INT’L. J. AGING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, Vol. 31 (3) 197-203,1990
THE CALL TO VOCATION: LIFE HISTORIES OF ELDERLY WOMEN RELIGIOUS
MARY ALICE WOLF,ED.D. Saint Joseph College West Hartford, Connecticut
ABSTRACT
Thirty elderly women religious (Catholic nuns) were studied using a phenomenological interview technique. This paper discusses the women’s “call to vocation”-the remembered life events that influenced their decisions to enter the convent as young girls. The women talked about romantic and pragmatic motivations as well as spiritual direction. Remembrances of three of the study participants are used to demonstrate circumstances and emotions that led the women to choose their life course. The recollections have significance for the women religious in late life; they provide a source of satisfaction and commitment. They also offer researchers a means of viewing the worlds of this population of women.
INTRODUCTION
The story of a life is the essence of human development. Telling that story requires one to look at accomplishments and losses in childhood and adult worlds. In the process, friends, family, jobs, dreams, and disappointments come into focus. This experience is not unlike looking back through a photograph album. “Yes, I used to look this way. Here I am when I was younger. I look the same-younger, but still the same. And look at my youthful parents!” The process of personal historical reflection is believed to be a “normative and universal experience” that is undertaken by older adults [l,21. By studying selfperceptions of subjective experience, developmental researchers are given rich opportunities to examine choices and transitions throughout the lifespan [3].
197 Q 1990, Baywood Publishing CQ.,Inc.
doi: 10.2190/QFV9-Y69F-1AH0-YRMW http://baywood.com
198 I WOLF
THE STUDY In this study, 30 elderly women religious were interviewed in a three-session protocol; the goal was to acquire data on their lives and to understand their personal choices throughout their lifespan. The interviewer encouraged the exploration of various themes: early family and educational circumstances, initiation into religious life, work and personal history, current life .pursuits, and satisfaction. For the participants in this study, the semiretired state was new, affording opportunity for personal reflection. Now in old age, they could see in retrospect the choices and directions taken throughout their lives. The study was set in a phenomenological framework based on the work of Berger and Luckmann [4], Coles [5], and Schutz [6]. The interview protocol used was that of Schumann [7], Seidman, Sullivan and Schatzkamer [8], and Wolf [9]. Three one-hour interviews were conducted over a three-week period. The first was related to background, early memories; the second, to further personal history, including work-life and present experiences; the third, to evaluation and a statement of meaning. These interviews were taperecorded, transcribed, and analyzed through an ongoing discovery of emerging themes (based on the “grounded theory” concept of Glaser and Strauss [lo]). The themes were childhood, the call (the vocation), the novice state, friendship, life in a community, the habit as a symbol, old age, and the legacy. This paper presents data related to the theme “the call to vocation” (the decision to enter the convent). Three life histories are discussed. These individual stories reflect patterns found in the larger population. The historical and cultural context for the women was strikingly similar and, despite highly personal motivations, many of the women in the community studied related comparable histories. THE CALL TO VOCATION: ROMANCE AND AMBITION
Sister Karen
Sister Karen, age 86, was the eldest of five daughters born to Irish immigrants. Her parents came separately to the United States and married while in their thirties. According to Karen, hers was a “devoted religious family” with her mother taking an especially strong religious role in the home. Her father was “honest, clean-minded.” When Sister Karen was in ninth grade, her 3-year-old sister died of spinal meningitis. “When she died something went out of my father’s life,” she said. In the same year, Karen made the decision to become a nun. A seventh-grade teacher had earlier been a “spiritual mentor,” but it was her ninth-grade teacher who actually advised her to follow “the vocation with God’s grace.” Upon hearing of her daughter’s goal, Sister Karen’s mother stated emphatically, “When you enter the convent, you will become the spouse of Christ. That is like a marriage
THE CALL TO VOCATION f 199
proposal.” She expressed pleasure that one of her children would fulfill what had, in fact, been an aspiration of her own. First-generation Irish immigrants thought the convent life prestigious, especially because working-class individuals in Ireland could not aspire to the religious life. Sister Karen finished high school and entered the convent in the fall. When asked if she had entered to avoid the pettiness of everyday life, she answered, “NO, I wasn’t looking for a life of peace or a life without any tumult. It wasn’t that. It was . . . my purpose was to dedicate my life to God and that’s why it was so hard.”
Sister Fay Sister Fay, born to Irish immigrants in 1900, was the youngest of ten children, only five of whom survived to adulthood. When Fay was two years old, her mother died. “We grew up with myths of her,” she said. One such myth centered around the family’s desire to produce priests and nuns: They were always telling me about what a very religious woman my mother was . . . and how she always wanted a priest or a nun. . . You know, the second son in an Irish family became a doctor, lawyer, or priest.” (Two brothers did enter the seminary: one died, the second left.)
As a child Fay admired a group of women religious who attended a nearby church. She remembered: I used to watch these sisters. They would be walking after supper nights. So I would sit there and wait for them to come down the walk for their adoration. I used to go very quickly after school during that time I knew they would be there-just to look at them. Praying there, just praying there in their group. . . Then a priest called me and he said, “I see you at morning Mass and I’m more or less interested in you. Did you ever think of becoming a nun?” (I hadn’t talked to anyone about it yet.)
.
At age 13, Sister Fay “felt the call.” She went to a local convent, rang the bell, and asked to join. She was told by the sister in charge, “You are too young, but I’m glad to know Our Lord is in your life and that He is calling you.” For some years later, the young girl took to standing outside or walking by the building. On Sunday afternoons with a “joyful little group” of friends, she visited the local priest who gave them religious materials to read. During this time, Sister Fay began reading about her childhood heroine, Saint Theresa, “the little flower.” Indeed, a romantic version of life in the convent contributed to Fay’s ideation, and this mingled with her interest in Theresa: She was very young. And she went to the Pope, and she made her First Communion. And he knew she was a very special person, and she had a special devotion. . . She died of consumption. . . She kept saying, “After I die I will let fall a shower of roses.” And she did, too.
.
.
200 1 WOLF
She was so beautiful. She used to go and wheel all the sisters in the infirmary in the wheelchair, and if she got any abuse from them (you know the way they can be), she would take it. She suffered a great deal; her health wasn’t too good. . . . Her mother died; she lost her mother and her father. I read in her life how she went out and asked her father if she could be a nun. And he was delighted. So I said, 1’11 go out under the grape arbor. And I said, “Pop, I want to see you under the grape arbor.” Interviewer: Why, was her father under the grape arbor when she asked him? Yes. yes. And we had one in the back yard. And I said, “I want to be a nun.” And he said, “Nothing would please me more. ‘‘But,” he said, “don’t be a nun that has to go behind the bars.” (You see, in those days if you were a person with a good education you would dress one way, but those who didn’t have any education and they worked at domestic work-they wore different apparel. That was the way it was when we entered.)
Sister Fay explained that a class system existed within the convent. Those “behind the bars” were cloistered, wore a “different kind of a bonnet,” and were trained as housekeepers. Others “had the veil” and were educated: That’s the way it was. And so he said to me, “I don’t want you to go behind the because we’re going to educate you. We want bars.” He said, “Don’t be like you to be educated.” At that time I wanted to be a teacher.
-
After completing three years of high school, Sister Fay entered the convent at the age of 18. She was educated to be a teacher, fulfilling the ambition of her father who had been denied an education in Ireland. (“The English wouldn’t let them have any education over there,” she said.) For Fay, myth, legend, romance, and ambition were fused; she achieved her dream. Sister Marie
Sister Marie, age 82, was born of Canadian immigrants who had settled in a small northeastern town. Each had been married previously, had had four children, and had lost these first families through death. There were eight children of this second union, three of whom died in childhood. To young Marie, who was six when one baby sister died, motherhood must have seemed a perilous occupation. As the oldest girl of the family, Marie nursed siblings and parents. At age 14, she became the eldest child after the death of her older brother “during the flu. . . . It wiped out whole families in 1918,” she recalled. The family prospered in the village, and Marie was sent to a Catholic boarding school. “My mother and father, neither of them had any formal education. But they were determined that their children would.” Of her vocation, Marie said: I’ve never doubted that I should have become a nun. If that’s what God wanted, that’s what I wanted.
THE CALL TO VOCATION I 201
My senior year I decided to enter the convent. It was not unusual for girls to enter before they finished school, because generally, we knew we would be sent back to finish (Which I did-I went back.). . . I weighed all the possibilities, you know. It was a conviction that that is what God wanted me to do.
.
Sister Marie achieved her educational goal; she trained as a nurse and hospital administrator. In later life, she became the chief administrator of a large city hospital. Her conviction that God wanted her to make this choice is strong, however, particularly in late life and in a time of extremely poor health. It is this vision of “the call” that informs Sister Marie at age 82. She says, “I had a vow of obedience, and I must say that I’ve always been happy to follow what I was asked to do. . . . I simply always followed the path. There was no question of not doing that.”
CONCLUSIONS In reflecting on the meaning of their experiences, the women talked about “the call” in terms of spiritual direction (“I did what I was called to do”) as well as in career terms (“I knew I would get an education.”) Certainly the women felt they chose their own path in life, yet some indicated that they were also chosen. This belief may afford a means of self-validation, a source of life satisfaction in old age. The self-assessment of the personal narration provides an individual the opportunity to reconstruct earlier experience in light of current needs [ll-151. Commitment and the assurance that they had chosen the right path in life was to some degree echoed by many of the women religious in the population studied. Although the women believed they were called, they also declared that they chose to “answer the call.” Commitment is a key to a sense of autonomy, central to self-esteem [16]. This ongoing reaffirmation of lifelong commitment is essential within the community of elderly women religious, particularly now, when there are few new women entering. Many communities are facing a crisis of old age [17,18]. The mean age in this study community was 72 years. Exploration into the worlds of nontraditional women may lead gerontologists to reconsider definitions of “masculine” and “feminine” 119, 201, to appreciate a divergent population whose stance is neither “traditional” nor “independent” [21], and to focus further on the never-married woman in retirement [22,23]. There are many areas of women’s development that are not yet reflected in the literature on aging: divergent life choices afford developmentalists the opportunity to reexamine earlier assumptions about normative life courses [24] and to explore stereotypical views of women [25]. Examination of subjective experience through life histories and narratives in old age can provide the means to better understand the course of human life.
202 I WOLF
REFERENCES 1. R. N. Butler, The Life Review: An Interpretation of Reminiscence in the Aged, Psychiao, 26, pp. 65-76,1963. 2. R. N. Butler, Successful Aging and the Role of the Life Review, in Readings indging and Death: Contemporary Perspectives (2nd edition), S . R. Zarit (ed.), Harper and Row, New York, pp. 20-26, 1982. 3. C. D. Ryff, The Subjective Experience of Life-Span Transitions, in Gender and the Life Course, A. S . Rossi (ed.), Aldine, New York, pp. 97-113, 1985. 4. P. B. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, Doubleday, Garden City, New york, 1967. 5. R. Coles, Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers, Little, Brown, Boston, 1971. 6. D. Schumann, Policy Analysis, Education and Everyday Life, unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1980. 7. A. Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, J. Wild (ed.), G. Walsh and F. Lehnert (trans.), Northwestern University, Chicago, 1967. 8. E. Seidman, P. Sullivan, and M. S. Schatzkamer, The Work of Community College Faculfy: A Study Through In-depth Interviewing, Report to the National Institute of Education, 1983. 9. M. A. Wolf, The Meaning of Education in Late Life: An Exploration in Life Review, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, 5:3, pp. 51-59, 1985. 10. B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss, The Discovery ofGrounded Theory, Aldine, Chicago, 1967. 11. M. Kaminsky, The Uses of Reminiscence: A Discussion of the Formative Literature, in The Uses of Reminiscence: New Ways of Working with Older Adults, M. Kaminsky (ed.), Haworth Press, New York, pp. 137-156,1984. 12. A. W. McMahon, Jr. and P. J. Rhudick, Reminiscing in the Aged: An Adaptational Response, in Psychodynamic Studies on Aging: Creativity, Reminiscing and Dying, S . Levin and R. J. Kahana (eds.), International Universities Press, New York, 1967. 13. B. Myerhoff, Number Our Days, p. 14, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1979. 14. M. A. Wolf, The Experience of Education in Adult Education, Lifelong Learning, 8 5 , pp. 8-11,1985. 15. M. A. Wolf, Growth and Development with Older Women Religious, Lifelong Learning, 9:4, pp. 7-10,28, 1986. 16. E. H. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed, W. W. Norton, New York, 1982. 17. E. Kolmer, Religious Women in the United States, Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, Delaware, 1984. 18. M. A. Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition, Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, Delaware, 1984. 19. D. Gutmann, Parenthood: A Key to the Comparative Study of the Life Cycle, in Life-span Developmental Psychology, L. Ginsberg and N. Datan (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 167-184,1975. 20. P. Self, The Further Evolution of the Parental Imperative, in Life-span Developmental Psychology, L. Ginsberg and N. Datan (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 185189,1975.
THE CALL TO VOCATION / 203
21. F. B. Livson, Patterns of Personality Development in Middle-aged Women: A Longitudinal Study, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 7 2 , pp. 107-115, 1976. 22. R. Braito and D. Anderson, The Ever-single Elderly Woman, in Older Women, E. W. Markson (ed.), Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, pp. 195-225,1983. 23. M. O’Brien, Being Never-married, Eighty Years and Over, and a Woman: The Experience in Prince Edward Island, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Canada, 1985. 24. C. Buhler and F. Massarik (eds.), The Course of Human Life, Springer, New York, 1969. 25. C. B. Giesen and N. Datan, The Competent Older Woman, in Transitions of Aging, N. Datan and N. Imhmann (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 57-72,1980.
Direct reprint requests to: Mary Alice Wolf, Ed.D. Director, Inst. in Gerontology Saint Joseph College West Hartford, CT 06117
THE CALL TO VOCATION: LIFE HISTORIES OF ELDERLY WOMEN RELIGIOUS
MARY ALICE WOLF,ED.D. Saint Joseph College West Hartford, Connecticut
ABSTRACT
Thirty elderly women religious (Catholic nuns) were studied using a phenomenological interview technique. This paper discusses the women’s “call to vocation”-the remembered life events that influenced their decisions to enter the convent as young girls. The women talked about romantic and pragmatic motivations as well as spiritual direction. Remembrances of three of the study participants are used to demonstrate circumstances and emotions that led the women to choose their life course. The recollections have significance for the women religious in late life; they provide a source of satisfaction and commitment. They also offer researchers a means of viewing the worlds of this population of women.
INTRODUCTION
The story of a life is the essence of human development. Telling that story requires one to look at accomplishments and losses in childhood and adult worlds. In the process, friends, family, jobs, dreams, and disappointments come into focus. This experience is not unlike looking back through a photograph album. “Yes, I used to look this way. Here I am when I was younger. I look the same-younger, but still the same. And look at my youthful parents!” The process of personal historical reflection is believed to be a “normative and universal experience” that is undertaken by older adults [l,21. By studying selfperceptions of subjective experience, developmental researchers are given rich opportunities to examine choices and transitions throughout the lifespan [3].
197 Q 1990, Baywood Publishing CQ.,Inc.
doi: 10.2190/QFV9-Y69F-1AH0-YRMW http://baywood.com
198 I WOLF
THE STUDY In this study, 30 elderly women religious were interviewed in a three-session protocol; the goal was to acquire data on their lives and to understand their personal choices throughout their lifespan. The interviewer encouraged the exploration of various themes: early family and educational circumstances, initiation into religious life, work and personal history, current life .pursuits, and satisfaction. For the participants in this study, the semiretired state was new, affording opportunity for personal reflection. Now in old age, they could see in retrospect the choices and directions taken throughout their lives. The study was set in a phenomenological framework based on the work of Berger and Luckmann [4], Coles [5], and Schutz [6]. The interview protocol used was that of Schumann [7], Seidman, Sullivan and Schatzkamer [8], and Wolf [9]. Three one-hour interviews were conducted over a three-week period. The first was related to background, early memories; the second, to further personal history, including work-life and present experiences; the third, to evaluation and a statement of meaning. These interviews were taperecorded, transcribed, and analyzed through an ongoing discovery of emerging themes (based on the “grounded theory” concept of Glaser and Strauss [lo]). The themes were childhood, the call (the vocation), the novice state, friendship, life in a community, the habit as a symbol, old age, and the legacy. This paper presents data related to the theme “the call to vocation” (the decision to enter the convent). Three life histories are discussed. These individual stories reflect patterns found in the larger population. The historical and cultural context for the women was strikingly similar and, despite highly personal motivations, many of the women in the community studied related comparable histories. THE CALL TO VOCATION: ROMANCE AND AMBITION
Sister Karen
Sister Karen, age 86, was the eldest of five daughters born to Irish immigrants. Her parents came separately to the United States and married while in their thirties. According to Karen, hers was a “devoted religious family” with her mother taking an especially strong religious role in the home. Her father was “honest, clean-minded.” When Sister Karen was in ninth grade, her 3-year-old sister died of spinal meningitis. “When she died something went out of my father’s life,” she said. In the same year, Karen made the decision to become a nun. A seventh-grade teacher had earlier been a “spiritual mentor,” but it was her ninth-grade teacher who actually advised her to follow “the vocation with God’s grace.” Upon hearing of her daughter’s goal, Sister Karen’s mother stated emphatically, “When you enter the convent, you will become the spouse of Christ. That is like a marriage
THE CALL TO VOCATION f 199
proposal.” She expressed pleasure that one of her children would fulfill what had, in fact, been an aspiration of her own. First-generation Irish immigrants thought the convent life prestigious, especially because working-class individuals in Ireland could not aspire to the religious life. Sister Karen finished high school and entered the convent in the fall. When asked if she had entered to avoid the pettiness of everyday life, she answered, “NO, I wasn’t looking for a life of peace or a life without any tumult. It wasn’t that. It was . . . my purpose was to dedicate my life to God and that’s why it was so hard.”
Sister Fay Sister Fay, born to Irish immigrants in 1900, was the youngest of ten children, only five of whom survived to adulthood. When Fay was two years old, her mother died. “We grew up with myths of her,” she said. One such myth centered around the family’s desire to produce priests and nuns: They were always telling me about what a very religious woman my mother was . . . and how she always wanted a priest or a nun. . . You know, the second son in an Irish family became a doctor, lawyer, or priest.” (Two brothers did enter the seminary: one died, the second left.)
As a child Fay admired a group of women religious who attended a nearby church. She remembered: I used to watch these sisters. They would be walking after supper nights. So I would sit there and wait for them to come down the walk for their adoration. I used to go very quickly after school during that time I knew they would be there-just to look at them. Praying there, just praying there in their group. . . Then a priest called me and he said, “I see you at morning Mass and I’m more or less interested in you. Did you ever think of becoming a nun?” (I hadn’t talked to anyone about it yet.)
.
At age 13, Sister Fay “felt the call.” She went to a local convent, rang the bell, and asked to join. She was told by the sister in charge, “You are too young, but I’m glad to know Our Lord is in your life and that He is calling you.” For some years later, the young girl took to standing outside or walking by the building. On Sunday afternoons with a “joyful little group” of friends, she visited the local priest who gave them religious materials to read. During this time, Sister Fay began reading about her childhood heroine, Saint Theresa, “the little flower.” Indeed, a romantic version of life in the convent contributed to Fay’s ideation, and this mingled with her interest in Theresa: She was very young. And she went to the Pope, and she made her First Communion. And he knew she was a very special person, and she had a special devotion. . . She died of consumption. . . She kept saying, “After I die I will let fall a shower of roses.” And she did, too.
.
.
200 1 WOLF
She was so beautiful. She used to go and wheel all the sisters in the infirmary in the wheelchair, and if she got any abuse from them (you know the way they can be), she would take it. She suffered a great deal; her health wasn’t too good. . . . Her mother died; she lost her mother and her father. I read in her life how she went out and asked her father if she could be a nun. And he was delighted. So I said, 1’11 go out under the grape arbor. And I said, “Pop, I want to see you under the grape arbor.” Interviewer: Why, was her father under the grape arbor when she asked him? Yes. yes. And we had one in the back yard. And I said, “I want to be a nun.” And he said, “Nothing would please me more. ‘‘But,” he said, “don’t be a nun that has to go behind the bars.” (You see, in those days if you were a person with a good education you would dress one way, but those who didn’t have any education and they worked at domestic work-they wore different apparel. That was the way it was when we entered.)
Sister Fay explained that a class system existed within the convent. Those “behind the bars” were cloistered, wore a “different kind of a bonnet,” and were trained as housekeepers. Others “had the veil” and were educated: That’s the way it was. And so he said to me, “I don’t want you to go behind the because we’re going to educate you. We want bars.” He said, “Don’t be like you to be educated.” At that time I wanted to be a teacher.
-
After completing three years of high school, Sister Fay entered the convent at the age of 18. She was educated to be a teacher, fulfilling the ambition of her father who had been denied an education in Ireland. (“The English wouldn’t let them have any education over there,” she said.) For Fay, myth, legend, romance, and ambition were fused; she achieved her dream. Sister Marie
Sister Marie, age 82, was born of Canadian immigrants who had settled in a small northeastern town. Each had been married previously, had had four children, and had lost these first families through death. There were eight children of this second union, three of whom died in childhood. To young Marie, who was six when one baby sister died, motherhood must have seemed a perilous occupation. As the oldest girl of the family, Marie nursed siblings and parents. At age 14, she became the eldest child after the death of her older brother “during the flu. . . . It wiped out whole families in 1918,” she recalled. The family prospered in the village, and Marie was sent to a Catholic boarding school. “My mother and father, neither of them had any formal education. But they were determined that their children would.” Of her vocation, Marie said: I’ve never doubted that I should have become a nun. If that’s what God wanted, that’s what I wanted.
THE CALL TO VOCATION I 201
My senior year I decided to enter the convent. It was not unusual for girls to enter before they finished school, because generally, we knew we would be sent back to finish (Which I did-I went back.). . . I weighed all the possibilities, you know. It was a conviction that that is what God wanted me to do.
.
Sister Marie achieved her educational goal; she trained as a nurse and hospital administrator. In later life, she became the chief administrator of a large city hospital. Her conviction that God wanted her to make this choice is strong, however, particularly in late life and in a time of extremely poor health. It is this vision of “the call” that informs Sister Marie at age 82. She says, “I had a vow of obedience, and I must say that I’ve always been happy to follow what I was asked to do. . . . I simply always followed the path. There was no question of not doing that.”
CONCLUSIONS In reflecting on the meaning of their experiences, the women talked about “the call” in terms of spiritual direction (“I did what I was called to do”) as well as in career terms (“I knew I would get an education.”) Certainly the women felt they chose their own path in life, yet some indicated that they were also chosen. This belief may afford a means of self-validation, a source of life satisfaction in old age. The self-assessment of the personal narration provides an individual the opportunity to reconstruct earlier experience in light of current needs [ll-151. Commitment and the assurance that they had chosen the right path in life was to some degree echoed by many of the women religious in the population studied. Although the women believed they were called, they also declared that they chose to “answer the call.” Commitment is a key to a sense of autonomy, central to self-esteem [16]. This ongoing reaffirmation of lifelong commitment is essential within the community of elderly women religious, particularly now, when there are few new women entering. Many communities are facing a crisis of old age [17,18]. The mean age in this study community was 72 years. Exploration into the worlds of nontraditional women may lead gerontologists to reconsider definitions of “masculine” and “feminine” 119, 201, to appreciate a divergent population whose stance is neither “traditional” nor “independent” [21], and to focus further on the never-married woman in retirement [22,23]. There are many areas of women’s development that are not yet reflected in the literature on aging: divergent life choices afford developmentalists the opportunity to reexamine earlier assumptions about normative life courses [24] and to explore stereotypical views of women [25]. Examination of subjective experience through life histories and narratives in old age can provide the means to better understand the course of human life.
202 I WOLF
REFERENCES 1. R. N. Butler, The Life Review: An Interpretation of Reminiscence in the Aged, Psychiao, 26, pp. 65-76,1963. 2. R. N. Butler, Successful Aging and the Role of the Life Review, in Readings indging and Death: Contemporary Perspectives (2nd edition), S . R. Zarit (ed.), Harper and Row, New York, pp. 20-26, 1982. 3. C. D. Ryff, The Subjective Experience of Life-Span Transitions, in Gender and the Life Course, A. S . Rossi (ed.), Aldine, New York, pp. 97-113, 1985. 4. P. B. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, Doubleday, Garden City, New york, 1967. 5. R. Coles, Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers, Little, Brown, Boston, 1971. 6. D. Schumann, Policy Analysis, Education and Everyday Life, unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1980. 7. A. Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, J. Wild (ed.), G. Walsh and F. Lehnert (trans.), Northwestern University, Chicago, 1967. 8. E. Seidman, P. Sullivan, and M. S. Schatzkamer, The Work of Community College Faculfy: A Study Through In-depth Interviewing, Report to the National Institute of Education, 1983. 9. M. A. Wolf, The Meaning of Education in Late Life: An Exploration in Life Review, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, 5:3, pp. 51-59, 1985. 10. B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss, The Discovery ofGrounded Theory, Aldine, Chicago, 1967. 11. M. Kaminsky, The Uses of Reminiscence: A Discussion of the Formative Literature, in The Uses of Reminiscence: New Ways of Working with Older Adults, M. Kaminsky (ed.), Haworth Press, New York, pp. 137-156,1984. 12. A. W. McMahon, Jr. and P. J. Rhudick, Reminiscing in the Aged: An Adaptational Response, in Psychodynamic Studies on Aging: Creativity, Reminiscing and Dying, S . Levin and R. J. Kahana (eds.), International Universities Press, New York, 1967. 13. B. Myerhoff, Number Our Days, p. 14, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1979. 14. M. A. Wolf, The Experience of Education in Adult Education, Lifelong Learning, 8 5 , pp. 8-11,1985. 15. M. A. Wolf, Growth and Development with Older Women Religious, Lifelong Learning, 9:4, pp. 7-10,28, 1986. 16. E. H. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed, W. W. Norton, New York, 1982. 17. E. Kolmer, Religious Women in the United States, Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, Delaware, 1984. 18. M. A. Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition, Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, Delaware, 1984. 19. D. Gutmann, Parenthood: A Key to the Comparative Study of the Life Cycle, in Life-span Developmental Psychology, L. Ginsberg and N. Datan (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 167-184,1975. 20. P. Self, The Further Evolution of the Parental Imperative, in Life-span Developmental Psychology, L. Ginsberg and N. Datan (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 185189,1975.
THE CALL TO VOCATION / 203
21. F. B. Livson, Patterns of Personality Development in Middle-aged Women: A Longitudinal Study, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 7 2 , pp. 107-115, 1976. 22. R. Braito and D. Anderson, The Ever-single Elderly Woman, in Older Women, E. W. Markson (ed.), Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, pp. 195-225,1983. 23. M. O’Brien, Being Never-married, Eighty Years and Over, and a Woman: The Experience in Prince Edward Island, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Canada, 1985. 24. C. Buhler and F. Massarik (eds.), The Course of Human Life, Springer, New York, 1969. 25. C. B. Giesen and N. Datan, The Competent Older Woman, in Transitions of Aging, N. Datan and N. Imhmann (eds.), Academic Press, New York, pp. 57-72,1980.
Direct reprint requests to: Mary Alice Wolf, Ed.D. Director, Inst. in Gerontology Saint Joseph College West Hartford, CT 06117
