ABSTRACT
Contemporary family life and intimate relationships are characterized by a new and increasing heterogeneity. In the growing body of research on this differentiation of family patterns and practices, the role of older people has largely been ignored. Studies of the family life of older people often deal with the adjustments that take place between couples when their children have left home or with the attempts of widows and widowers to come to terms with a life without their lifelong partners (for research reviews, see Allen et al., 2000; Borell, 2001; Brubaker, 1990; Goldscheider, 1990). When, on rare occasions, the important changes that have occurred in family life and intimate relationships are recognized, they usually deal with the indirect effect these may have on older people, such as the consequences of their children’s divorces for their roles as grandparents (see, for example, Cherlin and Furstenberg, 1986). For each new cohort of the ageing population this omission becomes less defensible: to an increasing extent the “young old” (sixty-five to seventy-four years of age) in particular are prime movers in the process of the differentiation of family forms and practices.
