Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Questions surrounding adaptation to aging and how adaptation can best be achieved have been of central concern in gerontology. Over the years, gender differences have been invoked in the answers to these questions. Women and men have been thought to follow different and unequal pathways in adapting to older age. Depending upon the explanation at hand and the specific dimension of adaptation under consideration, either women or men have been portrayed as adapting more effectively or encountering great difficulties in the aging process.
Beyond Gender Differences: Adaptation to Aging in Life Course Perspective shows the need to move beyond a focus on gender differences, toward a life course perspective on adaptation to aging. A life course perspective provides an effective framework to investigate sources of similarity as well as difference between-and among-women and men. The life course approach advanced in this volume emphasizes the interweave of personal biography and social history, the importance of gender, race, social class, and birth cohort across all stages of the life course, and the role of the state in allocating resources to members of different social groups.
Substantive chapters examine adaptation to aging as a broad and cumulative process (Chapter 3) and the two life events that have been thought to pose the greatest challenges to adaptation in older age: The death of a spouse (Chapter 4) and retirement (Chapter 5). Each of these chapters is designed to address the following questions: How have theories of gender difference been used to explain adaptation in this realm of experience? To what degree have gender differences been documented in the relevant empirical literature, and are the reported findings supportive of gender difference theories? How and why does a life course perspective provide a more satisfactory framework for understanding women's and men's adaptation to aging, and their adaptation to later-life events in particular?
The final chapter of the book addresses how the life course perspective can be integrated fruitfully with the theoretical approaches of symbolic interactionism and political economy to achieve a fuller understanding of adaptation to aging. A call is made to modify the study of adaptation to aging to focus more fully on lifelong processes and challenges, rather than on particular life events which are assumed to be stressful.
Editorials
Dale Lund
This outstanding book will be valued by sociology, psychology, gerontology, marriage, family, and women's studies scholars at many career stages. Faculty will assign it in advanced courses; undergraduates will find worthy term paper topics; and graduate students will be inspired by the numerous calls to research. We all will appreciate this book for its review and synthesis of a wide range of theory and empirical findings, advancement in theory building, careful analysis, elegant argument, and clear exposition.—Professor, University of Utah
Michelle L. Stevenson
This book provides clear and concise explanations of key concepts and theoretical approaches to gender difference research and adaptation to ageing. The overview and critique of research on gender differences and adaptation highlight the contradictory nature of the empirical evidence available, and the conceptual and methodical limitations of these bodies of research. Those readers interested in the influence of gender on adaptation to the death of a spouse and retirement will gain a detailed understanding of available research and its limitations as well as guidelines for the application of a life course perspective. Overall, this book progresses the application of a broad perspective on adaptation to older age.—Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Journal of Women and Aging, Volume 13, Number 4
Rosalie Gilford
This book is valuable not only to those interested in adaptation to aging, but also to those who use gender as a variable in developmental research. This book would be most useful to researchers who study developmental change and advanced students with prior background or supplementary readings in life course perspective. Hatch is to be commended for challenging widely used frameworks by offering and applying a 'new' perspective to further the field of gerontology. Hopefully, as Hatch states, it will assist in building bridges between gender studies and aging research.—California State University, Fullerton