Families in Later Life

Alexis Walker holds the Jo Anne Leonard Petersen Chair in Gerontology and Family Studies and is Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at Oregon State University, where she directs the undergraduate certificate program in gerontology. Her research on mother-daughter relationships and family caregiving has been funded by the National Institute on Aging. Margaret Manoogian-O'Dell is a doctoral student focusing her academic work in family gerontology and women studies. She has spent the last 15 years working directly with undergraduate and graduate students in cocurricular and advising functions and has taught family studies and adult development and aging courses to undergraduates. Her current research concerns older women and intergenerational relationships. Lori A. McGraw is a doctoral candidate in human development and family studies at Oregon State University, where she teaches undergraduate courses that focus on individual and family development and the connections among social hierarchies. Her research highlights women's unpaid family labor and their family ties.

Introduction 1. The Gathering PART I. NEGOTIATING TIES WITH YOUNG ADULTS 2. Four Models of Adolescent Mother-Grandmother Relationships in Black Inner-City Families 3. One Week Until College 4. The Good Daughter 5. Forgotten Streams in the Family Life Course: Utilization of Qualitative Retrospective Interviews in the Analysis of Lifelong Single Women's Family Careers 6. Social Demography of Contemporary Families and Aging 7. The Last Diamond of Summer 8. Intergenerational Solidarity and the Structure of Adult Child-Parent Relationships in American Families PART II. CONNECTIONS ACROSS THE GENERATIONS IN MIDLIFE 9. Dancing with Death 10. Historical Perspectives on Caregiving: Documenting Women's Experiences 11. Only Daughter 12. The Experience of Grandfatherhood 13. Father's Sorrow, Father's Joy 14. Last Christmas Gift From a Mother 15. Extended Kin Networks in Black Families 16. Looking After: A Son's Memoir PART III. THE CENTRALITY OF INTIMACY IN LATER MIDLIFE 17. Marriage and Family Life of Blues-Collar Men 18. Breathing Lessons 19. Grandparenting Styles: Native American Perspectives 20. Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood 21. Closeness, Confiding, and Contact Among Siblings in Middle and Late Adulthood 22. Shared Filial Responsibility: The Family as the Primary Caregiver 23. What Remains 24. Marriage as Support or Strain? Marital Quality Following the Death of a Parent PART IV. TRANSITIONS AT WORK AND AT HOME IN EARLY OLD AGE 25. Retirement and Marital Satisfaction 26. U.S. Old-Age Policy and the Family 27. Elderly Mexican American Men: Work and Family Patterns 28. Family Ties and Motherly Love 29. Predictor and Outcomes of the End of Co-Resident Caregiving in Aging Families of Adults with Mental Retardation or Mental Illness 30. Gender and Control Among Spouses of the Cognitively Impaired: A Research Note 31. Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage 32. Happiness in Cornwall PART V. CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES IN LATER LIFE 33. Final Rounds: A Father, a Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime 34. Manon Reassures Her Lover 35. Starboys 36. Divorced and Reconstituted Families: Effects on the Older Generation 37. Understanding Elder Abuse and Neglect 38. Obasan in Suburbia 39. Selectivity Theory: Social Activity in Life-Span Context 40. Wallace Nelson, 85, and Juanita Nelson, 70: Deerfield, Massachusetts 41. Letters From a Father

"The introductory essays and readings, drawn from both literature and social science research, vividly illustrate the diversity of aging experiences both within and across American families - diversity conditioned by social space, historical time, and individual biography." -- ELEANOR PALO STOLLER