Recent research on ways of ‘supporting the supporters’ of elderly people at home has taken a ‘snapshot’ approach to assessing carers' needs and has focussed primarily on the perceptions of service providers. Such an approach tends to neglect the complexity of caring relationships (particularly that between carer and person cared for), which must be understood if carers are to be offered appropriate help. The present paper reports the construction of ‘caring biographies’, using in-depth interviews with 41 daughters who had cared for their mothers on a co-resident basis and who had ceased to do so within the last ten years. The biographies were used to examine the nature of the caring process in terms of the carer's motivation to care, changes in the mother/daughter relationship and in the carer's extra-caring life. The research reveals both the power exerted by the injunction to care and the mixed legacy of satisfaction overlaid with bitterness that was experienced by a majority of respondents, largely as a result of inadequate and/or inappropriate support. We suggest ways in which professional workers may recast the way in which they approach the needs of carers based on a deeper understanding of the temporal and relational dimensions of caring.

As is now widely recognised, children, but especially daughters, are often involved in providing their elderly infirm parent(s) with care and tending. This paper seeks to examine two aspects of this care provision. First, how it relates to the nature of kinship solidarity between parents and adult children during other phases of their lives. More specifically, it will be suggested that while children are usually thought to bear some responsibility for their parents' welfare, actually providing support can none the less entail a far more extensive commitment than is normally expected of them. Yet the paradox is that such caring often seems to intensify feelings of responsibility rather than generate a sense of moral worth amongst those most highly involved. The second part of the paper examines some of the factors responsible for this. It will argue that the responses of carers to their situation need to be understood in terms of the immediate social environment in which they find themselves. In particular, what needs to be recognised is the sense of individual, rather than shared or collective, responsibility which develops.

In the United States, much attention has recently been directed to the issue of whether the welfare system has become over-generous to the retired population, at the expense of families with children. The proportion of the US elderly population living in poverty has fallen significantly in the last fifteen years while the number of poor children has increased rapidly, and it has been suggested that this lack of investment in the next generation of workers may have disastrous longterm consequences for the U.S. economy. This paper considers whether similar trends are evident in Britain. It reviews data on the poverty and income of the elderly population, and finds little unequivocal evidence of relative economic gain over the last two decades, although it is clear that many children have suffered from the recent rise in unemployment-induced poverty. It also looks at direct public expenditure on the elderly through both the pension and the health and personal social services systems, and finds no evidence of a transfer of public resources away from children and towards the elderly population. The paper concludes that the British welfare state has been remarkably neutral in its allocation of resources between generations, and that, in the British context, any discussion of inter-generational conflict for welfare resources establishes a false dichotomy, because economic inequality within broad age groups is much greater than inequality between age groups.

The sociology of ageing has often turned to general sociology in search of useful theoretical approaches, but there has been little cognitive influx back into general theory. By this one-sided relation, the sociology of ageing has typically constituted itself as an applied field. It can be argued, however, that the problems of an ageing society bring forth not only a new topical area but also a challenge for some of the foundations of sociological theory, which were largely laid before these problems became visible. The paper deals with some of the systematic issues that arise in this respect. It takes as its point of departure that modern society has been theoretically conceived as a ‘work society’. If social life is structured around work and its organisation, how can we theoretically cope with a situation in which a large (and still growing) part of the population has left the domain of formally organised work? This question is discussed on three levels: (I) the structure of social inequality (e.g. welfare classes instead of production-based classes); (2) cultural meaning structures (e.g. leisure instead of productivity and achievement); and (3) socialisation (e.g. biographical anticipation and reminiscence instead of a ‘situational’ orientation).

This article attempts to illustrate the importance of housing issues in old age and to argue for a more sophisticated view of older people than that achieved by much housing research. Tenure relationships in two contrasting localities are explored and it is shown that cruder models of social and tenurial polarisation need to be treated with care because of the tendency for aggregate data to hide important variations in relationships between tenures and within tenures. Many older people wish to enter local authority council housing and they have strong views on what is the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ property on offer.

This paper presents a review of current research in Soviet gerontology. It begins by establishing the origins of current research themes in the early investigations of pre- and early post-Revolution gerontologists. Five main areas of current research interest are then outlined: theoretical demography, longevity, physiology of labour, socio-hygiene and international collaborative studies. Some similarities and differences in approaches and emphases in Soviet and western gerontology are noted, and concluding comments address the need to recognise the social contexts in which research frameworks are developed.

Recent international research on retirement neglects the macro social context in which the process occurs. In an attempt to redress this neglect this paper analyses the phenomenon of retirement in Japan. It is argued, firstly, that different understandings of egalitarianism and individualism structure public policies about retirement in different countries. Japan with its different culture but highly developed economy provides a unique point of comparison with other developed countries because it can provide evidence of cultural values affecting individual motivations to action. In Japan, a strong group orientation as opposed to individualism in other developed countries has two consequences relevant to retirement. Firstly, individuals are unwilling to separate from their work group and, secondly, they are not socialised for leisure. Evidence is presented on how macro social factors influence work participation and attitudes. Finally, multivariate analyses show that cultural factors operate in conjunction with economic ones in retirement decisions. It is concluded that macro-social factors cannot be neglected in studying retirement and that caution is needed in taking policy innovations for dealing with population ageing from one culture and another.

This article reports a study of the social networks of recent applicants to the social welfare bureaux of Jerusalem. Beyond review of the relevant study variables as reflected in the literature, and an overview of Israeli social services for the aged, the article addresses why the social networks of the elderly claimants turned to formal assistance. The study revealed that networks were most likely to be the source of referral to social services when the applicant was frail, and the presenting problem was the need for institutional care. Multivariate analysis revealed that the degree of network-initiated contact with the social worker was significantly related to these same factors. Networks of the elderly seemed to turn to formal social services as a substitute for their own caregiving, rather than as a source for interweaving informal and formal care. The implications of the findings for social service policy are discussed.

Based on Erik H. Erikson's life-cycle model as clarified by Erikson, Erikson, and Kivnick, this theoretical paper considers psychosocial development in the adulthood and old age of South Africa's black majority population, under the oppressive laws of apartheid. The author draws on empirical observations made during three months of fieldwork in South Africa. The paper rests on the propositions that apartheid may be expected to interfere with healthy psychosocial development in South African blacks throughout the life cycle, and that cultural strengths – exemplified by traditional singing – function as counterbalancing resources that promote psychosocial health, nonetheless. Adulthood and old age are discussed to illustrate the way black South Africans must negotiate every stage of life under the powerful, opposing influences of apartheid and indigenous culture.

The concept of dependency is involved in two strands of the literature on old age, and is used in each with a different effect. In the literature on ‘structured dependency’ the concept is used to describe and criticise a relationship between elderly people and the state that is determined by social policy. In the literature on ‘dependency scales’ the concept is used as a basis for categorising elderly people for research, planning and service purposes. More recent commentary on the role of the concept in relation to elderly people suggests that dependency needs to be understood in a fuller way if it is to be useful in understanding the situation of elderly people in contemporary society. This paper develops the idea that dependency refers to a form of relationship characterised by an unequal distribution of power.

This paper takes as its starting point the historical debate about the respective roles of family and state in providing, where necessary, for the elderly population. Using the original data cards from the New Survey of London it is possible to consider this in the light of the experience of the working class in London in the early 1930s by analysing data on household composition and income. This is the first time that data on household composition have been assembled for the period after 1881 and before the Census authorities themselves began systematically publishing results from 1951. The picture which emerges, supported by analyses of the income of the elderly, suggests that in this period the role of the family was small, though important no doubt in certain critical situations. It is recognised however that analyses of household structure go only part of the way in illuminating the very complex patterns of assistance which existed. We go on therefore to consider the limitations of this approach and speculate briefly on wider kinship networks, and their potential for assistance.

At a time when the proportion of full-time permanent jobs is decreasing and there is evidence of a growth in ‘peripheral’ forms of work, it is important to review the position of older workers, both men and women. Using data from the Labour Force Survey of 1984, it is shown that, while the employment rate falls sharply in the ten-year period prior to state retirement age, it is only those of post-retirement age who are disproportionately represented in peripheral forms of work. It is suggested that some ‘peripheral’ forms of work allow greater flexibility in age of retirement than permanent full-time jobs. While there are clear gender differences among those of pre-retirement age, with a higher proportion of women than men in peripheral jobs, there is a marked erosion of these gender differences amongst men and women who work beyond state retirement age.

This paper draws on a 1980 sample survey of middle-aged and elderly residents of a medium-sized Canadian city (N = 464). Few parents and grown-up children discussed in advance what might happen should parents become seriously ill or unable to look after themselves. However, most respondents did feel these matters should be discussed in advance, and most felt that parents should be the ones to raise these issues. This was true for both the middle-aged and the elderly. Elderly men rarely discussed their wives' futures with their children. Both the middle-aged and the elderly rarely talked with siblings or friends about the possibility of their own or their parents' dependency. Discussions that took place were often precipitated by illness. However, children expressed a great deal of concern for parents, especially for older parents. A variety of possible contributing explanations are suggested. These range from unwillingness to acknowledge changing family structure and mortality to parents' view on non-family-provided services.

Provision for old people who are in need of continuing care requires close co-operation between informal carers and different agencies and disciplines providing health and social care. In the United Kingdom, the present system of care has evolved from earlier patterns of care centred on the asylums and the poor law with its workhouse institutions. It lacks cohesion. Despite the designation of old people as a priority group, resources are still inadequate to provide a good quality of care. Organisational differences between health and social services can lead to inefficient use of existing resources. More specialised medical, psychiatric and social services for old people enhance the possibilities for co-operation even though they may appear to lead to greater fragmentation. The history of the development of these services in the UK, including the recent expansion of private sector care, is reviewed, with special attention from the medical perspective to the phenomenon of ‘bed blocking’. The recently published Griffiths Report on community care is briefly considered, and some principles for future developments are laid down.

Change of residence from a private household to a residential care facility, implying the relinquishing of household activities, is as critical a life event for older women as retirement from employment outside the home is for older men. This transition terminates many of the activities that had structured the older women's lives for decades, and implies modification of patterns of lifestyle. Based on interviews with female residents of residential care facilities in the Munich area, a close relative who had observed the transition and an employee at the facility, the impacts of the move on dimensions/aspects of lifestyle were analysed, as well as the success with which adaptation to the new setting was made. The positive relationship posited by the continuity hypothesis between continuity in lifestyle and contentment with life situation were generally upheld, although the compensation for a dimension of lifestyle disrupted by the transition by another dimension often occurred.