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10 - Social Relationships in Old Age
- Edited by Paul B. Baltes, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin, Karl Ulrich Mayer, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
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- Book:
- The Berlin Aging Study
- Published online:
- 06 December 2010
- Print publication:
- 28 November 1998, pp 282-301
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Summary
The aim of this chapter is to describe the number, nature, and functions of social relationships in old age. The consequences of widowhood, childlessness, and institutionalization on the social relationships and loneliness of elderly people are also examined. The findings are based on the accounts of the Berlin Aging Study (BASE) participants and reveal that it is incorrect to assume that the social integration of older adults is marked by a lack of role in society, or that social relationships remain unchanged in quality and quantity into very old age.
There is a high degree of childlessness among those aged 85 years and older, but this can primarily be interpreted as a cohort effect. Although the loss of relatives from one's own generation is a common occurrence in very old age, the experience of being a great-grandparent also gains in importance. No uniform age differences can be found where nonrelatives are concerned either; whereas the number of friends decreases with age, the proportion of old people who include other nonrelatives in their social network remains relatively constant. The social network of widows and widowers has a structure similar to that of married people. However, the childless have smaller networks than parents, and the institutionalized have smaller networks than those living in private households. Married people feel lonely less frequently, whereas the institutionalized and the childless do so more often. […]
4 - Six Individual Biographies from the Berlin Aging Study
- Edited by Paul B. Baltes, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin, Karl Ulrich Mayer, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
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- Book:
- The Berlin Aging Study
- Published online:
- 06 December 2010
- Print publication:
- 28 November 1998, pp 111-128
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- Chapter
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Summary
Each of the 516 participants in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE) has a unique biography and his or her own way of dealing with the positive and negative aspects of old age. At the same time, subgroups in BASE have also had some “objectively” common experiences. Cohorts have lived through the same historical events and changes in German society and, in old age, subgroups of individuals often have an apparently similar status with regard to some life domains (e.g., marital or financial status). This chapter aims to provide an initial sense of the diverse life trajectories in the biographies of BASE participants that arise from the interplay between common and unique life experiences. Three men and three women were selected for deeper consideration in this chapter because of their above- or below-average status on objective life conditions or because they represented statistically normative cases.
Introduction
Other chapters of this book describe group-level differences across a broad range of life conditions and domains of functioning. The unique characteristics of the lives and subjective experiences of individuals have only been hinted at (e.g., in scatterplots). In this chapter the biographies of six participants in BASE take center stage. The technique of using biographical approaches to supplement quantitative nomothetic methods has received renewed attention in recent years, and there has been much discussion about appropriate methods (for an overview see the Ageing and Society Special Issue on Ageing, Biography and Practice, 1996; Birren, Kenyon, Ruth, Schroots, & Svensson, 1996; Reker & Wong, 1988).