This paper reports a study of family and family-like interactions and transfers, or exchanges of goods and resources, between paid, round-the-clock, Filipino home carers and those they care for in a sample of households in Israel. Qualitative interviews about their experiences and attitudes concerning the care role were conducted with 22 family members and 29 Filipino home-care workers. A thematic analysis of the interview data identified three major themes: the structure and internal dynamics of the adapted family or family-like system of care; the role of family members; and the role of Filipino home-care workers in the new system of care. Sons and daughters tended to appropriate the care-management positions and to reduce their social and emotional support for the care recipient. In contrast, spouse care-givers continued to provide some of the personal and emotional care even when a Filipino home-care worker was employed. Filipino home-care workers were made responsible for daily care and domestic routines and provided emotional and social care. It was found that family members do not relinquish their role as care-givers when round-the-clock foreign carers are on hand, but the nature of their role changes. The results suggest that foreign home-care workers' job description needs to be redefined to acknowledge the substantial social and emotional care that they provide.

The end of the ‘Golden Age’ of welfare capitalism in the 1970s was the prelude to a period of greater individualisation within societies and was accompanied by an increase in the importance of consumption as a way of organising social relations. During the same period there was also an expansion in the discourses aimed at enhancing the government of the autonomous self. One such discourse operates around what has been termed the ‘will to health’: it suggests that health has become a required goal for individual behaviour and has become synonymous with health itself. The generational groups whose lifecourses were most exposed to these changes are now approaching later life. We explore the extent to which social transformations related to risk, consumption and individualisation are reflected in the construction of later-life identities around health and ageing. We examine how the growth in health-related ‘technologies of the self’ have fostered a distinction between natural and normal ageing, wherein the former is associated with coming to terms with physical decline and the latter associated with maintaining norms of self-care aimed at delaying such decline. Finally, we consider anti-ageing medicine as a developing arena for the construction of later-life identities and discuss the implications of the social changes for researching later life.

This paper examines older women's experiences and perceptions of clothing prescriptions for adults in later life. Using data from in-depth interviews with 36 women aged 71 to 93 years, we investigate the stringent, taken-for-granted social norms that older women identified with respect to appropriate fashion for the ageing female body. Specifically, the participants argued that older women should refrain from wearing bright colours and revealing or overly suggestive styles. Expressing a preference for classic or traditional styles, the women also reported that they used clothing strategically to mask or compensate for bodily transgressions that had occurred over time as a result of the physical realities of ageing, including weight gain, altered body shapes, wrinkles and sagging or ‘flabby’ arms and necks, referred to respectively as ‘bat wings’ and ‘turkey wattles’. In addition, the women contended that they consciously chose their clothing styles to compensate for age-related health issues and/or to present a competent, healthy self to others. Finally, the women talked about the ways in which their clothing choices were influenced by their changing lifestyles and constrained by a lack of desirable and affordable clothing options for the older female body. The findings are discussed in the light of Erving Goffman's concept of stigma and contemporary theorising about ageing, ageism, beauty work and the body.

This study examined the cross-sectional association of bone and joint diseases with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among 850 randomly sampled people aged 60 or more years in a rural area of Bangladesh. Information about arthritis, back and joint pain was collected through self-reports and two physicians' assessments at a health centre. Health-related quality of life was measured using a multi-dimensional generic instrument designed for older people that has questions on the construct's physical, psychological, social, economic, spiritual and environmental dimensions. Bivariate analyses showed that the most negative effects of bone and joint diseases were on the physical and psychological dimensions. Hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that joint pain, whether doctor-diagnosed or self-reported, and self-reported back pain were all associated with lower HRQoL scores and accounted for almost 20 per cent of the variation (adjusted for age, sex, education, marital status, household size, income, expenditure and occupation). The analyses further revealed that women with self-reported back pain had significantly lower psychological, environmental and overall HRQoL scores than equivalent men, while self-reported joint pain was associated with significantly lower scores only for the environmental dimension. The strong association of bone and joint diseases with HRQoL underscores the importance of regarding these illnesses as public health problems.

This paper examines the relationship between informal care and ending paid work for working women of three age groups (up to 30, 31–49 and 50 or more years) in 1995 in Belgium. It explores the effect of being a carer for older adults on the probability of ceasing to work. Most particularly, it focuses on the effect of the care intensity in the different age groups. The analyses use data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). A sample of 24,592 working women living in 11 European countries was followed from 1995 to 2001. Multivariate analyses for the entire sample show that the simple fact of caring or not did not influence the probability of ceasing work, but that providing light care had a negative effect, suggesting the presence of a respite effect. As for the effects specific to each age group, caring did not have any effect for women aged 31 to 49 years, but for the other two age groups, women who provided light care were less likely to cease work than those not caring for an older person. In contrast, providing heavy care increased the probability of ceasing work, but only for those aged 50 or more years. The findings suggest that studies of and policies related to informal care and its consequences should give more attention to age group differences.

This paper examines whether participation in social activities is associated with higher levels of wellbeing among post-retirement age people in England, and, if so, whether these relationships are explained by the reciprocal nature of these activities. Cross-sectional analysis of relationships between social activities (including paid work, caring and volunteering) and wellbeing (quality of life, life satisfaction and depression) was conducted among participants of one wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) who were of state pension age or older. Participants in paid or voluntary work generally had more favourable wellbeing than those who did not participate in these activities. Caring was not associated with wellbeing, although female carers were less likely to be depressed than non-carers. Carers, volunteers and those in paid work who felt adequately rewarded for their activities had better wellbeing than those who were not participating in those activities, while those who did not feel rewarded did not differ from non-participants. These results point to the need to increase the rewards that older people receive from their productive activities, particularly in relation to caring work.

The current study describes from an attachment-theoretical viewpoint how intergenerational support in adult child-parent relationships is associated with wellbeing in both generations. The attachment perspective and its focus on affective relationship characteristics is considered as an important theoretical framework for the investigation of special relationships across the life span. Data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (N=1,456 dyads) were analysed to investigate if relationship quality moderated the association between providing intergenerational support to parents and wellbeing in adult children, on the one hand, and receiving intergenerational support from children and wellbeing of older parents on the other hand. The perspectives of both relationship partners were taken into account to allow for dependence within dyads. Intergenerational support, in terms of instrumental help provision, was negatively associated with the child's and parent's wellbeing. Being the stronger and wiser partner in adult-child parent relationships, as reflected by giving advice and being the initiator within the relationship, was beneficial for the wellbeing of both generations. Additionally, relationship quality was the strongest predictor of wellbeing in both generations. Parental wellbeing was benefited by filial support in high quality relationships. If an intergenerational relationships was of high quality, the challenges of intergenerational support provision and receipt were easier to deal with for both generations, parents and children.

The objective of this study is to describe the pattern of participation in leisure activities in an older population in relation to contextual factors as well as to mental and physical health. A cohort of 1,623 participants aged 75 or older living in Stockholm, Sweden was asked to list all the leisure activities they were engaged in. These were successively organised into 31 major categories and further grouped into mental, social, physical, productive and recreational types. The pattern of participation was examined in relation to age, gender, contextual factors (education, social network) and health status (depressive symptoms, cognitive impairment, dementia, somatic diseases and physical limitation). In spite of their advanced age, the majority of the population was active, as 70 per cent had participated in at least one activity. Reading (19%) was the most prevalent individual activity, and mental activities (43%) the most prevalent activity type. Older age, female gender, low education status, having a poor or limited social network, mental disorders, and physical limitation, were all factors correlated with a decreased engagement in ‘at least one activity’. Contextual factors and health-related factors were related to the five activity types in different ways. The pattern of participation in leisure activities is associated with multiple factors and their recognition is essential to the facilitation of an active lifestyle in the older population.

Increased emphasis on efficiency and regulation is changing the nature of the non-profit sector in western countries. In this paper, we explore the impact of these contemporary changes on older, more traditional volunteers. Specifically, we use neo-institutional theory as a framework to explore the micro-effect of these processes in one large, multi-service non-profit organisation in Australia. The findings of an ethnographic study are presented using an analytical template comprising: (1) the observational space; (2) the conversational order; (3) the content of talk; and (4) areas of resistance. Findings from these categories provided evidence of two institutional orders – one a traditional way of operating consistent with a charity model, and the other, a new, dominant approach driven by market forces. It was found that older, more traditional volunteers struggled to maintain the old order as well as to make the transition to the new order. If organisations are to benefit from a pool of potential volunteers and if older people are to benefit from the social and health advantages associated with productive ageing, there are important implications in these findings. Older people are able to make a successful transition to the new order, but organisations need to be more proactive in facilitating the change. In particular, organisations need to reject ageist cultures and practices, provide training and skills development, and to work collaboratively with older people.