Centre for Policy on Ageing



Pioneers in our own lives — grounded theory of lesbians' midlife development
Author(s)	Lynn Calhoun Howell, Amy Beth
Journal title	Journal of Women & Aging, vol 16, no 3/4, 2004
Pages	pp 133-148
Source	http://www.tandfonline.com
Keywords	Sexual orientation ; Older women ; Middle aged ; Mental health [elderly] ; Qualitative Studies ; United States of America.
Annotation	Historically, human development theorists made no mention of experiences unique to lesbians. To explore implications of differences associated with lesbian midlife development, this qualitative study compared the midlife experiences of 12 lesbians aged 41-54 to descriptions of midlife development resulting from two previous studies using similar methods with groups whose members were nearly all heterosexual women (i.e., data collected in a series of focus group meetings and analysed using a grounded theory approach). Whilst lesbians in this study faced many of the same occurrences described by other middle-aged women, they experienced those events in different ways. The lesbians experienced less emotional turmoil during midlife than did their heterosexual counterparts. They also expressed unique concerns about old age. (KJ/RH).
Accession Number	CPA-050606209 A
Classmark	ES6: BD: SE: D: 3DP: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.