Stories of intimacy and sexuality in later life

Gender Equality

“…Relationship status has central significance within policy and drives the way in which we frame the design and future provision of quality care and support. Those involved in direct work with older people will be concerned to describe the older person's social and economic connections and personal and community networks (Lambert et al 2018). Education, health, or social welfare policies similarly make many assumptions about family forms, for example, in relation to what is expected from its members, living arrangements, work patterns, and financial security including subsequent roles taken up in later life.…”

“…Against this background, academic research on "singleness" or "soloness" has been relatively underdeveloped. Most empirical investigations have come from a feminist discursive analysis and feminist scholars (Victor et al 2000;Lahad and Hazan 2014;Simpson et al 2016;Lambert et al 2018) alongside political-economic theoretical underpinnings of critical gerontology which have focused on disadvantage, class, and ageing as residual categories (Pudrovska et al 2006;Formosa and Higgs 2017).…”

“…However, some of the women sought actively to mitigate their concerns by making plans for the future. Similarly, Lambert et al ( 2018) linked the concept of intimacy to themes about unexplored concerns that solo women in their qualitative study were harboring about their future care needs. They found a disproportionate number of women within their sample who were direct carers for their parents or relatives mostly because their siblings or relations assumed that they would be available to do this because of their solo status.…”

“…The world's population is ageing rapidly (United Nations 2015) and with increased longevity, the diversity of those moving into later life has the potential to challenge preconceptions and homogenization about ageing. The impact of relationship status for women in later life is one such theme that is emerging from the literature (DePaulo 2006;Lahad 2016;Hafford-Letchfield et al 2017;Lambert et al 2018;Khan et al 2018). This nexus of ageing, gender, and relationship status offers a new conceptual lens for reviewing and extending the research on ageing.…”

“…This nexus of ageing, gender, and relationship status offers a new conceptual lens for reviewing and extending the research on ageing. Different conceptual lenses can be useful for those developing ageing policy, in particular, social policy by challenging some of the assumptions on which care services are planned and delivered (Pinquart and Sörensen 2006;Vlachantoni et al 2020;Lambert et al 2018). For example, by 2041, public expenditure on social care in the UK is projected to rise by 329% (Wittenberg et al 2008), leaving a carer gap for those needing care (Pickard 2015).…”