September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years | Maggie Scarf

September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years | Maggie Scarf | Hang on; it might get better

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September Songs: T...

	September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years Maggie Scarf Riverhead Hardcover, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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An unexpected?and surprisingly positive? exploration of the benefits awaiting married baby boomers in their ?bonus? years from the New York Times?bestselling author of Intimate Partners.

In September Songs, journalist and author Maggie Scarf finds that marriage has undergone some fascinating changes since she wrote her bestselling Intimate Partners. Over the course of the twentieth century, thirty years of life have been added to normal human life expectancy?what the author calls ?the bonus years.? This means that couples will often live together for years after their children have left home, and perhaps well past retirement. This extra time is bringing change to our long-term relationships, especially marriage.

In a series of intimate interviews, Scarf delves into the lives of couples married for more than two decades and discerns encouraging new insights about marriage. Seen through the eyes of these baby boomers as they move into this new phase of life, we hear?in the couples? own words?how they survived the bumps together and learned to balance their needs with those of their partners. Scarf reveals that, in many ways, men and women in long-term marriages are far happier and more fulfilled in their relationships today than when they were younger.

A compelling and human portrait of the long-term emotional, psychological, and physical benefits of a lasting commitment to another, September Songs uncovers the challenges and new opportunities couples find to love, cherish, and live alongside each other in the extra years they have together.

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Closer, Deeper, Stronger

Here's the blueprint for a happy, lifelong union. It's called "staying together no matter what" --- and these couples, married 40 or 50 years or longer, tell you exactly how they did it.

Author Maggie Scarf has written a wonderful treatise on fulfillment in marriage, and shows us how you get there: going through hard times, and moving forward with courage and commitment to a better tomorrow.

There's nothing simplistic here, no formula, no program. Instead, there's the sage advice of 'the greatest generation' and others --- showing us the virtue and value of keeping your promises and staying together.

A great gift for a wedding or anniversary --- and a great read for yourself.

Dr. David & Lisa Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
Del Mar, California
Authors of ten books, including: The Soul-Mate Marriage: The Spiritual Journey of Becoming One

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Hang on; it might get better

If a marriage is less than perfect and the kids are out from under then why do people stay married? I think that's the question Maggie Scarf sets out to answer. She arrives at a very up-beat set of solutions. Just hang on in there and it won't be as bad as you think. Her methods are at least partly scientific. She reviews what has been written on the subject and she conducted structured interviews, including questions about health, sex and money, with 75 couples. A lot of the book, probably its most readable part, consists of descriptions of six of these interviews.
Of course we can't know how objective she was, and maybe she would have had trouble finding a publisher for a book that just said we get more miserable as we get older. Suicide rates go up, especially for old white guys, although there is evidence that women suffer less depression.
I think this will be of interest to older married couples. For professionals in the field of geriatric mental health it is lacking in scientific rigor. The writing is clear but klunky; full of adverbs and phrases such as "both members of the pair nodded in energetic agreement."

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