Older men's health. Sociocultural and ecological perspectives.

This article identifies a set of conditions that renders the morbidities and earlier deaths of men as the outcome. The article also discusses four factors that affect older men's health and longevity: culture, class, race and ethnicity, and social organization and participation.

Narratives of elder parental death: a structural and cultural analysis.

This article reports on middle-aged daughters' perceptions of the experience of parental death. One hundred three married women, aged 40-62, were interviewed about six months after the deaths of their widowed elderly mothers using an in-depth qualitative interview format. As part of the interview, informants were asked to "tell the story of your mother's death," a question designed to elicit a subjectively based narrative account. Analysis of these narrative texts discovered a number of salient themes: the quality of medical care; the personality of the mother; issues of health decision making; the salience of the death scene; and mother-daughter closeness at death. Issues of family dynamics were quite important and permeated each description. In general, the narratives disclosed four aspects of the elder parental death experience: the enmeshment of medical care with the story of the death; the occurrence of pervasive ageism in accounts of the death; impossible dilemmas in terminal care of the aged; and the irreducibility of subjectivity in the daughter's biography of her mother.

Culture, caregiving, and the frail elderly on malo, vanuatu.

This paper addresses the indigenous meaning of old age and frailty on Malo Island (Natamambo), Vanuatu, (the South Pacific). While local meanings are of course germane to the sense of personhood, they have also been affected by cultural, demographic and social change that has occurred in recent decades. The paper presents discussion of the effects of these changes on old age and aging. Finally, the paper examines family caregiving by middle-aged adults for frail elders, in the context of social change. It is clear that the ideology of caregiving is under negotiation at the present time.

A path not taken: a cultural analysis of regrets and childlessness in the lives of older women.

This paper explores regrets about childlessness in 90 older women interviewed using qualitative methods. Regrets were discussed in the context of the changing meaning of childlessness over the life course. We found that issues of regret are situated in a cultural system that renders childless women marginal. We argue that regrets should be understood in a wider cultural context that incorporates the cultural construction of the self over time.

Cultural differences among elderly women in coping with the death of an adult child.

This article describes differences between elderly Jewish and non-Jewish women in dealing with the death of an adult child. Dimensions of difference include the meaning of the death to the mother, her expression of grief, and her conceptualization of the future in the face of the loss. Results are based on data from 12 Jewish and 17 non-Jewish women taking part in a larger study examining generativity as a predictor of well-being in women over 60. Data collection included in-depth life histories and quantitative evaluations of well-being, affect, generativity, and personality variables associated with mothering. Qualitatively, Jewish women were depressed and fixed in grief, with the loss remaining central to their lives. Non-Jewish women articulated philosophies of acceptance, putting the death in a perspective that enabled them to move beyond their loss. Well-being, affect, generativity, and personality measures statistically supported the qualitative differences found between the groups.

Key relationships of never married, childless older women: a cultural analysis.

The key relationships of never married, childless older women, that is, those relationships described as central, compelling, enduring, or significant throughout their lifetimes, were explored in this study. Analysis of qualitative, ethnographically based interviews with 31 women indicated that the key relationships they describe fall into three classes: ties through blood, friendships, and those we label "constructed" ties (kin-like nonkin relations). We report on types of key interpersonal relationships of these women and also examine limits to these key relations, describing some strategies these women have adopted for gaining kin-like relations and the problems inherent in them for the expectation of care in later life. Theoretical work by anthropologist David Schneider concerning American kinship as a cultural system is used to explore dimensions of these relationships.

The home environments of older people: a description of the psychosocial processes linking person to place.

This study describes how older people endow the home environment with meaning. Specifically, it describes the nature and meaning of the linkages between the older individual and the home environment, suggesting that the home environment is given meaning through three classes of psychosocial processes relating the person to (a) the sociocultural order, (b) the life course, and (c) the body. Seven discrete components of the processes are illustrated, using extensive case examples derived from lengthy ethnographic interviews with seven elderly informants. In the context of the relationship of the individual to culture, the study assumes the salience of personal meaning as a significant level of analysis.

Childless elderly: Theoretical perspectives and practical concerns.

Almost nothing is concretely known about childless elderly in cross-cultural perspective. Few published papers have appeared on this social category in the West, although childless elders make up (at least) 20% of the population of elderly in many Western nations. Little is known about childless elderly in the Third World. This paper provides some theoretical background to the study of childless elderly and articulates some social policy concerns about them. It suggests that there are five important questions to examine concerning the lives of childless elderly. These include, how childless aged are or are not provided for in societies in which a great deal of the care of the aged is undertaken by children; how kinship functions as a matrix for care; how the increasingly common phenomenon of voluntary childless may give meaning to childlessness in late life; how childlessness fits with such social science models such as "the developmental cycle"; and, the relationship of this phenomenon to changing opportunities for women. The paper further examines how factors such as fertility, systems of caregiving, the social meaning of childlessness, alternatives to childlessness such as adoption, and educational and economic opportunities may affect the lives of childless elders.

The significance of personal objects to older people.

This article reports on the meaning of personal objects to older persons. A sample of 88 elderly individuals were asked to name personally significant objects and discuss their meanings. Responses were analytically sorted into a number of thematically based categories including: objects symbolizing relationships with others past and present; objects as symbols of the self; those serving as defenses against loss and other deleterious changes; objects of care; representations of the past; and objects as the focus of mature sensuousness. The article supports the view that personal objects can play an important role in maintaining personal identity in late life and may function as a distinctive language for the expression of identity and personal meaning.

The construction of a day by elderly widowers.

The way in which some elderly widowers living alone experientially organize time can be viewed as on a continuum structured around the notion of a "day" as a central organizing focus. Related to this is the role of a "daily highlight" in organizing daily activities. The continuing role of bereavement, effects of living alone, and other factors may help structure this experiential continuum.

What is 'social integration of the elderly' in small-scale society?

Social integration of the elderly is a key analytical concept in both Western social and cross-cultural gerontology. While generally understood to describe the fit between the elderly and society in industrial nations, this construct should have utility for Third World societies as well. I argue that the concept is useful insofar as we clarify several antecedent considerations. These are, specification of (1) the model of integration being used; (2) other social distinctions besides age which affect the elderly; (3) the analytical level used; (4) underlying values leading to or away from integration; and, (5) the referent moment of time for society. These notions are discussed with reference to old age in one small-scale Melanesian society, Malo, Vanuatu.