how we define our third role of generativity. He (Vaillant, 2012, p. 165) writes about the Harvard men he was studying during the latter third of their lives who became generative and provided deep care by serving as Guardians of traditions, heritage and culture: “Guardians are caretakers. They take responsibility for the cultural values and riches from which we all benefit, offering their concern beyond specific individuals to their culture as a whole; they engage a social radius that extends beyond their immediate personal surround.”
Much as Generativity Two is an expansion of care beyond our immediate family and our special projects, Generativity Three moves us past deep care about specific people to deep care about an entire set of values and an abiding and important history. In the case of Generativity Three, the expansion has to do with broadening concerns for a much larger group of people (an entire society or culture) and also going backward in time to honor the past. (We will see yet another shift as we move to Generativity Four, an expansion in space – a direct and tangible expansion of care regarding an entire community.)
In the case of both Generativity Three and Generativity Four it is a matter, as Vaillant indicates, of both care and wisdom:
Generativity has to do with the people one chooses to take care of: Guardianship entails a dispassionate and less personal world view. It is possible to imagine care without wisdom, but not wisdom without care—and indeed, in adult development, the capacity to care does precede wisdom. Wisdom requires not only concern, but also the appreciation of irony and ambiguity, and enough perspective and dispassion not to take side. [Vaillant, 2012, p. 165]
We will have more to say about the interplay between wisdom and care as we turn to insights offered by our own mid and late-centurion men and women of the Nevada County, CA, Sage Leadership Project as they reflect on their third and fourth role of generativity. At this point, we merely want to express our view that wisdom is to be found in early adult years as we learn how to become caring parents to our children and to our special projects.
A considerable amount of wisdom is also needed to be an effective Generativity Two mentor, motivator, mobilizer, monitor, and mediator. We wish to honor George Vaillant’s work and build on it by moving forward with our own exploration of the third role of generativity. In short, we wish to emulate the very notion of Generativity Three as a bridge between that which has already existed and that which moves forward into the future.