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I was pleased, maybe a little smug even, to read a recent report on research showing that middle-aged women have the most empathy of all segments of the population, published in the Journal of Gerontology—Psychological Sciences. This pleased me in part because as a social worker and social work instructor, empathy is a major concept and skill we use in our work with clients and teach our students to embrace. Empathy means being able to see things from the perspective of another, to understand how their experience feels to them, and it can be a powerful tool in forming and maintaining trusting relationships.
In the research above, the authors measured empathy two ways: as “Empathic Concern,” meaning an emotional interest in the situations of others, and as “Perspective Taking,” the cognitive ability to imagine what it’s like to be in another person’s situation. Applying empathy in practice involves not only this emotional interest and perspective taking but being able to communicate to the other(s) your concern and perspective taking.
Hearing that mid-life women are especially empathic did not particularly surprise me. Women who are past having young children of our own but still quite a ways from old age often have the energy and the emotional maturity to understand the needs of others and lend emotional support. We get a lot of practice, since many of us are long-term partners, caregivers to older parents, or moms of older kids. And most of us have many, many responsibilities that place us in the midst of the community daily.
The authors address an important point about their study. They cannot be sure that the differences they see in terms of age are not related to the current cohorts of younger, middle-aged, and older people, rather than to chronological age. Maybe the women born in the late 1950’s through early 1970’s are simply more empathic because of the historical context in which they grew up. It’s definitely a possibility. Those of us in this generation of mid-life women were children and teens during times of turbulent social movements that generally led to greater openness about all sorts of issues. That probably has influenced us to be more accepting.
But, no matter in what decade we were born, by mid-life, women have had many exhilarating, satisfying, and illuminating personal experiences. We have also had many disappointing, exhausting, unsettling, painful, or frustrating ones. We’ve known the thrill of being in love—and how it felt when the object of our affections didn’t love us back. We can remember what it was to feel “less than” among a group of peers; to feel overwhelmed and uncertain as a new mom or a new employee; to lose someone we love; to be sick and tired and worried. But we can also remember how it feels to be young and invincible; to work really hard and accomplish something; to keep going even when we were discouraged; to stand up for something we believe in.
None of it was so long ago that we have forgotten and, of course, we are still in the business of richly experiencing every day!
The more openly and deeply we have been able to process our life experiences with our family members, our good friends, our significant others, and sometimes our therapists, the more we will have integrated all the good, the bad and the ugly as part of who we are. And if we have been able to integrate our experiences, it is easier to reflect upon our own past calmly, without too much sadness or defensiveness. All of this allows us to appreciate and understand the situations and feelings of others more readily: the foundation of empathy.
As a woman of a certain age, I find I’ve become a little less self-conscious, a little less focused on myself, less judgmental of my own and others’ shortcomings. Perhaps it’s because I have less to prove. Perhaps it’s because I am not as crazy busy as I was a decade ago. I know I am more aware of the brevity of time and the importance of close relationships now that my parents are getting older and my kids are young adults.
We may be at risk of being overwhelmed by caring for and about others, but empathy may be more helpful than burdensome to us. The researchers of the study here cite literature on the positive benefits of empathy to the empathizer, as well as the recipient. Empathy is a pro-social, relational facilitator, something like etiquette and respect, only different.
Women at mid-life can become empathy leaders in our private lives and in public discourse. We have unprecedented opportunities to offer others our not insubstantial gifts: experience, patience, humor, attention, and perspective.
O’Brian, Konrath, Gruhn & Hagen (2013). Empathic concern and perspective taking: Linear and quadratic effects of age across the adult life span, J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci, 68 (2): 168-175. DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbs055.
