Many Americans Changing Jobs And Life At 40

Press, Issue 32333, 26 June 1970, Page 19

Many Americans Changing Jobs And Life At 40

(From HARRY ROBINSON, in New York) American men in their thousands are now undergoing a change of life around 40 years of age. Some are changing jobs, some are changing their roles in society and some are changing their patterns of living. They are not dropouts or harum-scarum job hoppers, but men well established in business and professions—men who could go on for 20 years from success to success.

They are not changing merely to make more money. Some will earn less. What they are seeking is more challenge, more satisfaction, more peace of mind. The urge to break into something new seems to strike any time from the middle-thirties to tye middleforties, but even some 50-year-olds are switching roles.

American sociologists are asking why. So far they don't have exact answers but agree that a common factor is a bad taste with life as it has developed in America. Status, income, three cars in the family stable, no longer are enough. Or rather, they are not the right things for happiness. Advertising Priest Take Joe Pintauro, of New York City. He was brought up in the suburban borough of Queens, became, a Roman Catholic priest and served in a parish for eight years. Then he turned away from pastoral work and towards high pressure business—advertising. He has leave from the Church to write copy for the huge agency of Young and Rubicam. Pintauro has bad three books of poetry published. It seems he feels freer to express himself outside the milieu of the Church. He says is is socially important to make good, attractive, honest advertisments. Ugliness, he says, is killing kids and millionaires alike. Take Dr William O'Brien who is moving the other way —from advertising to religion. He is executive vicepresident of an advertising agency specialising in ethical drugs. As the O’Brien children grew up, he became involved in church affairs. Then he studied and found exciting new values in Christian philosophy. Life took a new turn.

O'Brien has taken holy orders and is now a vicar of a church in New Jersey. His role is to be pastor to about 60 families.

Rick Tiefer was a whizzkid businessman in a tough game: trucking. By the time he was 27 he had created for himself an enterprise valued at $3,500,000. But the strains were brutal. Tiefer’s drivers had accidents, his shipments were hijacked, he had to pay people under the lap to operate.

In the old days, he would have simply employed executives to do the worrying. But Tiefer reacted differently. He rejected the trucking-boss way of life and got out. Last Christmas he and his wife opened a Madison Avenug speciality shop selling maternity clothes. It is showing a profit, but it is nothing like $3,500,000. Tiefer has no regrets. He sleeps at night. Pulpit To Politics Then there is Father Louis Gigante, a parish priest of the Bronx. He has taken up politics,' and is running for Congress on a reform ticket. The poor and coloured people of bis area needed so much and so little was coming to them from “the system’’ that he got on the hustings to try to force some changes. A radical change of life came to John C. Robbins as he approached his 50th year. He turned from the profit motive to serving the public good. He had a high, powerful and well-paid job with an oil

company. It is said his salary was $lOOO a week. Robbins gave it up to join Planned Parenthood a nonprofit organisation devoted to teaching birth control techniques, mainly to Negro and Puerto Rican people who do not know how to space their children.

The aim is to reduce family burdens so the people may lift themselves above subsistence level.

Robbins is in the chief executive officer’s chair at Planned Parenthood at much less than $lOOO a week. He does not look back in sorrow. He says be has found career satisfaction, and that is what he enjoys. Some switches reach even deeper into the personality. Return To Nature There is a movement all over America to forsake the concrete jungles of the parking lots and go back to the soil, to “natural” foods and to freedom from fertilisers and pesticides. Although the movement has attracted its share of cranks, it has also attracted many thoughtful devotees who find creative expression in rejuvenating “worn out” land, in bringing life back to patches of eroded earth.

Some go so far as to take an eclectic, quasi-religious joy in their new vocations. Joe Ryan was a chemical engineer in Boston until six years ago. Then he decided he could do more with his life than put stuff into pressure cans.

He put his savings into a rundown farm. He is battling to make the farm thoroughly productive again and is living a fairly austere life. But “he gets his stimuli from "reverence for the soil,” growing his own vegetables, and living with nature.

Joe Ryan is no isolated case. Thousands of Americans

have given up their executive chairs in the commercialindustrial community to live in harmony with the good earth. Come disappointing harvests and stringent living conditions, they stick to their way of life. Some have adopted beliefs of the American Indians. Some have adapted oriental, mystic faiths of the Zen Buddhist variety to their own natural-living philosophies. It is safe to say that most men who change their ways of life lose money. Certainly, they all risk losing money—and in America that is a radical departure from the old values. Why do they do it? The reasons are many. “The pressures of the rat

race have grown too acute,’ says one.

“The youth culture is seeping upwards to the oldies,” says another, meaning that radicalism among students is affecting men in the prime of life. The youngsters are willing to jeopardise their futures for causes and values and some of their fathers are taking the cue. “Mountain To Climb” “A man needs a mountain to climb,” says yet another line of reasoning. This makes sense for businessmen who have proved they can succeed in commerce at a high level. More success, more titles, more stock issues fail to satisfy them. They want personal adventure.

They want to prove that they can personally win battles at something else, be it religion, politics or public service. Through all the discussion , comes the theme that personal satisfaction in what a man does is more important than a fat salary or a dreary security. One factor taken for granted here, but nevertheless important, is the prolific wealth of America.

A man who opts out of a job at, say, $30,000 a year and takes up a new life at $lB,OOO is still a long way from the breadline.

Many Americans can afford 'to be healthy and happy on • less. This may look axiomatic but up to a few years ago no American would seriously consider it. More material wealth meant more happiness and that was that. Today’s thinking represents a small revolution. Whatever the motives, the quality of American life stands to gain because people with the courage to start an adventure in mid-life are likely to add intangible riches to society and its affairs.