ABSTRACT
Remarriage occurs after one of two types of critical events, divorce or death of spouse. Ganong and Coleman (1994) have very appropriately named them post-divorce remarried families and post-bereavement remarried families. There are many typologies of re-married families (ibid), many factors which influence the constellation of living arrangements, and an indeterminate variety of family relationships that can develop. In this chapter, the focus is on the perceptions of remarriage among widowed persons, that is, widows and widowers in the Singaporean context. The first assumption as we embark on this subject is that widowhood is a landmark transition that has socio-emotional and economic implications for the surviving spouse. Loss of spouse through death has very different dynamics as compared to loss of spouse through divorce.
