Julie Ann McMullin

Family, Friends, Stress, and Well-being: Does Childlessness Make a Difference?

Data from the Survey on Ageing and Independence are employed to test the relationship between stress, integration in close family and friend networks, and well-being with a particular emphasis on parent status. The dependent variables used in this analysis are, whether individuals have a close family member or a close friend, the number of reported close relatives and friends, life stress, and the affect balance scale. It is hypothesized that the zero order relationship often found between parent status and well-being may be due to (1) a fundamental difference in the social support experiences of older parents and older childless individuals, (2) different levels of stress among these groups, or (3) the potential of friends to be of greater importance in assuring well-being in older age than family. Results show that childless persons are less likely than parents to have at least one close family member and they have fewer close relatives. No parent status differences are found regarding the likelihood of having a close friend or in the number of close friends individuals have. Compared to parents, childless individuals experience less life stress and similar levels of well-being. Finally, the nature of the stress-support-well-being relationship appears to be the same regardless of parent status.

Understanding social inequality : intersections of class, age, gender, ethnicity, and race in Canada

Preface Acknowledgments PART I 1. Introduction 2. Class and Inequality 3. Gender and Inequality 4. Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality 5. Age and Inequality 6. Actors and Agency 7. Actors and CAGE(s) (Class, Age, Gender, Race & Ethnicity) PART II 8. CAGE(s), Families, Domestic Labour, and the Processes of Reproduction 9. CAGE(s) and Paid Work 10. CAGE(s) and Education 11. CAGE(s) and Health 12. CAGE(s) and the State 13. Conclusion: Equality, Politics, Platforms, and Policy Issues References Index

Reasons for and perceptions of childlessness among older persons: Exploring the impact of marital status and gender

Abstract Using a subsample of 281 childless respondents aged 55 and over, we examine reported reasons for being childless and subjective childless status (self-definition of childlessness as a matter of choice or circumstance). The primary reason for childlessness among never married individuals is being single while the central reasons for childlessness among the ever-married are physiological factors, age, and fate. However, the reported reasons for childlessness vary within both marital status groups depending on whether respondents define their childlessness as a matter of choice or circumstance. Indeed, marital status and gender appear to be more closely related to childless status than are the actual reasons given for childlessness. The results show that the interaction between gender and marital status is a significant predictor of childless status, with widowed women most likely to define themselves as childless by circumstance.

The Impact of Family Composition on Providing Help to Older Parents A Study of Employed Adults

Using a subsample from the Canadian Aging and Research Network (CARNET) Work and Family Survey of 1,015 persons who provide at least 1 hour of help weekly to one or both parents, the impact of family composition on providing help to older parents is examined. Specifically, three research questions are addressed: (1) Do family composition characteristics affect the number of hours of help provided to a parent or parents? (2) does the likelihood of being the sole provider of help differ according to these characteristics? and (3) does the likelihood of being the primary helper vary based on family composition? Family composition variables include gender and marital status of the respondent, number of brothers and sisters, the number of children age 20 and older and age 12 and under, and the gender of the parent. Several family composition variables are significant predictors, including number of sisters, number of brothers, and gender in interaction with marital status and number of siblings.

Getting out of the House: The Effect of Childlessness on Social Participation and Companionship in Later Life

Using data from a Canadian national sample, participation in three activities - going to public places, travel, and going on outings - in a sample of 4,258 respondents aged 55 and over is examined. OLS regression results indicate that the childless go to public places and travel as frequently as parents and go on outings more frequently than parents. Significant differences are also found for gender, marital status, health, and education. Logistic regression results indicate that the childless are more likely to seek companionship with friends and other relatives than are parents. However, gender and marital status are more often significant predictors of source of companionship than is parent status. We conclude that the childless negotiate unique social participation networks which ensure social participation outside the home.

Permanent Childlessness: Perceived Advantages and Disadvantages Among Older Persons

This study examines the perceptions of childlessness reported by 287 childless respondents aged 55 and over who were part of a larger study (n - 678) on aging and social support. Sixty-seven per cent (n = 193) report advantages to childlessness and 64 per cent (n = 185) report disadvantages. Qualitative data show that key perceived advantages are fewer worries or problems, financial benefits, greater freedom, and career flexibility. The major disadvantages are lack of companionship/being alone/loneliness, lack of support and care when older, and missing the experience of parenthood. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of the effects that gender, marital status, age, and childless status (childless by choice or by circumstance) have on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of having no children show that there is variability in perceived advantages only. When we compare specific perceived advantages and disadvantages to related experience, only some perceived benefits (financial advantage) are associated with actual experience. Findings are discussed in the context of actually experiencing costs and benefits versus sharing widely-held beliefs about childlessness.

Ageing, disability and workplace accommodations

In most western nations, laws discourage discrimination in paid employment on the basis of disability, but for these policies to be of benefit, individuals must define their functional limitations as disabilities. There is a strong relationship between age and disability among those of working age, yet it is unclear whether older workers attribute their limitations to disability or to ‘ natural ageing ’. If the latter is true, they may not believe that they need or qualify for workplace accommodations (i.e. adaptations or interventions at the workplace). Similarly, if an employer ascribes a worker’s limitation to ‘ natural ageing ’, rather than to a disability, they may not offer compensatory accommodation. Using data from the Canadian 2001 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, this paper asks whether workers who ascribe their functional limitation to ageing are as likely as those who do not to report a need for a workplace accommodation. It also addresses whether those who identify a need for compensatory accommodations and who ascribe their limitation to ageing have unmet workplace-accommodation needs. The findings suggest that, even when other factors are controlled, e.g. the type and severity of disability, the number of limiting conditions, gender, age, education, income and occupation, those who made the ageing attribution were less likely to recognise the need for an accommodation ; and among those who acknowledged a need, those who ascribed their disability to ageing were less likely to have their needs met.

Learning and Aging

When we think about learning we often think about it in relation to formal education. Yet, education and learning are not necessarily the same things; one can go to school and not learn anything, while others learn without participating in formal schooling. Nonetheless, in sociology, the study of learning has largely centered on the study of education and its institutions and structural features, with an attendant focus on inequality and the individuals and groups most typically served by the system, namely, younger people. Although the adult educational complex has certainly expanded in recent years, 248% from the 1970s to 1990s in the United States (Hamil-Luker and Uhlenberg 2002:S324), there remains a considerable degree of age-based compartmentalization when it comes to learning, with an emphasis on training young people for the labor market. Hence, there continues to be an overall lack of scholarly attention to learning later in life.

The Life Course Perspective and Public Policy Formation: Observations on the Canadian Case

The antecedents of the life course perspective can be traced back, at the least, more than 100 years when, in an attempt to understand the persistence of poverty in England, Rowntree (1901) proposed that there was a relationship between the individual life course and economic demands related to family life. As Bengtson and Allen (1993: 472) record, Rowntree „postulated that poverty in English families living in York was most prominent at three stages of the life course – early childhood, the childbearing years, and old age – because one workers wage was inadequate to provide sufficient support for a whole family with dependent children and in old age there was decreasing income from work.“ Rowntrees imaginative research was also quiet clearly relevant to social policy issues.

Introduction: Aging and Working in the New Economy

This book is about aging and working in the New Economy. It is about how individuals manage their paid work within fi rms that are struggling to survive and compete in global economies. It is also about the tensions that arise as workers and owners struggle for personal and fi rm survival, two processes that are often contradictory and result in paradoxes that occasionally produce confl ict. For centuries, of course, tension, contradiction, paradox, and confl ict have been used to describe the employment relations that exist between employers and employees. Yet, as this book will show, the specifi c character of employment relations and the tension, contradiction, paradox, and confl ict that ensue, take on a somewhat diff erent character in the small, New Economy fi rms in this study. Throughout the 1990s, the New Economy concept came to refer to the idea that old ways of doing business were waning, largely due to advances in information technology, the innovative implementation of these technologies in the workplace, and the commodifi cation of knowledge (Castells, 1996; Ranson, 2003). Although there have been debates about how new the New Economy really is, the evolution of employment relations over the last several decades and the idea that ‘business is not being conducted as usual’ have policymakers, think tanks, and academics taking notice. Indeed, according to Chris Benner ‘it is not at all an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of an information revolution as signifi cant for changing economic and social structures in the twenty-fi rst century as the fi rst and second industrial revolutions were for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ (Benner, 2002: 1–2). Although it is diffi cult, and perhaps premature, to say for certain whether the changes in the use of information technology could be classifi ed as a revolution of the same magnitude and scope as the fi rst and second industrial revolutions, one need only consider the vast changes in manufacturing processes and the omnipresence of email and text messaging at work and at home to recognize that profound change is underway. The transformation of employment relations in the New Economy has coincided with workforce aging. Over the next few decades, population