Our Initiative
 Practical tipsTips about how to interact/communicate with going to retire or retired parents |
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 Psychological theories and conceptsPsychological knowledge relevant to retirement |
 Practical information and resourcesInformation about retirement planning and retirement life |
 MemesReal life examples that we may experience and psychological fact/tips |
 “one hundred thousand (not dare to ask parents) whys”Real life examples that we may experience and psychological fact/tips |
 Useful linksLinks about useful resources related to retirement |
What we are doing
"All about R" is a project dedicated to retiree's family members. An Instagram and Facebook page has been developed, which includes organizing useful information and links about retirement, sharing retirement-related psychological knowledge, providing practical tips on how to get along with pre-retired/retired parents and how to help them adapt to the transition in retirement.
Why we initiate this project
Hong Kong has an aging population. According to the Census and Statistics Department, the number of people aged 65 or above will escalate from 11.7% in 2003 to 27% in 2033. Many citizens will have to undergo retirement eventually (Au et al., 2017). Our in-depth research has discovered that existing resources and support for retirement issues are insufficient. At the same time, work-family conflicts are common when preparing for retirement or just getting retired (Matthews & Fisher, 2012). Most importantly, retirement is not only about an individual. Family also plays a crucial role, which is the basis of support retirees possess (Dorfman,2002). Hence, we would like to address this issue by providing resources to families of pre-retirees/retirees.
A informative page based on
Humanistic psychology
Humanistic, modern view of retirement
Since the start of our project, our target has been disputing the traditional view of retirement and facilitating retirees to fulfil their life goals. As a core idea of humanism, Carl Rogers believes that self-actualization is a continuous process throughout life. One should constantly maintain and enhance their self-concept through reflection on life experiences to achieve personal growth and development (Rogers, 1959). This is congruent with research indicating that people in modern society tend to postpone and compress their life goals into the post-retirement stage (Freund, 2020). This phenomenon has happened for decades and thus affects many generations of our society. Therefore, we adopt this school of philosophy as our main direction for our content, encouraging people to rethink the meaning of retirement. Even though our target audience has shifted from the young-old to the young adults, we still think it is important to clear society's misunderstandings about retirement and convey to the public that retirement is an opportunity to live life to the fullest.
Empirical findings to foster emotional understanding with families
Retirement can be a huge psychological burden and the origin of many family conflicts since retirees spend much more time at home. As a result, it is easy to form negative thoughts about retirement when a family is not adapting to the changes well. Family members tend to focus on how they are affected by their retirement lifestyle. In light of this, we aim to find published psychological theories and models that could explain their parents' behaviours in different scenarios. By providing insights into topics of retirement life based on empirical findings, we aspire to help our audience understand retirees' emotional and financial difficulties, especially anxiety during the first few years of retirement. We hope to encourage them to view from a more empathetic perspective and thus improve their relationship with their retiring parents.
Communication tips for families with retirees
Apart from little knowledge about the emotional difficulties of retirees, a lot of family distress and conflict also arise from poor communication skills. Therefore, a major goal of our posts is to provide practical tips to communicate more effectively with their parents and guide them to respect each other's lifestyles. In this regard, we are addressing family issues from a cognitive approach, and many techniques that we gathered are from related fields of research. Hopefully by utilizing our knowledge about psychology and providing solutions based on many real-life scenarios, our audience can have a more joyful and comforting family life.