Ch.7, Families in Middle/Later Life

Question 1

Two key recent demographic changes

Answer 1

having fewer children and living longer
adult children are spending more time with their parents than at any other point in history

Question 2

Why is old age defined at 65 problematic

Answer 2

because often people live much longer than even 80 or 90, so now we’re defining a third of their lives as being old
average life expectancy: 82.3 years

Question 3

Latter years of midlife–the years prior to the traditional marker of old age at 65

Answer 3

empty nest stage

Question 4

Intergenerational coresidence

Answer 4

kids living with their parents, Toronto and Oshawa in Ontario have the highest rates of this

Question 5

Sandwich generation

Answer 5

parents with full time jobs, children, parents to care for, everything happening all ago once

Question 6

Grey tsunami

Answer 6

apocalyptic pronouncements of an epidemic of dementia occurring; although this isn’t accurate and is more of a media panic

Question 7

Colongevity of different generations

Answer 7

increase of number years that older adults and their children are jointly alive, has affected caregiving as children who are already old then have to care for old parents, and there is a decrease in the proportion of one’s adult life spent raising children, increase in number of years spent in the empty nest phase of life

Question 8

Boomerang kids

Answer 8

return home after leaving it

Question 9

Cluttered nest

Answer 9

nest once children keep returning and leaving

Question 10

Serial home leavers

Answer 10

returning and leaving multiple times

Question 11

Grey/silver divorce

Answer 11

later life divorce is becoming more common and more acceptable; because people are living longer they have more reason to divorce and look for new unions

Question 12

Primary reason for parents to rmain in an unhappy marital union

Answer 12

concern over the welfare of their children

Question 13

Effects of widowhood on men vs women

Answer 13

women experience more economic hardship; although they have much better support networks

Question 14

Remarriage as a gendered transition

Answer 14

men are more likely than women to remarry
-women often prefer their singleness and independence

Question 15

Streib and family relations

Answer 15

argues that the quality of ties and relations are more important than the number of such relations

Question 16

Bi-directional resource flow

Answer 16

emotional exchanges, caregiving, time, money

Question 17

Intragenerational caregiving

Answer 17

support and care from family members for an older adult,

Question 18

Age in plac

Answer 18

aging at home rather than being forced to relocate; home care

Question 19

Sociological ambivalence

Answer 19

ongoing negotiation of contradictions in family relationships and their connections to how social life is organized and structured

Question 20

Experiences of ambivalence

Answer 20

women are more likely to report ambivalence isn regards to each other, caregiving to older parents, and in laws

Question 21

care gap

Answer 21

The Vanier Institute of the Family (VIF) has expressed concern about a growing “care gap” in Canada, both for the care of older adults and of children as primary recipients of family care. Increases in dual-earner households, from 36 per cent of couples with children in 1976 to 69 per cent in 2015, drive this care gap; indeed, among three-quarters of these couples, both partners are employed full-time. “While this has increased family income, it has also meant there are fewer family members available to help manage work and family responsibilities”

Question 22

Women at old age vs men

Answer 22

A striking characteristic of Canada’s older adult population is the large and increasing imbalance in the proportions of men and women. By age 85, women outnumber men by more than two to one (Statistics Canada 2016b) as it is well acknowledged that in later life “women get sick, but men die” (Gee and Kimball 1987).

Question 23

difference between intragenerational and intergenerational support?

Question 24

Bigamy

Answer 24

entering a marriage while still legally married to another

Question 25

resilience

Answer 25

Originally referring in psychological literature to the ability to overcome severely adverse life conditions to go on to lead a successful life, the term has now broadened to refer to the ability to individually manage and overcome difficulties in life in general.

Question 26

non-transitions in family

Answer 26

Non-transitions Not transitioning to culturally expected experiences, e.g., marriage, parenthood, along the family trajectory.

Question 27

potential side effects of intensive parenting

Answer 27

or instance, found that while children whose parents engaged in concerted cultivation tended to display a growing sense of entitlement and self-confidence that would likely help them succeed in later life, they had more difficulty entertaining themselves, were more time-stressed, and had less freedom to play in unstructured environments than the children of working-class parents in the study. Nelson (2010) drew some similar conclusions, as is outlined in the box below.

Question 28

Salad family

Answer 28

same as blended family

Question 29

Transnational/multi-local families

Answer 29

families separated, may be spread all over the globe

Question 30

Love match and ideas of marriage

Answer 30

Revolutionized marriage; no longer considered an economic and reproductive deal

Question 31

Homonormativity

Answer 31

the LGBTQ people that gain rights and acceptance are normative but homo and therefore homonormative

Question 32

Domesticating same sex couples

Answer 32

sameness argument, as long as they mimic nuclear heteronormative families they can have rights

Question 33

New childhood

Answer 33

more child centered, called for smaller families, more focus on character formation

Question 34

“Poor man’s divorce” in the early 1900s

Answer 34

desertion, abandoning their wives, living common law in a “second marriage” with another woman

Question 35

Why was universal suffrage originally granted in 1918?

Answer 35

Not because of gender equality, only bc the government wanted to recognize women’s involvement in the workforce during WWI, not bc the government actually wanted equality

Question 36

“Family experts” during the interwar years

Answer 36

Eugenical, selective breeding, wanted to restrict immigration leading to “racial degeneration” where there were less white people.

Question 37

Anti-contraception campaigns and their ideas; why were they against contraceptives?

Answer 37

believed that family limitation was “race suicide” and wanted “better stock” couples to have families

Question 38

“Baby bonus” and the family allowances act

Answer 38

gave mothers 5-8 dollars per month per child, which then secured a liberal victory in the election

Question 39

Why is research moving away from just studying the grandparent/grandchild relationship?

Answer 39

Studying the middle generation

Question 40

New involved father

Answer 40

despite perpetuating the idea of a new involved father, fathers are still viewed as less competent and less suitable parents than women