Being Women and Growing Old: Social Construction of Identities and Experiences of Aging Women in Contemporary Indian Families

Abstract

Family as a domestic group is seen to be crucial for the production and replenishment of human capital from generation to generation. With the consequences of demographic aging process, there is a rethinking into the structure and function of the institution for critically analyzing the contemporary challenges. In India, graying of the population became one among the major reason for scholars to pay more attention to interpret family attributes. Women’s social status, autonomy, and entitlements had marked serious shifts according to subsequent changes that happened. Using mixed methodology, aged women from Hindu families in India were studied. An examination of the existing structure, functions, social duties, and responsibilities in Hindu families, sociocultural constructions of identities within the sphere of family, and the impacts of age identities in determining the health-related quality of life and subjective well-being of aged women were the objectives of the study. While Bourdieu’s concept of habitus was used as a theoretical basis for the study, the researcher gives prepositions for sociocultural constructions of age identities through the concepts of Reverse Metamorphosis and Identity Cocoons. The study reveals that the self and social identity constructs explain interactive behavior as well as the interplay of personal meanings, family dynamics, and informal factors across the life span under the sociocultural underpinnings in a multicultural society like India.