Marriage In Old Age

Analysis

Studies show that most men and women who have a partner in old age are married. Among these couples, couples who are married for 17 years or longer ranked love as the top factor for keeping their marriages together. However some questions are raised about those individuals who are in their old age but are not married or are widowed or divorced. These questions surround the topic of remarriage in old age, elderly dating, and intimacy.

Iveniuk, J., Waite, L. J., Laumann, E., McClintock, M. K., & Tiedt, A. D article helps us understand some key reasons for conflict in previous or current marriages in old age. This category falls into the conflict theory because it shows how the dynamics of a marriage are affected and changed throughout illness and lack of positivity. The article showed that lack of positivity, and poor health was a main indicator for marital conflict, this leading to both divorce or depression. These findings also aid the understanding that men are better able to adapt to conflict and change thus allowing them to open themselves up into the senior dating world or even allow them to remarry with more ease if divorce or spousal death does occur due to the fact that in most cases men are more positive in dealing with spouses with poor health. This is most likely because respectable men feel the need to protect their loved ones while woman feel the need to protect their title as a mother, wife or simply woman. This allows this catagory to also fall under the labeling theory and also role theory as our self identity influence and determine our behaviour. If a woman views herself as a stressed individual she will carry out the attitudes and behaviors of a stressed individual. Woman carry a huge role as a “marri...

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...elf into the Interactionism theory. How we age sexually determines the amount of affection we need to feel from others to feel desirable. This relates to more than just elderly people it is a constant factor in every day life.

Conclusion 
 Overall the answer to the question “why is marriage in later life so much more different than marriage in earlier years?” is answered by the fact that as we age not only our bodies are changing, our values are changing, our options are changing, our outlooks on life and the way we deal with conflict are changing and our senses are changing. Elderly people experience things in extremely different ways than adolescence or middle aged people experience them. Who someone is when they marry at 24 is completely different than who they are when they remarry at 62 and cannot and should not be viewed to adhere to the same set of standards