Gender, Preloss Marital Dependence, and Older Adults’ Adjustment to Widowhood
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چکیده
I examine how preloss emotional and instrumental dependence on one’s spouse affects older adults’ psychological adjustment to widowhood. Analyses are based on 297 persons from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study, a prospective study of widowhood among adults aged 65 and older. Women who were most emotionally dependent on their spouses had the poorest self-esteem while still married, yet evidence the highest levels of self-esteem following loss. Men who were most dependent on their wives for home maintenance and financial management tasks experience the greatest personal growth following loss. These results suggest that widowed persons who were once highly dependent upon their spouses reap psychological rewards from the recognition that they are capable of managing on their own.
منابع مشابه
Black/White Differences in Psychological Adjustment to Spousal Loss Among Older Adults
This study examines differences between Blacks and Whites in the effect of widowhood on depressive symptoms and anxiety; in grief symptoms six months after spousal loss; and the extent to which these differences are explained by marital quality, social support from children and friends, and religiosity. Analyses are based on the Changing Lives of Older Couples, a prospective study of 1,532 marr...
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We use prospective couple-level data from the Changing Lives of Older Couples to assess the extent to which spouses concur in their assessments of marital quality (N= 844) and whether discrepancies in spouses’ marital assessments affect the bereaved spouse’s psychological adjustment 6 months after loss (n= 105). Spouses’ assessments of marital quality are correlated modestly (r= .45), with wome...
متن کاملMarital quality and psychological adjustment to widowhood among older adults: a longitudinal analysis.
OBJECTIVES This study examined whether psychological adjustment to widowhood is affected by three aspects of marital quality--warmth, conflict, and instrumental dependence-assessed prior to the loss. METHODS The Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) is a prospective study of a two-stage area probability sample of 1,532 married individuals aged 65 and older. The CLOC includes baseline data on...
متن کاملGender, Aging and Widowhood
Widowhood is widely regarded as a women’s issue. In all developed and nearly all developing nations, women are more likely than men to survive the death of their spouse, reflecting men’s higher rates of mortality and the tendency of women to marry men slightly older than themselves. Women also are more likely than men to remain unmarried after their spouse dies, due both to a highly skewed sex ...
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OBJECTIVES Despite the large body of literature on bereavement, little is known about the impact of sociohistorical context on individual reactions to spousal loss. This study examines the effect of marital status, time period and gender on physical and mental health, and whether reported difficulties following spousal loss differ at 2 distinctive time periods. METHOD Two cohorts of older ber...
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