Key Relationships of Never Married, Childless Older Women: a Cultural Analysis

Abstract

The key relationships of never married, childless older women, that is, those relationships described as central, compelling, enduring, or significant throughout their lifetimes, were explored in this study. Analysis of qualitative, ethnographically based interviews with 31 women indicated that the key relationships they describe fall into three classes: ties through blood, friendships, and those we label "constructed" ties (kin-like nonkin relations). We report on types of key interpersonal relationships of these women and also examine limits to these key relations, describing some strategies these women have adopted for gaining kin-like relations and the problems inherent in them for the expectation of care in later life. Theoretical work by anthropologist David Schneider concerning American kinship as a cultural system is used to explore dimensions of these relationships.While much gerontological research focuses on marriage and parental status of the older person, more than 20 percent of older Americans have no children, and some 5 to 6 percent have never married. American culture is strongly pronatalist, marriage is normative, and key relations are articulated on the basis of a cultural ideology of shared biogenetic substance ("the blood tie"; Schneider, 1980). Given an alternative set of life paths that does not include affinal and filial relations, never married, childless elderly women may become involved in relationships that are central to them and enduring and that, while nonstandard, are enriching and generative.Based on lengthy qualitative research conversations with 31 never married, childless women age 60 and older, interviewed as part of a larger project on childless older women, this article has two aims. First, it reports on types of and attitudes toward key interpersonal relationships of these women. Second, it examines limits to these key relations, describing some strategies these women have adopted for gaining kin-like relations and the problems inherent in them for the expectation of care in later life. It should be noted that the theoretical perspective taken here, deriving from cultural anthropology, emphasized the role of cultural meaning in the analysis of social relations. It is different from, and must be viewed as complementary to, the approach usually taken in kinship and support studies in gerontology.A choice was made to focus here on never married, childless older women because their situations are compelling in that they lack connections of parenthood and marriage from which the pool of later-life caregivers is often drawn. Further, our focus on this group illuminates the nature and limits of the cultural ideology of kinship upon which many key relations are usually based. Certainly, the issues and findings reported here for our informants may be extended to women in other parental and marital statuses for whom these issues are no doubt germane; however, this is beyond the scope of this report. Further, in addressing these aims, we introduce a body of theoretical work o...

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