Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:34:30.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Life After a Death: The Experience of Bereavement in South Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Susan Pickard
Susan Pickard
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Salford, Salford M54WT, U.K.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper looks at the experience of bereavement in old age in a South Wales locality and traces the immediate and long-term effects it has on the bereaved. It examines various categories of bereavement – death of spouse, death of the mother, death of a child, siblings and friends, with death of spouse as specially significant. In each category it closely relates the experience of bereavement to the nature of the relationship formerly maintained, arguing that the significance of bereavement can only be appreciated within the context of social structure which defines the meaning of these relationships. It suggests that the special position occupied by female networks in the social structure enables old women to cope with the effects of bereavement more successfully than old men. For both old men and old women however, the special position they occupy with respect to contemporary society gives death a particular and unique resonance.

Keywords

Bereavementsocial structurediscontinuitydesolationtie-breaking ritualsintegrationlonelinessreligious beliefs
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 191 - 217
Copyright
Copyright Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Harrison, J., Women and Ageing: Experience and Implications. Ageing and Society, 3. (1983). 209–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Bytheway, W. R., The Later Part of Life: A Study of the Concept of Old Age. Occasional Paper, UC Swansea, 1985.Google Scholar

3 Myerhoff, B. and Simic, A., Life's Career – Aging; cultural variations on growing old. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, 1978.Google Scholar

4 See Gearing, B. and Dant, T., Doing Biographical Research, in Peace, S. (ed). Researching social gerontology. Sage Publications, in association with the British Society of Gerontology, London, 1990.Google Scholar

5 McCall, M. and Wittner, J., The Good News about Life History, in Becker, H. and McCall, M., (eds). Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990.Google Scholar

6 Fontana, A., The Last Frontier: The Social Meaning of Growing Old. Sage, Beverly Hills, 1971.Google Scholar

7 Anderson, B., The Process of Deculturation – its dynamics among US aged. Anthropological Quarterly, 45, (1972) 209–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Abrams, P., Social networks and neighbourhood care. Social Change, 22, (1980) 12–23.Google Scholar

9 Figures in Wall, R., Residential isolation of the elderly: a comparison over time. Ageing and Society, 4, (1984) 483–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 See Jerrome, D., Intimate Relationships, in Bond, J. and Coleman, P., Ageing in Society. Sage, London, 1990.Google Scholar

11 See Arber, S. and Ginn, J., Gender and Later Life. Sage, London, 1991.Google Scholar

12 Jones, D., Counting the cost of coal: women's lives in the Rhondda 1881–1911 in John, A. (ed). Our Mother's Land: Chapters in Welsh Women's History. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1991.Google Scholar

13 Jerrome, D., The significance of friendship for women in later life. Ageing and Society, 1, 2, (1981) 175–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Rosenblatt, P. C, Walsh, R. P. and Jackson, D. A., Grief and mourning in crosscultural perspective. HRAF Press, USA, 1976.Google Scholar

15 Batchelor, J., Ainu life and lore. Kyobunkwan, Tokyo, 1927: quoted in Rosenblatt, P. C., et al., (1976), op cit.Google Scholar

16 Gorer, G., Death, Grief and Mourning. The Cresset Press, London, 1965.Google Scholar

17 Balkwell, Carolyn has provided a very good summary of this in Transitions to widowhood: a review of the literature. Family Relations, 30, (1981), 117–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Lopata, H. Z., Women as widows. Elsevier N. Holland, New York, 1979Google Scholar

Caine, L., Widow. William Morrow, New York, 1974.Google Scholar

19 Lopata, H. Z., Role changes in widowhood: a world perspective, in Cowgill, D. O., and Holmes, L. W., (eds), Aging and Modernization. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1972.Google Scholar

20 Cleveland, W. and Gianturco, D., Remarriage probability after widowhood. Journal of Gerontology, 31 (1976), 99–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

21 Lopata, H. Z., (1979) op. cit.Google Scholar

22 Rosser, C. and Harris, C., The family and social change: a study of family and kinship in a South Wales town. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 See Wenger, G. C., Dependence, interdependence and reciprocity after eighty. Journal of Ageing Studies, 1, 4 (1987) 355–77;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedJerrome, D., (1990) op. cit.Google Scholar

24 Bott, E., Family and Social Network. Tavistock, London, 1964.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, Gubrium, J., (1975), Being single in old age. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 6, 1 (1975) 29–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

26 Elias, N., The loneliness of the dying. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985.Google Scholar

27 Jerrome, D., Intimate relationships, in Bond, J. and Coleman, P., Ageing in Society. Sage, London, 1990.Google Scholar

28 Townsend, P., The Family Life of old people. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1957.Google Scholar

29 Bowling, A. and Cartwright, A., Life after a Death: A Study of the Elderly Widowed. Tavistock, London, 1982.Google Scholar

30 Dennis, N., Henriques, F. and Slaughter, C., Coal is our life: an analysis of a Yorkshire mining community. Tavistock, London, 1956.Google Scholar

31 Arber, S. and Ginn, J., Gender and Later Life. Sage, London, 1991.Google Scholar

32 Timaeus, I., Families and Households of the elderly population: prospects for those approaching old age. Ageing and Society, 6, (1986), 271–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 For example: Reid, W. S., Religious attitudes of the elderly, in Johnson, M. (ed). Transitions in later and middle life. British Society of Gerontology, London, 1980.Google Scholar