Composing a Further Life

American politics. “We live longer,” I argued, “but we think shorter.” Since everyone in the group except Pat Schroeder already had at least one grandchild (by the time the project was launched she had a sonogram of a grandchild on the way), we decided to start a grandparents’ campaign based on the twenty-year implications of current issues that our grandchildren would have to deal with: the environment, the deficit, enmities incurred that might lead to future conflict, availability of opportunity, and the preservation of rights and liberties. The slogan would be “I am voting for my grandchild.”
    Statistics show that seniors vote in much larger percentages than other age-groups, partly because we have more time to think about elections and perhaps partly because our approach to politics was formed before more recent episodes of corruption and the resulting cynicism. We hoped that the emphasis on grandchildren would inspire grandparents to put pressure on politicians of both parties to think beyond the next election or the next quarterly earnings report. We argued that any involvement adults might have with young children, whether as family members or students or patients, represents an investment in the future beyond our own lifetimes. Ruth played a key role in making us aware of the increasing child-care role of older adults across the country, either fostering their own grandchildren or helping out while both parents work. And we were all aware that our own grown-up children were under financial and career pressure, overworked with jobs and child care. One of the things we did as a group was to commission national poll questions aimed at grandparents, which showed that our suspicion that grandparenthood influences voting decisions is correct. As far as we could determine, the question had never before been asked.
    The various newspaper columns and op-eds that grew out of the launching of the project, which we called Granny Voter, seem to have led to a greater awareness of the legitimacy and potential influence of the grandparent generation, but we had no program to take forward at the grass roots, and among that heavily committed and engaged group of women, there was no one ready to make Granny Voter her primary project and build it as an ongoing movement. We created a website with the story of Granny Voter, the poll results, photographs of the launching, and the texts of speeches by Geraldine Ferraro, Ruth Massinga, and myself, which is still on the Internet as of this writing at www.GrannyVoter.org . The concept is still waiting for some group to take up the challenge. As long as short-term thinking governs decision making in Washington, we are all at risk.
    The Granny Voter story offers food for thought for older adults. On the one hand, it poses the question of how we concentrate our energies in continuity with what we have done in the past. My friends in the group are all committed and continuing to work for goals that were important in the early years of the women’s movement, which they still share, including a woman’s right to choose, which continues to be under threat. Their loyalties are shaped by the priorities of organizations they want to continue to support and the ongoing participation of these pioneers is valued by the groups they have worked with over the years. Women’s groups seem to value those who have played a historic role more than men’s groups do—perhaps among women there is less of an oedipal thrust for young leaders to step forward. New leaders might come forward more quickly if they were less respectful of the pioneers.
    On the other hand, perhaps the struggle to preserve the right to choose whether or not to have a child and how to care for and educate that child should be in the hands of younger women dealing directly with the issues, while older adults might be rethinking the right to choose death with dignity. Do we stay with the same causes and organizations, or do we translate the fundamental commitments they represent into a new form? Or do we move from local to more global causes? How, when energy is limited, do we choose? It is possible that our efforts carry more conviction when they address others’ problems rather than our own. I was proposing a new activism on the part of older adults that was not on behalf of older adults—though both are important—an activism on behalf of the future beyond our lifetimes, more similar to the Gray Panthers than to