A01=Helena Lopata
American Widows
area
Author_Helena Lopata
Category=JHB
chicago
Chicago Area Widows
Chicago Housing Authority
elderly women resilience
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Family Literature
High School Drop Outs
intergenerational relationships
Large Families
life
Life Style
Living Siblings
Long Range Adjustment
Married Friends
Married Offspring
Married Women
Mother Scale
NORC
psychosocial adaptation aging
qualitative case studies
Relations Restrictive Attitude Scale
Rummage Sales
Sibling Group
Sibling Scale
Sibling Scores
social
Social Disengagement Theory
Social Life Space
social role theory
space
urban life transitions
urban widow social integration research
Vice Versa
Voluntary Associations
Widows Live
Younger Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781138540583
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2017
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Widowhood in an American City focuses on the roles and lifestyles of urban American widows fifty years of age or older. These women form a segment of two generations of one society; they present a historical instance of people born and brought up under conditions that are not likely to be duplicated. Not only the U.S., but many other countries are undergoing modifications in the degrees and forms of urbanization, industrialization, and social complexity.Helena Znaniecki Lopata argues that the way women re-engage society following the death of a husband is different due to their location in the modern social system. She notes that the trends in social structure are toward increasingly voluntaristic engagement in achieved, functionally oriented social roles that are performed in large groups and contain secondary social relations. The cultural background of many societal members prevents the utilization of most resources of the complex urban world, restricting them to a small social life space, with almost automatically prescribed social relations.Those who argue that the elderly are socially isolated contend that this is a result of the natural process of withdrawal of the person and the society from each other. These arguments focus on those who are isolated or lonely and those who lack the skills, money, health, and transportation for engaging or re-engaging society. Lopata's study indicates that this assumption is false for many widows. If such people are to be helped, a fresh view of the relation between the urban, industrial, and complex modern world and its residents is required, and new action programs must be creatively developed. This is a timely, ground-breaking work that addresses and shatters common myths associated with growing old alone in an urban society.
