The Aging of the Gender Revolution

Abstract

Over the last decade, research on the elderly family has been glowing, portraying strong marital and family relationships. But the currently elderly, while they have benefited from the demographic and economic transformations of modernity, did not participate in the family revolutions that have followed. Cohorts who will become the elderly of the 21st century have been on the leading edge of the family revolution, the rapid growth of labor force participation among women, the tremendous rise in divorce and in childrearing out of marriage, and the overall decline in marriage and remarriage. Increasingly, the elderly will not be married or not in their first marriage. Research has focused on women and children as the sufferers from divorce, but in old age, as family relationships based on marriage and parenthood grow in importance, it is males who are at risk. This article presents a series of research findings that specify these risks.