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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Past experiences and older adults' attitudes
— a lifecourse perspective | | Author(s) | Anne-Rigt Poortman, Theo G Van Tilburg |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 25, part 1, January 2005 |
| Pages | pp 19-40 |
| Source | http://journals.cambridge.org/ |
| Keywords | Attitude ; Life span ; Longitudinal surveys ; Netherlands. |
| Annotation | A lifecourse perspective is applied to an examination of older people's attitudes about gender roles and moral issues. The study goes beyond previous research, in that it examines the relationships between older people's attitudes and experiences in the parental home; people's own marital and work experiences through the entire lifecourse; and the marital and work experiences of their children. The sample consists of respondents aged 55+ from the Living Arrangements and Social Networks of Older Adults in the Netherlands survey of 1992 and the Longitudinal Ageing Study Amsterdam (LASA). It is shown that a large majority of older people subscribe to the view that people have the freedom to make their own choices about the issues of voluntary childlessness, abortion and euthanasia. Similarly, most older people favour equality between men and women. Multivariate analyses show that people's attitudes are generally consistent with their lifecourse experiences. It is found that unconventional lifecourse experiences, particularly with respect to childbearing, associate with more progressive attitudes in late life. The behaviour and lifecourse experiences of their children are also related to older people's attitudes. Particularly, if their children co-habited, older adults tried to be more progressive. These findings suggest that an important mechanism by which societal change may have affected older people is through their children's experiences. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050126202 A |
| Classmark | DP: BG6: 3J: 76H |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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