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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The intertwining of second couplehood and old age | | Author(s) | Chaya Koren |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 35, no 9, October 2015 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, October 2015 |
| Pages | pp 1864-1888 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Older men ; Older women ; Married couples ; Personal relationships ; Qualitative Studies ; Israel. |
| Annotation | Second couplehood in old age is a growing phenomenon alongside increases in life expectancy. Lately, a shift has occurred in that individual diversity of ageing is perceived to depend on the physical and social contexts in which older people experience change. This paper reports on an Israeli qualitative study which used an existential-phenomenological theoretical orientation to examine second couplehood in the context of old age, and old age in the context of second couplehood. Twenty couples were recruited using criterion-sampling. Couples were men aged 65+ and women aged 60+, with children and grandchildren from a lifelong marriage that had ended in widowhood or divorce, living in second couplehood (married or not), in separate houses or cohabiting. Forty individual semi-structured interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed according to phenomenological tradition. Five sub-themes emerged, demonstrating couplehood and old age intertwining: (a) enjoying life while still possible; (b) living with health-related issues; (c) relationships with adult children: autonomy versus dependency; (d) loneliness: living as a couple is better than living alone; and (e) self-image: feeling young or feeling old. Findings support the existence of positive and negative aspects of old age. The authors' discussion suggests the need to replace perceptions of old age as either a negative burden or a positive asset towards a period of balancing between gains and losses. Furthermore, the authors acknowledge the role of second couplehood in older peoples' well-being on the personal-micro level through love, the familial-meso level through care-giving, and the social-macro level by reducing prejudice. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150918203 A |
| Classmark | BC: BD: SM: DS: 3DP: 7H6 |
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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