Intimacy and Ageing: New Relationships in Later Life

✍ Scribed by Torbjörn Bildtgård; Peter Öberg

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 224
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

To begin new relationships in later life is increasingly common in large parts of the Western world. This timely book addresses the gap in knowledge about late life repartnering and provides a comprehensive map of the changing landscape of late life intimacy. Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, the book examines the changing structural conditions of intimacy and ageing in late modernity. How do longer lives, changing norms and new technologies affect older people’s relationship careers, their attitudes to repartnering and in the formation of new relationships? Which forms do these new unions take? What does a new intimate relationship offer older men and women and what are the consequences for social integration? What is the role and meaning of sex? By introducing a gains-perspective the book challenges stereotypes of old age as a period of loss and decline. It also challenges the image of older people as conservative, and instead presents them as an avant-garde that often experiment with new ways of being together.

✦ Table of Contents

INTIMACY AND AGEING
Contents
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
Series editors’ preface
1. Introduction
Setting the scene
Outline of the book
2. Intimacy and ageing in late modernity
The changing landscape of later life
The transformation of intimacy
Intimacy and cultural context
The importance of life phase: a developmental perspective
Conclusion
3. The changing landscape of intimacy in later life
The impact of the prolonged lifespan for envisioning new intimate futures
A culture of divorce
From ‘society of widows’ to ‘society of divorcees’
The grey divorce revolution
The gendered structure of the partner market
Changing venues for dating in later life
Conclusion
4. From marriage to alternative union forms
A smorgasbord of union forms
Are older people carriers of the ideals of marriage culture?
Are older people following the ideals of their times?
Are some union forms more adapted to later life?
A question of age, period or cohort?
Cohort
Historical time
Life phase
Conclusion
5. A life of relationships
Relationship careers among older Swedes
Consequences of prior relationship dissolutions for late-life intimacy
Gendered experiences: continuity and change in repartnering
Conclusion
6. Attitudes towards new romantic relationships
Attitudes to what?
Whose attitudes?
The Swedish case
Conclusion
7. Initiation and development of new romantic relationships
Unveiling negotiation and change in new late-life relationships
Relationship ideals in singlehood: Single Sally
From singlehood to LAT and beyond: LAT Lisa and Lars
From singlehood to cohabitation and beyond: Cohabiting Carl and Caroline
From singlehood to marriage and beyond: Married Mike and Martha
Conclusion
8. A new partner as a resource for social support
The gains of repartnering
Companionate support
Emotional support
Practical support
Conclusion
9. Consequences for social network and support structures
The impact of life transitions on linked lives
Integration of social and filial networks
The partner as a key to autonomy
Restructuring the chain of interdependent lives
A hierarchy of dependencies
The social support network
Conclusion
10. Sex in an ideology of love
From an ideology of marriage to an ideology of love
The ideal of the consummate relationship
Sex in new late-life relationships
Conclusion
11. Time as a structuring condition for new intimate relationships in later life6
An existential theory of time
Post-(re)productive free time
Remaining time
Conclusion
12. Discussion
Historical change
Phase of life
The Swedish case
Methodological appendix
The qualitative interview study
The quantitative questionnaire
References
Notes
Index