ABSTRACT
The previous chapter explored the very practical aspects of the elderly's domestic lives, discussing the sorts of people who were likely to live with the aged and the reasons for these arrangements. The household, defined as a group of people sharing the same dwelling, was our focus. Now we turn to consider the family, a category whose members sometimes but not always overlapped with the household. Family—defined here as the relations between husband and wife, parents and children, sisters and brothers, and grandparents and grandchildren—often figured prominently in the lives of old people, whether they were part of an aged person's household or not. To gain further perspective on the private lives of elderly men and women, this chapter considers the nature and quality of the elderly's family relationships.
