Aging Families and the Gendered Life Course

Abstract

Family scholarship primarily focuses on the strains of working families raising children. But increased longevity and the large aging Boomer cohort necessitate attention to families moving through the later life course. Drawing on research conducted chiefly in the United States, we take a gendered life course approach, incorporating key life-course themes and processes: historical timing, transitions and trajectories, linked lives, and family adaptive strategies. These processes are taking place on a moving platform of demographic, structural, and policy changes-in family composition, work and retirement, and caregiving. Much of what we know comes from studies of previous cohorts in the twentieth century; such findings may not be relevant to the unique experiences of older families in the twenty-first century. This review points to the need for research on contemporary aging families, as well as differences according to their composition, race/ethnicity, social class, and life course stage.