Happy senior singles
There’s good myth-busting going on at the New Old Age blog. Recent posts debunk the singlist notion that being unmarried in old age means being unhappy and alone.
From a research study mentioned in the blog:
Are Older Adults Happy? They’re about as happy as everyone else. And perhaps more importantly, the same factors that predict happiness among younger adults-good health, good friends and financial security-by and large predict happiness among older adults. However, there are a few age-related differences in life’s happiness sweepstakes. Most notably, once all other key demographic variables are held constant, being married is a predictor of happiness among younger adults but not among older adults (perhaps because a significant share of the latter group is made up of widows or widowers, many of whom presumably have “banked” some of the key marriage-related correlates of happiness, such as financial security and a strong family life). Among all older adults, happiness varies very little by age, gender or race.
I was put off by the “banked” line on first glance. But on closer reading I believe it means that young married people who describe themselves as happier than young unmarried people may be happier not because of marriage itself but because of factors that correlate with but are not caused marriage (“such as financial security and a strong family life”). Those factors can outlive marriage and can be obtained over time without marriage, so older previously married people still enjoy them as much as never married older people who had achieved similar life factors.
And from the blog itself:
loved-starved widows, if they ever really existed outside men’s imaginations, have gone the way of June Cleaver. Women like Ms. Austin see themselves as part of a new generation of widows who openly, and sometimes gleefully, admit they like being liberated from their roles as wives and homemakers. While they may grieve over the deaths of beloved spouses and while some will never recover from their losses, the vast majority of older widows, studies show, accept and even revel in their roles as single women.
