Two years into an Editorship is a good time to take stock. In the essentials, Ageing & Society is doing well. There is a healthy flow of quality submissions, and the ‘bank’ of accepted papers has built up to fill two issues ahead. In other words, the time between a paper's acceptance for publication and its appearance has extended to around 6–8 months. The interval will be held at this level. Recognising the increased number of papers that merit publication, Cambridge University Press has agreed to an expansion of a volume's pages by 12 per cent. They were happy to allow more, but we'll proceed step-by-step for, as it is, Jean Wilkinson works flat out.

In a rapidly changing society, young adults may play an important role in teaching older adults about social, cultural and technological changes. Thus older people who lack regular contact with younger people are at risk of being excluded from contemporary social developments. But how age-segregated are older people? The level of age-segregation of older people can be studied by examining the age-composition of personal social networks. Using NESTOR-LSN survey data from The Netherlands, we are able to determine the number of younger adults that people aged 55–89 years identify as members of their social networks, and to examine the factors that are associated with segregation or integration. The findings show that there is a large deficit of young adults in the networks of older people, and that few older people have regular contact with younger non-kin. If age were not a factor in the selection of network members, one would expect the age distribution of adult network members to be the same as the age distribution of the entire adult population, but the ratio of actual to expected non-kin network members aged under 35 years for those aged 65–74 years is only 0.10. And only 15 per cent of the population aged 80 or more years has weekly contact with any non-kin aged less than 65 years. The number of children is strongly related to the total number of younger network members, because most younger network members are adult children. Further, participating in organisations (work and volunteer settings) that include people of diverse ages increases the likelihood of an older person having significant cross-age interactions with non-kin.

Modernisation and ageing theory has provided the main platform for the debate on changes in family support for older people in both the industrialised and the developing worlds. Although its well-known proposition of an ‘abandonment’ of older people in individualistic society has received much attention and been solidly refuted, the modernisation model continues to be the principal and most common framework for explaining the decline in familial material support for older people – both historically in the West, or at present in developing countries. The main rival explanation is provided by materialist accounts. The ability of these explanations to provide a meaningful understanding of why material family support may diminish has however received little if any analytical attention, despite its vital policy relevance, especially for the developing world. This paper critically examines the content and basis of both explanatory models. For each it exposes fundamental conceptual and epistemological limitations that render neither able to provide a solid understanding of the nature and causes of decline in support. Building on this analysis, the paper proposes a new approach in order to develop a fuller conceptual and empirical understanding.

This paper reports the findings of a study using both quantitative and qualitative approaches of the quality of life of older Chinese people in Melbourne. A total of 60 participants was recruited: 30 were residents of three Chinese hostels and 30 were members of a Chinese welfare society. Along with the established scales of health status, functioning and self-reported life satisfaction, to give a broader perspective the participants were asked about their general health, level of depressive mood and independence. In-depth interviews were conducted with a convenience sub-sample of six informants to explore other important aspects of their quality of life. The hostel group was found to be less healthy, less independent, more depressed and less satisfied with their lives than the community group, but nonetheless were generally satisfied with their lives, as revealed during the in-depth interviews. A good quality of life was found to be associated with good health, independence, secure finance, a meaningful role, strong ethnic community and family support, low expectations, no worries, and a sense of the family's love and respect. The findings reinforce the notion that the quality of life is truly multi-dimensional. They also demonstrate that a high self-rated quality of life in old age is achievable and, indeed, was being enjoyed by most of the participants. The research has made a substantial contribution to understanding the circumstances of Chinese-origin older people in Australia and has useful lessons for studies of other ethnic groups.

Little is known about how negotiation between older people and their carers varies according to gender. This paper reports a study of older men and women who have had multiple falls and the actions of their key family members to prevent multiple falls. In-depth interviews were conducted with 35 older people who had had recurrent falls, and separately with the identified key family member. The actions taken by the relatives to prevent future falls were classified as protective, coercive, negotiating, engaging and ‘reflective of mutual respect’. It was found that sons caring for older mothers took only ‘protective’ and ‘coercive’ actions, resulting in mothers having passive and submissive roles. In contrast, the daughters who were caring for their fathers undertook most often ‘engaging’ and some ‘negotiating’ actions, which empowered the fathers in their decision making. Daughters had a ‘peer-like’ relationship with the mothers that they supported and cared for, and undertook primarily ‘negotiating’ as well as ‘engaging’ actions. The two men who cared for older men took no specific actions but maintained mutual respect for each other. The findings demonstrate several ways in which the gender of the dyad members influences the nature of the negotiation between close relatives, and throws light on the factors that influence the autonomy and dependence of older people.

Identity theory suggests that individuals who perceive their family roles as salient and feel competent in their performance have greater psychological well-being than others. This paper assesses the ways in which aspects of parent, grandparent and great-grandparent role investments affect self-esteem, levels of depression and affect-balance. The 188 respondents with an average age of 73 years were participants in the University of Southern California Longitudinal Study of Generations and occupied all three roles at the time of measurement. They self-assessed quality of performance, importance to one's identity and satisfaction in their family roles. Overall, levels of role investment declined consistently with greater lineage distance from parent to great-grandparent. Latent correlations showed that parent role investment was most highly associated with well-being, followed by investment in grandparent and great-grandparent roles. Structural equation modelling, however, revealed no unique effects on well-being for any of the three roles (as a result of high inter-correlations). All three role structures formed a single meta-construct that was positively related to psychological well-being. It is concluded that the strength and consequences of inter-generational role investments were hierarchically structured by relational proximity, but also manifested in a single integrated family identity, which suggests that there are two competing and complementary views of family role structures in later life.

Sensory loss (visual and/or hearing loss) is prevalent in older adults. Decreased vision and/or hearing acuity often result in poor communication and psychosocial functioning. This qualitative study explores the communication and psychosocial perceptions of a group of older adults with single or dual sensory loss. The aims were to identify the communication difficulties and conversational strategies used by the subjects, and to explore their perceptions of their social adjustment, quality of life and physical and mental well-being. The participants were all older adults with sensory loss who attended the Vision Australia Foundation. In-depth interviews revealed that the participants experienced frequent communication difficulties. They identified the personal, situational and environmental triggers responsible for communication breakdown, and they described the compensation and avoidance strategies that they used. The participants acknowledged that frequent communication breakdown resulted in decreased socialisation. The problems of adjusting to sensory loss, depression, anxiety, lethargy and social dissatisfaction were cited as factors that affected their physical and mental well-being, while being optimistic, coping with their sensory loss, and maintaining social contact contributed to an improved quality of life. All participants expressed interest in being involved in further communication intervention programmes.