Pearl A. Dykstra

Changes in older adult loneliness: results from a seven-year longitudinal study

This study examines loneliness and its correlates—health, residential care, partner status, and network size—over a seven-year period among adults born between 1908 and 1937. The four waves of data are from the Dutch “Living Arrangements and Social Networks of Older Adults” and the “Longitudinal Aging Study of Amsterdam”programs. Data from at least two waves are available for 2,925 respondents. Results show that older adults generally become lonelier as time passes. The increase is greater for the oldest, the partnered, and those with a better functional capacity at baseline. Older adults who lose their partner by death show the greatest increase in loneliness. Not all older adults become more lonely: Improvement in functional capacity and network expansion lead to less loneliness. Entry into residential care does not affect loneliness. The longitudinal design provides new insights into factors that protect against loneliness compared to cross-sectional studies.

Older adult loneliness: myths and realities

The focus in this paper is on the social domain of quality of life, and more particularly loneliness. The empirical literature on older adult loneliness is reviewed, thereby challenging three often-held assumptions that figure prominently in public debates on loneliness. The first assumption that loneliness is a problem specifically for older people finds only partial support. Loneliness is common only among the very old. The second assumption is that people in individualistic societies are most lonely. Contrary to this belief, findings show that older adults in northern European countries tend to be less lonely than those in the more familialistic southern European countries. The scarce data on Central and Eastern Europe suggest a high prevalence of older adult loneliness in those countries. The third assumption that loneliness has increased over the past decades finds no support. Loneliness levels have decreased, albeit slightly. The review notes the persistence of ageist attitudes, and underscores the importance of considering people’s frame of reference and normative orientation in analyses of loneliness.

Loneliness and social isolation

textabstractLoneliness is nowadays considered to be one of the main problems in society. The negative experience of a discrepancy between the desired and the achieved personal network of relationships is common and affects both younger and older adults. This chapter first addresses well-established aspects and new developments in the main concepts of loneliness and social isolation, the measuring instruments and the prevalence of loneliness. The chapter continues by an overview of theoretical ideas regarding loneliness, focusing on individuallevel and societal predisposing characteristics as well as on genetic/evolutionary perspectives on the onset and continuation of loneliness. The main part of the chapter is dedicated to empirical evidence from many sources and disciplines including psychology, sociology and epidemiological sciences. The prevention of loneliness, coping and interventions are addressed in the final part of the chapter. Other chapters in this volume address topics related to loneliness, namely social rejection, the neuroscience of social disconnection, social networks, and relationships and health (see Leary & Acosta, this volume; Cacioppo, this volume; Felmlee & Sinclair, this volume; and Holt-Lunstad, this volume).

Cross-National Differences in Older Adult Loneliness

ABSTRACT Loneliness concerns the subjective evaluation that the number of relationships is smaller than the individual considers desirable or that the intimacy that the individual wishes for has not been realized. The aim of this study was to assess variations in levels of late-life loneliness and its determinants across Europe. Data came from the SHARE surveys, Wave 2 (Börsch-Supan et al., 2008), encompassing adults aged 50 years and over in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland (N = 12,248). Loneliness was measured by a single item derived from the CES-D (depression) scale. Using logistic models, the present authors tested several types of explanations for country differences: differences in demographic characteristics, wealth and health, and social networks. Older adults in the southern and central European countries were generally lonelier than their peers in the northern and western European countries. In the southern and central European countries, loneliness was largely attributable to not being married, economic deprivation, and poor health. Frequent contacts with parents and adult children, social participation, and providing support to family members were important in preventing and alleviating loneliness in almost all countries. To combat loneliness among older adults, the findings suggest both (a) generic approaches aimed at improving social embeddedness and (b) country-tailored approaches aimed at improving health and wealth.

Social and Emotional Loneliness Among Divorced and Married Men and Women: Comparing the Deficit and Cognitive Perspectives

Data from the 1998 survey “Divorce in the Netherlands” (N = 2,223) are used to analyze differences in loneliness among divorced and married men and women. The results indicate that it makes sense to distinguish social from emotional loneliness. This is consistent with the deficit perspective, which posits that the absence of specific types of relationships is associated with specific forms of loneliness. Whereas social loneliness is largely attributable to support network deficits, emotional loneliness is associated with the absence of a partner. In line with the cognitive perspective, the results show that greater insight into loneliness is obtained when discrepancies in relationships are considered. Divorcees who attach great importance to having a partner and people whose marriages are conflict ridden tend to have the highest levels of emotional loneliness. Our study shows that to explain loneliness, one should take not only characteristics of peoples relationships into consideration, but also their relationship preferences. The investment hypothesis, which also follows from the cognitive perspective, is not supported by the data. There is no indication that those who attach greater importance to having a partner invest less in relationships with friends, relatives, and colleagues and therefore show high levels of social loneliness. Consistent gender differences are observed: Men, regardless of partner status, tend to attach greater importance to having a partner than do women, and they tend to have smaller support networks and higher levels of social loneliness. Among the divorced, men are more apt to suffer from emotional loneliness than are women.

Relationships between parents and their adult children: A West European typology of late-life families

ABSTRACT Following Rehers (1998) seminal paper on family ties in western Europe, the perspective that family solidarity patterns are divided between an individualistic north and a famialistic south has dominated the literature. We challenge this view and address the variability in intergenerational family solidarity within and across countries. Using multiple dimensions of intergenerational solidarity drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we develop a typology of late-life families which is robust across northern, central and southern regions. The four types are: (a) descending familialism: living nearby, frequent contact, endorsement of family obligation norms, and primarily help in kind from parents to children, (b) ascending familialism: living nearby, frequent contact, endorsement of family obligation norms, and primarily help in kind from children to parents, (c) supportive-at-distance: not living nearby, frequent contact, refutation of family obligation norms, and primarily financial transfers from parents to adult children, (d) autonomous: not living nearby, little contact, refutation of family obligation norms, and few support exchanges. The four types are common in each European country, though the distributions differ. The findings suggest that scholars should abandon the idea that a particular country can be characterised by a single dominant type of late-life family. Socio-demographic differentials in family type follow predictable patterns, underscoring the validity of the developed typology.

Roads Less Taken Developing a Nuanced View of Older Adults Without Children

This article provides the rationale for doing research on childlessness and parenthood in late life. Childless older adults have been rendered invisible in the social scientific literature. A central goal of this issue is to make them visible and to expose unstated assumptions about normal adult life. Parenthood emerges as a key organizer of the life course and a major factor in social integration. Because the childless tend to be conceptualized as “the other,” focusing on them teaches lessons about the dangers of dichotomous thinking, that is, overlooking diversity and assuming deficiency. Studying older adults without children reveals the necessity of considering life pathways over time and of putting lives in a historical context.

Health of Aging Parents and Childless Individuals

This article reviews and presents research findings on the relationships between parenthood and health over the life span. Existing research shows lacunae. The links between reproductive behavior and longevity generally focus on family size rather than contrasting parents and nonparents. Studies of marital status differentials in survival generally confound the effects of parenthood and marital status. Studies of the effects of multiple roles (combining parenthood, marriage, and employment) have the drawback that parenthood is equated with currently having children in the home. The authors provide new evidence on the health of people who have reached old age, contrasting those with and without children, in an attempt to tease out the effects of parenthood, marital status, and gender. Data from Australia, Finland, and the Netherlands are used. Insofar as parenthood effects are found, they pertain to health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical exercise), providing evidence for the social control influences of parenthood.

Virtue is its own reward? : Support-giving in the family and loneliness in middle and old age

ABSTRACT Gerontologists have emphasised that older adults are not only recipients of support but also important support providers. Using data from the first wave of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study of 727 middle-generation adults aged 45 to 79 years, we examined the associations between loneliness and giving support up, across and down family lineages. Overall, the findings were consistent more with an altruism perspective, that giving brings rewards, than with an exchange perspective, which emphasises the costs of giving support. The results showed an inverse relationship between the number of generations supported and loneliness, and that those engaged in balanced exchanges with family members in three generations (parents, siblings and children) were generally the least lonely. As regards the direction of support giving, the findings showed that the association between giving support and loneliness was insignificant if the support was for parents, negative for support to siblings, and positive for support to children. Imbalanced support exchanges were differentially associated with loneliness, and depended on the type of family relationship involved. Non-reciprocated support made parents more vulnerable to loneliness, whereas non-reciprocated giving in sibling ties was associated with low levels of loneliness. Imbalanced support giving in relationships with parents was not associated with loneliness.

Social Embeddedness and Late-Life Parenthood Community Activity, Close Ties, and Support Networks

This article focuses on the ways in which patterns of marriage and fertility shape older peoples involvement in community groups and their support networks. The data are from Australia, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Findings show that childless older adults, regardless of marital status and gender, are equally as likely as parents to be active in the community and in voluntary organizations and to perform volunteer work. Never-married childless women are particularly active socially. Married, childless men are particularly dependent on their wives. In general, childless people are less likely than are parents to have robust network types capable of maintaining independent living without recourse to residential care during conditions of frailty. In some countries, it appears to be marriage rather than parenthood that makes the difference in support networks.