This study explores gender differences in older widowed persons' interest in dating and remarriage, and the implications of these desires for psychological adjustment to loss. Analyses are based on the Changing Lives of Older Couples study (N = 210). Men's interest in dating and remarriage is conditional upon the amount of social support received from friends. Six months after spousal loss, only those men with low or average levels of social support from friends are more likely than women to report interest in remarrying someday. Similar patterns emerge for interest in dating 18 months after loss. Persons who both want and have a romantic relationship report significantly fewer depressive symptoms 18 months after loss, yet this relationship is attributable to their greater socioeconomic resources.

The desire to date and remarry among older widows and widowers

The effects of loneliness: A review of the literature

Selected research and theoretical writings, published in the 1970s, on divorce, remarriage, and desertion were reviewed. Particular emphasis was focused on variables (demographic and interpersonal) related to divorce, divorce adjustment, probability of remarriage, and the dynamics of remarriage. Data presented confirm some previous findings but challenge others. Implications of the noninstitutionalized status of divorce, remarriage, and desertion, and suggestions for research in the 1980s are included.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/351835.pdf

The Noninstitutions: Divorce, Desertion, and Remarriage.

There is an ‘urban myth,’ nevertheless widely held, that in widowhood, women grieve and men replace. Indeed, demographic data indicate that older widowed men are more likely to remarry than older widowed women. This article reports a small-scale study of twenty-five widows and twenty-six widowers over the age of sixty-five in the UK. The study focuses on the choices and constraints in the making of new dyadic relationships and how men and women differ in their approaches to them. What emerges from the interview data is a complex picture of friendship and partnership networks which are age- and gender-specific. For most of the widows, some of whom were living by themselves for the first time, being alone was perceived as a sense of liberation. They were unwilling to relinquish it as a trade-off for companionship with caring responsibilities. For the widowers, loneliness was viewed more as a sense of deprivation after a life of being cared for by a woman in whom they had concentrated their emotional existence.

Gender differences in new partnership choices and constraints for older widows and widowers

Throughout most of human history, the family has been both the primary context of social integration for aged individuals and the principal provider of economic support and physical assistance to the elderly in need. Within the lifetime of those Americans now approaching old age, however, a number of dramatic changes have occurred in social structure and culture∔changes that promise to alter traditional assumptions concerning aging, the family, and social supports in meeting the challenges of old age.

The family in later years.

Although an increasing number of elders in the United States are remarrying, remarriage has been among the least researched and least known alternatives in old age. This paper explores some social, situational and personal factors associated with remarriage in old age, and focuses on role changes associated with remarriage. The findings were obtained through in-depth interviews with twenty-four remarried elderly couples. Remarriage is seen as a viable option in old age, deserving of attention and encouragement from older people themselves, people who work with the elderly, and social planners.

Barbara Helene Vinick

Papers

Remarriage in Old Age.

Remarriage in old age