ABSTRACT
Older people alone are living longer and it is critical for policy makers, practitioners, and administrators to reframe the meaning of family with them in mind. For older people alone, “family” may be those significant people they have access to and choose to include in their circle of intimate others, regardless of blood or marriage ties. In a most thorough article on “The New American Family”, the family is basically described in terms of young families: single parents, childless couples, broken families, traditional working and nonworking families. There are a vast array of nonblood “kin” who act as surrogate family for many elderly people. They include friends, neighbors, former unmarried partners and ex-in-laws, volunteers, church members, and professional health and social service providers. Life circumstances and the desire to resolve and rectify them, as well as the absence of family patterns and relationships that were satisfying, contribute to the search by older people for new intimacy, trust, safety, and inclusion.
