Cohabitation Among Older Adults

In an era of constant revolution, all industrialized countries are undergoing related processes of change in family life and social structures that have a collision on traditional caring arrangements and expectations of care. The question of living arrangements is at the heart of the discussion about care and support to older people of 65 and above. All through the life course, maintaining an independent living is considered as an expression of autonomy and this becomes particularly important in old age, where the possibility to decide on the preferred living arrangement cannot always be maintained. It is a fact that shared households between generations are on the decline in all modern countries, and are reducing the impact of cohabitation as a factor for family care. Family values and normative obligations are still strong, with high levels of cohabitation (Bumpass, L.L, & Sweet, J.A. 1995). Studies show that marital satisfaction is usually very high at the beginning of couple life, but declines consequently with the accretion of duties related to child rearing, work, domestic tasks, etc. Later in life, marital satisfaction is restored somewhat when the couple regains some intimacy (Kiernan, K. & Estaugh, V. 1993). In addition, studies show that marital distress or dissatisfaction is a problem for elderly people just as it is for other age groups. Statistics indicate that divorce and separation, formerly nearly nonexistent among people at this stage of their lives, are on the rise (Axinn, W. & Thornton, A. 1999). This life stage is that it is often the first time that the spouses find themselves in the same space on a day-to-day basis. A variety of problems that may have been concealed throughout their lives are very likely t...

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