Transcript Later life widowhood and loneliness Dr Tracy Collins PhD study with older women experiencing widowhood • Managing transition: a longitudinal study of personal communities in.

Later life widowhood and
loneliness
Dr Tracy Collins
PhD study with older women
experiencing widowhood
• Managing transition: a longitudinal study of
personal communities in later life widowhood
• Context of the study
• Study design
• Main findings
Context of the study
• Widowhood in later life is more common for
older women than older men (Hirst & Corden,
2010)
• Social networks and social support are
thought to help buffer such events and ease
subsequent transitions (Momtaz et al., 2009)
Context of the study
• Lack of longitudinal qualitative research
exploring the personal communities of older
widows experiencing transition in
contemporary Britain (Collins, 2011)
• I was particularly interested in older women’s
personal communities and social practices
and if and how they change during
widowhood
Study design
• Methodological approach – qualitative framework,
longitudinal design
• Purposive sample – 26 older widows, widowed
between 1 and 3 years (transitional phase)
• Method – series of three in depth interviews
conducted over eighteen months, including the use of
personal community diagrams to identify the structure
of social networks, and Christmas and Christmas
cards to further explore social relationships and
practices
• Analysis – thematic analysis of interview transcripts
and content analysis of diagrams
Main findings
• Four types of personal community among the
older widows in the study, comprising different
combinations of family, friends and others.
‘Concentrated family’, ‘Diluted family’, ‘Friend
with family centrality’ and ‘Friend with mixed
centrality’
• The diverse, complex, and often-paradoxical
nature of personal relationships within
structurally similar social network types is often
compounded by multiple transitions associated
with ageing in addition to widowhood itself
Main findings
• The continuity and discontinuity of social
relationships, as well as the re-arrangement of
family and friendship practices, demonstrate the
multifaceted and ever-shifting characteristics of
social networks during the transition of
widowhood
• The management of transition incorporates not
only social relations, but also personal agency,
and flexibility. These combined factors appear to
be more important to adaptation during later life
widowhood than social network type
Negative experiences of
Christmas
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Christmas can be an isolating and excluding
experience for some older widows,
compounded by multiple challenges such as:
family friction
personal dependence
increasing frailty
a growing sense of passivity as established
roles and relationships alter or are lost
(Collins, 2014)
Social exclusion
For Mary, family friction between her four
adult children, compounded by her being
housebound, culminated in her spending
Christmas alone at home:
‘I was here all on my own on Christmas
day…and the same with new year. I didn’t go
anywhere, I was here, you know, so I was
glad when they’d both gone…Christmas and
the new year, you know. So I just had the
television on, to pass the time away, you
know.’
Cultural exclusion
Mary’s social and cultural exclusion was
starkly illustrated as she described her
Christmas meal, which is vastly different to
that which many people in Britain enjoy on
Christmas Day:
‘…I had a tin of vegetable soup on Christmas
day for my dinner, with a mince pie, and I had
a tin of tomato soup and a mince pie on
Boxing day.’
Post doctoral study with
older widowed men
• The personal communities of men experiencing
later life widowhood
• Context of the study
• Study design
• Preliminary findings
Context of the study
• Although the incidence of widowhood is still
greater for older women than it is for older men,
this ratio has decreased over recent years, due
in part to the increased life expectancy of men
(Hirst and Corden, 2010)
• Furthermore gender differences in the
experience of widowhood in later life continues
to be an area of academic (Collins, 2011) and
public (Bunyan, 2012; Collins, 2012a; Collins,
2012b) interest
Context of the study
• Existing widowhood research has examined
gender differences in terms of partnership
choice (Davidson, 2001) and psychological
adjustment (Bennett, Hughes and Smith, 2005)
• However there remains a lack of qualitative
research exploring gender differences in terms
of the types and characteristics of social
relationships and support during the transition
(Collins, 2011)
Study design
• Methodological approach – qualitative framework, cross
sectional design
• Purposive sample – 7 older widowers, widowed between
1 and 3 years (transitional phase)
• Method – one in depth interview, including the use of
personal community diagrams to identify the structure of
social networks. Although this smaller study did not
include a study of Christmas and Christmas cards the
interview schedule included questions about Christmas
and birthday celebrations etc.
• Analysis – thematic analysis of interview transcripts and
content analysis of diagrams
Preliminary findings
• Four types of personal community among the
older widowers in the study, comprising
different combinations of family, friends and
others. ‘Concentrated family’, ‘Friends and
others with family centrality’, ‘Family and friends
with family centrality’ and ‘Friends only’
• One of the older widowers included just two
people (friends) in his personal community
diagram. His estranged son, daughter in law
and grandchildren live in Australia
Preliminary findings
• The older widowers ties with organisations and
subsequent friendships tend to be ‘task or
career-focused’ e.g. Veteran’s club, rather than
‘social’
• The majority of the older widowers had been
long term carers, many of the men talked about
friendships and connections ending even before
their wives had died. For example, Arthur,
whose wife had dementia:
Social isolation
‘…your independence has gone…you don’t
become er a social person anymore, you
become introverted and life is for…unless you
go out shopping, and that was it. So…we used
to go out playing dominoes…at least once a
week, well that went. And then erm slowly but
surely because of the condition, I couldn’t leave
her, they obviously didn’t want that sort of erm
thrust upon them so…so we became isolated so
erm.’
Recommendations for policy
and practice
• Policy makers and practitioners should be
aware that in addition to widowhood, older
people may be experiencing multiple and
parallel transitions associated with ageing and
the life course, such as changes in health and
the additional loss of relationships with family
and friends
Recommendations for policy
and practice
• Practitioners should seek out opportunities to
explore the deeper content of relationships with
family, friends and others when working with
older widows and widowers, for example during
initial assessments and when planning
discharges from hospital, or from other settings,
to home. Although an individual’s personal
community may appear to be stable and robust
on the surface, it may not necessarily offer
ongoing tangible support
Recommendations for policy
and practice
• Some older people are likely to face social
exclusion over the Christmas period. This has
implications for practitioners working in
hospitals, or other settings, as attempts are often
made to discharge service users prior to the
Christmas period with the assumption that they
would rather be at home with the support of
family, friends and others. In reality this is not a
viable option for all older people
Recommendations for policy
and practice
• It is important to consider gender differences
and preferences when designing services for
older people
• Services should consider the ‘social’ needs of
long term carers; social isolation and loneliness
often begins long before the death of a spouse
References
Bennett, K., Hughes, G. and Smith, P. 2005.
‘Psychological response to later life widowhood:
coping and the effects of gender’ Omega, Vol. 51, 1,
33-52.
Bunyan, N. 2012, 28 February. ‘Merry widows’ enjoy
fulfilling life with friends. The Daily Telegraph, p.3.
Collins, T. 2011. Managing transition: a longitudinal
study of personal communities in later life
widowhood. PhD, Keele University. Available at
http://usir.salford.ac.uk/15823/
References
Collins, T. Interview. ‘Lunchtime with Mark Patterson’
BBC Radio Foyle. 28 February 2012a.
Collins, T. Interview. ‘Breakfast with Beswick’ BBC
Radio Manchester. 29 February 2012b.
Collins, T. 2013. Remembering the past, looking to the
future: Christmas as a symbol of change in later life
widowhood. Ageing and Society, Available on CJO 2013
DOI: 10.1017/SO144686X13000329
References
Collins, T. 2014. Managing widowhood in later life:
the challenges encountered. International Journal of
Therapy and Rehabilitation, Vol. 21, Iss. 2, 05 Feb
2014, pp 69 – 76.
Davidson, K. 2001. ‘Late life widowhood, selfishness
and new partnership choices: a gendered
perspective’ Ageing and Society, Vol. 21, 3, 297317.
References
Hirst, M. and Corden, A. 2010 ‘Change in living
arrangements following death of a partner in England
and Wales, 1971-2001’ Population Trends, nr 141
Autumn. Available at
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/population_trends/11
-poptrends141-hirst.pdf Accessed on 22nd April 2011,
12.25pm.
Momtaz, Y., Hamid, T., Yahaya, N. and Ibrahim, R.
2009. ‘Widowhood and psychological well-being among
older Malaysians: mediating effect of social network’
Indian Journal of Social Work, 70, 3, 375-390.
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