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Best Practices in Family Life Education Programming for Midlife and Older Adults
Author(s) -
Benson Jacquelyn J.,
Donehower Allison K.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
family relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1741-3729
pISSN - 0197-6664
DOI - 10.1111/fare.12461
Subject(s) - scholarship , life course approach , gerontology , psychology , family life , population , categorization , perspective (graphical) , best practice , developmental psychology , sociology , medicine , gender studies , political science , computer science , demography , artificial intelligence , law
Due to dramatic changes in the U.S. population's aging demographic, family life educators have begun offering more programming for midlife and older adults. This shift began in the early 1990s, after several family scholars and practicing professionals urged the National Council of Family Relations to revise its Framework for Life Span Family Life Education to include “later adulthood” as a fourth age‐group categorization. Since this revision, family life educators and family scholars alike have gradually expanded their programming and scholarship efforts to address the challenges and concerns associated with midlife and older adulthood. In this article, we review best practices in family life education (FLE) programming for midlife and older adults, including programming needs, program design preferences, and contextual variation. To conclude, we suggest future directions for research on best practices in FLE for midlife and older audiences and recommend using the life course perspective as a complement to the Framework when planning and designing FLE programming to meet the needs of the heterogeneous aging population.