Research on Aging

We contribute to knowledge about older adults with chronic illnesses by identifying positive and negative influences of family and friends on self-management. Thirteen focus groups were conducted in upstate New York with 84 African American and White men and women, 65 years old or older, with arthritis, diabetes, and/or heart disease. Specific positive and negative social network influences are discussed in the areas of disease management (medication management, dietary activities, physical activity, and health care appointments); decision-making about the illness; and psychosocial coping. Overall, we found many more positive than negative social network influences, and more negative influences from family members than from friends. We discuss differences between influences of family members versus friends, and point out a few suggestive differences by gender and race. We conclude with limitations of the study as well as implications for the design of self-management interventions involving family members and friends.

Data collected from a representative sample of 157 Black and 394 White older women is used to explore within-family differences in mother-to-child support. High rates of differentiation in both Black and White families were found. Within-family analyses revealed more similarities than differences in the effects of adult children's characteristics on mothers' likelihood of providing support. For both groups, mothers were most likely to provide support to children who had fewer resources, greater need, and who had provided the mothers with support. Children's health problems were better predictors of support among Black than White mothers, whereas children's gender played a larger role in White than Black mothers' provision of support; however, both groups of mothers favored daughters and children with poor health. In sum, these patterns provide little support for the argument that family solidarity is substantially more important in explaining intergenerational exchanges in Black than White families.

This study examines a domain of life—involvement in paid work—that has not been explored in prior research addressing the mental health consequences of widowhood. We argue that experiences in the paid labor force increase women's economic, social and psychological resources, which compound over the life course and ease their adjustment to widowhood. Using a sample of 207 widows interviewed in the Miami-Dade County, Florida area in 2001—2002, findings from ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models support the hypothesis that widows with work histories report fewer depressive symptoms than their peers without employment experience. Further analyses reveal that social and psychological resources mediate this association suggesting that employment enhances social support and self-perceptions, which reduce the negative health effects of widowhood. Our study illustrates the importance of incorporating work histories into examinations of widowhood, particularly as cohorts of women with considerable lifetime investments in paid work enter their later years.

This study examines: (1) the extent to which acute and chronic stressors related to spousal loss affect the physical functioning of bereaved spouses; and (2) how these patterns differ for men and women. We use data from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study, which tracks older adults prior to spousal loss, and 6, 18, and 48 months after spousal loss. The results reveal that (1) widowed persons whose spouses had serious ongoing health problems before the death report more severe perceived limitation in performing daily activities 18 and 48 months after loss; (2) widowed persons who were not with their spouses when they died have greater functional limitation 18 and 48 months after loss. However, gender interaction term analyses reveal that the health effects of spousal death context hold for widowers only. Our findings suggest that the ways older adults die may have long-term physical health consequences for their surviving spouses, and these ramifications differ for widows and widowers.