As middle-class women enter retirement, through giving up a job or losing a spouse or dependent relative, they adopt different friendship strategies. Some extend and deepen existing relationships; some make new friends; some develop the role of ‘good neighbour’; some grow closer to siblings. One of the most popular ways of making friends is to join a voluntary association, but this strategy is not always successful. Between them, friends provide a variety of services, supports and company. Old friends contribute something unique to the acceptance of ageing and adjustment to changing circumstances. Middle-class friendships have a hedonistic quality which matches the lifestyle of middle-class women in retirement.

This paper is concerned with the nature, usage and potential of the concept of lifestyle. It concentrates on usage in social gerontology and specifically on the way in which it has been used by three teams of American researchers. Its overall aim is to discover guidelines for establishing the lifestyle concept on a sounder methodological footing.

The paper begins with a discussion of diversity within the elderly population and it identifies the need for a systematic conceptual scheme for describing the social life of the individual. It examines the relationship between lifestyle and social class and concludes that they represent complementary rather than competing approaches. The paper goes on to explore three definitions of life-style - as structure, content and meaning - and compares and contrasts these three alternative approaches. The difference between ‘nominal’ and ‘real’ definitions is discussed and the paper ends with a summary account of the way in which the concept has been operationalized in a continuing British study.

Introductory descriptions of the contemporary ‘old age phenomenon’ tend to draw heavily upon demographic statistics. An analysis of such descriptions in popular books on retirement show that the ways in which these are presented and interpreted reflect a certain set of beliefs concerning the concept of old age. Critical to this ideology is the dissociation of old age and death. Together with indicators of the unprecedented expansion of old age, this creates an image of old age that has doubtful validity.

A notable feature of most recent policy statements regarding care of the elderly is a reference to the costs of care. Public expenditure cuts at a time when the numbers of old people, and dependent old people, are increasing have heightened the already growing concern about the resources needed for providing care. This paper has two basic aims. The subsidiary aim is to examine this growing concern, with particular reference to the British experience since 1948 and with an especial focus on residential care services. This examination provides an historical and contextual basis for the discussion which is the principle aim of the paper. This aim is to explain how information on costs which is currently available to the policy maker and care provider can be gainfully employed in the planning of care services for the elderly. Again, attention is mainly focussed on residential care, but the approach has more general relevance. The starting point for this discussion is an examination of why costs vary – either between homes or between areas or between providers. A fairly comprehensive review of previous costs studies in this area is provided.

If we are to develop better methods of integrating elderly people into society then above all we need a better sociology of the ageing and the aged. In this paper I wish to put forward the thesis that the dependency of the elderly in the twentieth century is being manufactured socially and that its severity is unnecessary. The process can therefore be revised or at least modified. Certain major influences, which will be discussed below, are steadily deepening, or widening that dependency. There is the imposition, and acceptance, of earlier retirement; the legitimation of low income; the denial of rights to self-determination in institutions; and the construction of community services for recipients assumed to be predominantly passive.

Although general family involvement is heralded as critically important for the elderly, the importance of the specific family involvement of grand-parenthood remains surprisingly little understood. The present study integrates qualitative and quantitative methodologies: 11 grandparents completed a series of five open-ended interviews, 19 grandparents participated in single open-ended interviews, and 286 grandparents completed lengthy quantitative questionnaires. In contrast to previous studies reporting that there is little relationship between grandparenthood experience and life satisfaction, current findings indicate that grandparenthood serves a compensatory function with respect to life satisfaction and morale, particularly for those individuals who are most deprived and who have fewest sources of satisfaction. Ageing persons seem to use grandparenthood to enhance their mental health; in grandparenting they capitalize on their existing strengths and re-work existing weaknesses.

The paper argues for a theoretical renewal of basic perspectives for ageing research. A longitudinal, ‘historical’ view of the personality is advocated as it is expected to permit a deeper understanding of needs as well as chances for renewal, re-training, prophylactic and rehabilitative measures of and for persons in later life. A psychosocial theory of cumulation of general life conditions and special events, interpreted and reacted to by the subjects, will supposedly enlarge the more static conceptions of ‘social factors of ageing’.

It is currently the vogue to speak of development throughout life. It is here argued that epigenetic models of human development are unsuited to explaining psycho-social change in old age. An alternative model of the emergence of psycho-social change in old age is proposed. An indication is given of why such change should occur, and the argument is illustrated with two catastrophe models of change, one hypothetical, and another describing events in the life of the composer Sibelius. These models indicate how role loss and modernization could have a causal role in psycho-social change. It is then argued that under prevailing social conditions emergent change could take the form of an ‘inner journey’ in old age. It is concluded that it is time to re-assess the use of developmental models of change in old age.

As a result of the institutionalization of retirement and the development of an ageing population, a keen discussion has emerged concerning the nature of retirement education. Two major research projects (at the Universities of Keele and Surrey) have begun; and the number of books and articles devoted to the theme has expanded enormously over the past two years. However, despite this attention, pre-retirement education (PRE) is still struggling to find a secure foundation within the range of occupational and social policies affecting the older worker. There remains a feeling that it has yet to demonstrate its full value or potential – either to employer or employee. In this paper I shall argue that the reasons for this can be traced partly to the post-war origins of PRE, and the way these origins influenced the trajectory taken by retirement education. I shall go on to examine the effectiveness of PRE; to look at arguments about the adequacy of its present structure; and finally, look at the likely shape of future developments in the area of retirement education.

An exploratory study examines the knowledge of old people, their past and present teaching-learning experiences with children, and their readiness to teach children in the future. The respondents to structured-interviews are 76 old people from three cultural groups in Israel: Europeans, Yemenite-Tunisians and Christian-Arabs. Old people have many kinds of knowledge: occupational skills; formal, general and religious knowledge; personal experience and traditions of the ethnic group. Old people who perceive of themselves as knowledgeable and competent, who have frequent contacts with school-age children (particularly their own grandchildren), who reside in communities that support the social norm of communication between the generations, have had positive experiences teaching children and are prepared to teach children in the future. Old people who teach children, integrate then- past experiences, enhance their self-esteem and provide alternative behavioural models to children.

The first part of this article summarises some results of a recent retirement study of newly retired people conducted in the Paris area in 1975. It examines the conditions under which a sample of salaried workers stopped working and compares their original anticipation with their reactions after two years.

The second part analyses the rapid changes in French retirement patterns over the past decade. Throughout, the author exemplifies and argues for an approach which views retirement within a wider politico-economic framework.

Although widespread poverty in old age has been recognized in Britain for at least 100 years, research on age and ageing has tended to concentrate on individual adjustment to old age and in turn, on narrow functionalist explanations of depressed social status. The elderly have been treated as a homogeneous group facing common problems. In contrast, an approach to ageing based on political economy will examine the relative social and economic status of different groups of elderly people as well as the relationship between the elderly and younger generations. Thus it is argued that poverty in old age is primarily a function of low economic and social status prior to retirement and the depressed social status of the retired, and secondarily, of the relatively low level of state benefits. Social policies which have failed to recognize inequality in old age and the causes of low economic and social status have therefore failed to tackle the problem of poverty and low incomes. The starting point for policy-makers should be the labour market and the social relationship between age and the labour market.

This study has systematically examined the use of health and social services among non-institutionalized elderly people according to the Andersen model which groups factors influencing use into predisposing, enabling and need variables. Need for service as evidenced by physical and psychological functioning was the most important predictor of use of physician services and hospitalization. Predisposing factors had the most effect on use of dental services. On the other hand, knowledge of services, an enabling factor, was most relevant to use of social services. Since this factor is manipulable to planned change, several program strategies were suggested for increasing awareness of social services particularly among the impaired elderly.