Helena Znaniecka Lopata

Growing up and growing old : ageing and dependency in the life course

Introduction Infantilization as Social Discourse Constructing Personhood Changing Categories of the Child Young at Heart Dependency, Family and Community The Making and Sustaining of Marginality Weakness and Power

Work/Family Conflicts: Private Lives--Public Responses.

Preface Overview Dimensions of Work/Family Relationships A Survey of the Past Job and Homelife Study Conflicts Within the Family Child Care Elder Care Social Conflicts Societal Response Meeting the Challenge of Work/Family Issues in the Twenty-first Century Bibliography Index

The Interweave of Public and Private: Women's Challenge to American Society.

The A. analyzes the social and ideological changes in American society that resulted in the definition of the world as containing two spheres, the private sphere of women and the public sphere of men, and the consequences of this view. It is argue that the two-spheres imagery was an ideological tool used to justify restrictions on womens involvements in economic and political activity and mens involvements in family and community. The ideology was, and still is, an artificial polarity that ignores the continuum of social relations in real life and which has become increasingly dysfunctional to modern life.

The Social Involvement of American Widows.

Most sociologists would agree with William Goode (1963) that urbanization and industrialization are creating a world revolution in social structures and life styles. Despite these changes it has been assumed in the United States that all candidates for participation in that society have the ability and the motivation to engage themselves at levels satisfactory both to the group and to the individual. Such social involvement is anticipated to follow the average trend of a life cycle of entrance, active behavior, phasing out, and exit. Americans are expected to be socialized at home, obtain necessary educational skills in school, self-select the best marital mate to match their needs, obtain a job, have children, move to suburbs, have a steady work career, expand their social involvement in middle life, and then gradually disengage first from secondary and then from primary social roles (Leslie, 1967; Cumming and Henry, 1961).

DIVORCEES AND WIDOWS: Similarities and Differences

Based on findings from age-standardized survey data, divorced women feel more restricted in their relationships with others and have less favorable attitudes toward their ex-spouses than do widows. The greater clarity of the widowed role may provide more social support and ease adjustment to the end of a marriage for the widow in ways unavailable to the still somewhat stigmatized status of the divorcee.

The Middle Years

Human beings are involved in many social roles in a lifetime, consecutively and within time-bound clusters. One can be a student, worker, wife, and mother either simultaneously or at different times. At any one stage of life, however, a person is involved in a cluster of roles, each with its own cycle of involvement. Each role consists of a set of mutually interdependent relations with members of a social circle for whom duties are performed and from whom rights are received (Lopata, 1971, 1973; Lopata, Barnewolt, and Norr, 1980; Znaniecki, 1940, 1965).

The Chicago-Poznan and Columbia-Poznan University Connections

In spite of the tendency of national culture societies and individuals to be protective about products identified as of their own creation, the cosmopolitan community of scholars has developed along many lines, even in the pre-email and Internet times. This study traces one such line, initiated by one scholar interested in knowledge of another society who personally went to it, met another scholar and entered into a joint venture. Their product became a classic and the contacts extended over the years and involved increasing numbers of students and scholars who crossed national, even continental boundaries. I have limited myself here to the contacts of scholars between two universities in America and one university in Poland. The initial lines of connection have been followed by other scholars into other centers, resulting in numerous contributions to scholarly knowledge.