Faces of Women and Aging

Ellen Cole, Esther D Rothblum, Nancy C Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317764953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Discover the diverse ways aging women attempt to deal with the universal challenges of loss, sickness, and death along with the problems of being old women in a society that values women mainly as sexual partners or producers of children. Old women are often seen as poor, powerless, and pitiful in our sexist and youth-oriented society. The truth is that women age much more successfully than do men and they are increasingly in the majority as our population ages. These truths and others are presented in Faces of Women and Aging--a collection written by women, a number of whom are themselves older women who bring their unique life experiences and personalities to the topic. This uplifting book emphasizes that middle and old age are merely stages of growth and development, not just seasons of loss and decline as the end approaches. A wealth of topics are covered in Faces of Women and Aging that broaden the reader's awareness of the problems of women and aging including:

• how to maintain self-esteem in the face of sexism, ageism, and severe illness
• the problems of being single or divorced in the later years
• the problems of maintaining a good body image for older women in a society which values the young and the beautiful
• the additional difficulties of minority women, specifically lesbians and native American women
• increased dependency brought on by illness and loss of partners Faces of Women and Aging combines personal narratives that serve as reminders of the human beings behind statistics and case studies with theoretical observations which help therapists assist older women cope with the daily hardships as well as the more catastrophic problems of aging.

Older Never Married Women: A Cross-Cultural Investigation

Sharyn A. Paradise

SUMMARY. A .U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare report (Peace, 1981) and a United Nations source (Haney, 1980), emphatically identify that by the year 2000 the single most important fact in an aging society is that it will be primarily female; more than half of these women will live singly. The purpose of this research is to examine the life themes and coping skills of older never married women. It is hoped that the results of this research will move us away from stereotypes into a broader and more encompassing view of this group. The implications for redesign of an infrastructure which supports older women's needs is discussed.

Introduction

This study investigates the normative values and stereotypes of never married women and its implications for the redesign of an infrastructure which supports them. Attitudes and behaviors, particularly those culled from family research on caucasian middle class couples and nuclear families, have become standards of the definition of "family" in North American society. Even in the age of increased awareness of racial, ethnic, sexual preference, and global differences in family models, the standards set by this prior research linger on. At best, minority groups are negatively stereotyped as deviant or socially problematic, at best. This study examines the central themes in women's lives as they progress to older adult hood: the similarities and misnomers.

One must note, however, that traditional family research also focuses on the course of women's lives as defined by societal expectations that women sequence their lives according to rites of passage such as marriage and parenting (Rossi, 1980). These rites of passage are commonly acknowledged in couples and nuclear families but not in the lives of older never married women. One of the questions raised in Katherine Allen's (1989) research addressed similarities of theme in older never married women's lives, utilizing a qualitative life history research model. Allen (1989) focused her research however on Caucasian "blue collar" women. She provided some important insights into the family dynamics regarding separation, individuation, and kin-keeping roles of the unmarried women in these families, but more importantly, she established the participatory research design used in this study.

The research process was initiated through a snowball technique (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982). The researcher contacted U.S. based agencies and U.S Peace Corps projects working with older women in Jamaica. Initial contact was made with potential participants identified by the agencies involved, who were also asked for names of other women in similar circumstances. Participants were selected from both urban and rural areas; no attempt was made to match women to socioeconomic or educational levels, although the effects of the cohort (born between 1920 and 1940) will be discussed as part of the time, context, and process structure experienced by these individuals and families.

Of the initial 20 women interviewed, six were chosen, three women from the United States and three from Jamaica. An open ended interview was used to establish initial rapport and eligibility for the study. Several descriptive questions were asked to establish place in the cohort and never married status for eligibility in the study. A second more in depth but less structured interview was conducted with a series of open ended questions regarding demographics, genogram construction, life events, family relationships, and kin-keeping roles. The participants were asked for permission to video and audio tape.

However, no attempt was made to select participants on the basis of income, given the inherent difficulties of gathering such information from older women living in different cultures.

Data was collected from the interview forms and transcriptions of the actual taped interviews. The researcher then coded the data and searched for common themes and differences. The focus for analysis of the data was at three levels of generality: the search for universals across the experiences (what seemed true for all the women); group differences due to race, class and culture (what seems true for the groups within the sample); and individual characteristics. Representative quotations were used to illustrate some of the universal themes.

Discussion

The cohort group of six women were born between 1920 and 1940. Four women came from two-parent families while the other two were raised by single parents. Five of the women in the study reported themselves to be first born children in the family. The additional member of the study was an only child. The birth order results reflected similar findings in Allen's (1989) study. Three women were from middle class homes while the others placed themselves in a low socioeconomic class. Four of the women in the study still lived in the family home at the time of the interview while the other two lived within a 30 miles radius of a parent.

The Jamaican women attended "All Age School," a government school. The required tuition was usually paid by the father. Two women were not allowed to complete school, the third Jamaican stopped out for 20 years and returned to a technical school to complete her education. A typical Jamaican women shared this:

I went to a government school. My father wanted me to drop out, and he wouldn't pay the tuition because the oldest girl in the family doesn't go to school. Then my father found out I was talking to a brown skinned boy (my father thought he would make me pregnant).

My father got drunk and beat me up with a bicycle pump. He said I could not go to school after that. I grew up with my grandmother soon after that and she sent me to learn sewing.

All of the U.S. women completed high school without reported barriers; one went on to complete graduate work at the Master's level. The occupations of the U.S. women included a machinist, bookkeeper, and teacher. The U.S. women reported the following:

There was no problem, I was always expected to go to college and teach. I did what I was told and it was near my mother! I never really left home.

School was good but I always said I was married to Mr. Sears (Sears and Roebuck was her employer) for 35 years. I loved being a bookkeeper, until the end when I had to decide to travel with the company or caretake my fa ther. I did both with help.

I was a machinist for several years during the war (World War II) but I had to return home. My mother was alone at the time. My sister married and I came home to stay with mom.

The Jamaican women worked as a street vendor (higgler), nurse aide, and a small business owner. They reported similar results which reflected a conflict between family and external jobs.

Two of the Jamaican women reported an occupational progression beginning with seamstress work and farming to upwardly mobile professions: small business owner and nurses aide:

My family had a little land in the bush. Af...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Late Mid-Life Astonishment: Disruptions to Identity and Self-Esteem
• When Mary Stopped Talking
• Aging Lesbians: Bearing the Burden of Triple Shame
• Three Native American Women Speak About the Significance of Ceremony
• Confronting Ageism: A MUST for Mental Health
• The Myth of the Golden Years: One Older Woman's Perspective
• Body Image Issues of Older Women
• Where Are the Archetypes? Searching for Symbols of Women's Midlife Passage
• From Edith Bunker to the 6:00 News: How and What Midlife Women Learn About Menopause
• Women at Midlife: Current Theoretical Perspectives and Research
• The Significance of the 50th Birthday for Women's Individuation
• Older Never Married Women: A Cross-Cultural Investigation
• Older Women Coping with Divorce: Peer Support Groups
• Real versus Reel World: Older Women and the Academy Awards
• Between Midlife and Old Age: Never Too Old to Learn
• The Empowerment of Women Residents in the Nursing Home