As a result of social conditioning, meaning for men comes primarily from their role in the public sphere, where they labor to provide for their families and struggle to make an impact on the area in which they work. Therefore, when they leave that area, either by voluntary retirement or by being pushed out. When the arena in which they have worked and in which they have found the meaning of their lives either collapses or is abandoned, men very often feel a decline in their self-worth and in the significance of their lives. Whereas women, at least until the women's movement, when women joined men in the workforce in large numbers for the first time, most women derived their purpose from the home. Women derived their meaning from nurturing, feeding, teaching and raising the members of their family. Since a woman's sense of self-worth does not depend on conquering the world outside, they are therefore spared the rupture that the passage of time inflicts on their husbands when they have to give up their place in the world outside. .
Barbara Myerhoff points out; that the proverb, "A woman's work is never done" is usually understood to mean that she has to work all day. But, it also applies to the continuity of over a lifetime" (263). A woman's work is never done, even in old age. A woman is needed at home even when she is no longer needed in the business. And to be needed is a blessing; to be needed is what keeps depression and despair away; to be needed is what gives zest, and purpose to life. More times than not I have heard stories of elderly people dieing, who have been forced to retire and or have no family left. Loneliness and a sense of useless sets in a long of with depression and they just give up. .
It appears that our generation is going to live longer than previous generations. More of us are going to have more years of retirement than the generations before us. Men and women will be retired from the businesses, the offices, the factories, and the companies in which we now find our meaning.