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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Off the beaten track
— childlessness and social integration in late life | | Author(s) | Pearl A Dykstra |
| Journal title | Research on Aging, vol 28, no 6, November 2006 |
| Pages | pp 749-767 |
| Keywords | Marital status ; Family relationships ; Childless ; Integration ; Comparison ; Netherlands ; Germany. |
| Annotation | Aiming to uncover the socially integrating functions of parenthood, this study focused on differences in network size between older adults with and without children, using survey data from Amsterdam for 661 subjects from the NESTOR-LSN (Living Arrangements and Social Networks of Older Adults) survey and 516 from the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). Explicit attention was paid to diversity among the childless and to their biographical pasts. The pattern of results was similar for both countries. Those who never had children had smaller networks in old age than parents, a finding partially attributable to a more limited supply of kin. There was no evidence for a competing hypothesis, namely, that childlessness is a means to greater sociability. Contrary to expectations, those who had outlived their children were not more socially isolated than those who had never had children. Neither was there support for the expectation that parenthood history differences would be greater among women than men. Last, the findings showed that parenthood contributes to social integration independently of marriage and employment. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070115218 A |
| Classmark | SLM: DS:SJ: SU: TO: 48: 76H: 767 |
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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