This third role of generativity can also be acted out when we seek to honor a person who has won the most baking contests at the annual county fair over the past 30 years. We collect baking recipes from many people in our community and assemble them in a cookbook named after the baking champion. Researchers in many fields have been doing this for many years. They honor a colleague who has made major contributions to their field by assembling a series of essays focusing on the themes and findings for which their honored colleague is noted. These assembled essays are given a fancy, Germanic name— they are called “Festschrifts.” This is big-time Generativity Three. The Personal Worth of someone who has been honored is enhanced, and we are likely to feel a bit better ourselves when helping to prepare the festschrift.
There is a fourth way in which generativity is enacted on behalf of the culinary arts. We can engage our community in the enhancement of these arts. We begin a recipe-sharing club. We ask a chef in town to come to one of our homes and cook a meal for members of this newly formed club. The chef offers some tips about cooking and shares her recipe at the end of the meal. We pay for the food and compensate the chef. The chef, in turn, donates the money to a charitable cause. The chef finds the event to be personally gratifying. Her restaurant gets some publicity. She gains a sense of Personal Worth. Her restaurant gains some Collective Worth. Our role in starting the club leaves us feeling a bit more “worthy.”
Generativity Four is also enacted when we start, manage, or advocate for a program that provides leftover food from restaurants and grocery stores to homeless families in our community. Called by many names (often “Urban Harvest”), these food-sharing programs are a “godsend” for many destitute people and local shelters. In some large cities, it is estimated that food not used by restaurants and not sold by groceries could meet all the nutritional needs of every homeless person living in this city. It is only a matter of legal protection (the so-called “Good Samaritan” laws) and finding the right people and distribution networks to get out the food. Typically, the distribution costs are offset by restaurant and grocery store savings in reduced garbage services. It is a matter of providing generative services on behalf of community welfare. It is a thoughtful enactment of generativity’s fourth role. Ultimately, it is about recognition that Personal Worth and Collective Worth are generated in abundance for all concerned.
Generativity in Four Acts: Expanding and Extending Our Region of Care and Worth
Generativity is clearly a multi-dimensional concept with many different manifestations; nevertheless, we propose that each of the four roles tends to be center stage at a specific time in our lives. Similarly, as I have already noted in this series of essays, Worth is multi-dimensional at both a Personal and Collective level. I offer a preview of the prominent role generativity plays and principal sources of Worth found at specific times in our adult life.
Early Adulthood
There is a period early in adulthood when we attempt to balance a commitment to both love and work. It’s a time of life when the generative role includes parenting our children or parenting a specific project or job in an organization. We tend to focus on Personal Worth. Everything is a bit intimate and “close to home.”
