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Rapid fertility declines and improved longevity are now shifting the overall balance of population towards older ages in many parts of the world. Within this growing population of older people there are many groups with particular needs about which relatively little is known. This collection focuses on one such sub-population, the elderly without children. Few would deny that childlessness poses potential human and welfare problems for older people without them. What is less well known is that comparative anthropological and historical demographic research indicates that childlessness is a recurring social phenomenon that has affected 1 in 5 older women in many cultures and historical periods. High levels of childlessness arise not solely or primarily from biological factors like primary sterility, but from a combination of actors. Many, like non-marriage, delayed childbearing , and pathological sterility, reflect the interaction of social and biological influences.
Also of major importance are factors that remove the support of children from elders' lives: migration, mortality, divorce, remarriage, family enmity, social mobility, and the pressing demands of family and career on younger generations. The papers collected in this volume employ a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to define and characterize the experience of ageing without children.
List of contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Chapter 1. Where are the Children?
Philip Kreager PART I: ASIA Chapter 2. Problems of Elderly without Children: A Case-study of the Matrilineal Minangkabau, West Sumatra
Edi Indrizal Chapter 3. 'They Don't Need It, and I Can't Give It': Filial Support in South India
Penny Vera-Sanso Chapter 4. Adoption, Patronage and Charity: Arrangements for the Elderly without Children in East Java
Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill Chapter 5. In the Absence of Family Support: Cases of Childless Widows in Urban Neighbourhoods of East Java
Ruly Marianti PART II: EUROPE Chapter 6. Demographic Change in Europe: Implications for Future Family Support for Older People
Maria Evandrou and
Jane Falkingham Chapter 7. British Pakistani Elderly without Children: An Invisible Minority
Alison Shaw Chapter 8. Home-place, Movement and Autonomy: Rural Aged in East Anglia and Normandy
Judith Okely Chapter 9. The Position of the Elderly in Greece Prior to the Second World War: Evidence from Three Island Populations
Violetta Hionidou Notes on Contributors
Index
About the author
Philip Kreager is Lecturer in Human Sciences, Somerville College, and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Ageing.
Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill is Lecturer in Gerontology at the University of Southampton.
Summary
Rapid fertility declines and improved longevity shift the overall balance of population towards older ages in many parts of the world. This collection focuses on one such sub-population, the elderly without children. Employing quantitative and qualitative methods, it aims to define and characterize the experience of ageing without children.
Additional text
“by emphasizing the historical and synchronous universality of the childless elderly in the East and the West and by highlighting the social context of their formation and relations, Ageing without Children: European and Asian Perspectives fills a glaring lacuna in demographic studies.” · H-Net Reviews
“As a collection of rich case studies…the volume will provide a welcome read and source of enlightening data.” · JRAI
