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.

• Introduction1. The GatheringPART I. NEGOTIATING TIES WITH YOUNG ADULTS2. Four Models of Adolescent Mother-Grandmother Relationships in Black Inner-City Families3. One Week Until College4. The Good Daughter5. Forgotten Streams in the Family Life Course: Utilization of Qualitative Retrospective Interviews in the Analysis of Lifelong Single Women′s Family Careers6. Social Demography of Contemporary Families and Aging7. The Last Diamond of Summer8. Intergenerational Solidarity and the Structure of Adult Child-Parent Relationships in American FamiliesPART II. CONNECTIONS ACROSS THE GENERATIONS IN MIDLIFE9. Dancing with Death10. Historical Perspectives on Caregiving: Documenting Women′s Experiences11. Only Daughter12. The Experience of Grandfatherhood13. Father′s Sorrow, Father′s Joy14. Last Christmas Gift From a Mother15. Extended Kin Networks in Black Families16. Looking After: A Son′s MemoirPART III. THE CENTRALITY OF INTIMACY IN LATER MIDLIFE17. Marriage and Family Life of Blues-Collar Men18. Breathing Lessons19. Grandparenting Styles: Native American Perspectives20. Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood21. Closeness, Confiding, and Contact Among Siblings in Middle and Late Adulthood22. Shared Filial Responsibility: The Family as the Primary Caregiver23. What Remains24. Marriage as Support or Strain? Marital Quality Following the Death of a ParentPART IV. TRANSITIONS AT WORK AND AT HOME IN EARLY OLD AGE25. Retirement and Marital Satisfaction26. U.S. Old-Age Policy and the Family27. Elderly Mexican American Men: Work and Family Patterns28. Family Ties and Motherly Love29. Predictor and Outcomes of the End of Co-Resident Caregiving in Aging Families of Adults with Mental Retardation or Mental Illness30. Gender and Control Among Spouses of the Cognitively Impaired: A Research Note31. Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage32. Happiness in CornwallPART V. CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES IN LATER LIFE33. Final Rounds: A Father, a Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime34. Manon Reassures Her Lover35. Starboys36. Divorced and Reconstituted Families: Effects on the Older Generation37. Understanding Elder Abuse and Neglect38. Obasan in Suburbia39. Selectivity Theory: Social Activity in Life-Span Context40. Wallace Nelson, 85, and Juanita Nelson, 70: Deerfield, Massachusetts41. 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."