Elders Living Alone: Frailty and the Perception of Choice

What is it like to be old, have many health problems, and live alone? Never before have there been so many elders, and never before have so many of them been living alone and pursuing their lives independently. This book enters the lives of frail elders who live alone and vividly conveys their continuing struggle to maintain their independence. Many look to their homes as the important facilitating element for that independence, and that the home environment as well as personal space are the most significant elements for elders living alone.The authors' approach combines an eye and an ear for the telling individual detail, in all of its human complexity, with broader societal and communal concerns. In interviewing their subjects, Rubinstein and his colleagues examine how these elders view the choices they have, understand their independence, and raise possibilities and alternatives. Using a framework that will interest both anthropologists and case workers, the authors explore the cultural background of concepts such as independence and choice, and how they are symbolically located in the home.The authors register their subjects' urban isolation, fraught with needs of the most basic kind, imperiled by intermittent and uncertain human conduct, erratic provision, and occasionally engulfing solitude. These voices, seldom heard and often with reluctance, are caught and interpreted in these pages. The general hypothesis was that active management of the environment is itself a source of well-being for frail elders living alone.

-This book summarizes data from in-depth, open-ended interviews conducted on 52 frail and functionally impaired older persons living in the Philadelphia area. Informants were interviewed in their own homes, in three sessions each lasting a minimum of six hours. The authors, two anthropologists and a psychologist, focus on environmental factors that affect older peoples' independence and ability to live alone. Specifically, they examined how concepts of freedom of choice and desire for independence are actually realized in the daily lives of at-risk older persons... Recommended for gerontology programs.- --L. A. Baumhover, Choice -Elders Living Alone is a study of elderly people, mainly debilitated, living alone in Philadelphia... [It[ provides a caveat against using one's own value screen to judge the personal satisfaction provided by apparently marginal living conditions. It vividly demonstrates the pathological intensification of the American value of independence in the case of the frail elderly. In so doing, the book serves as an indictment against key values in bourgeois culture.- --Andrea Sankar, American Anthropologist "This book summarizes data from in-depth, open-ended interviews conducted on 52 frail and functionally impaired older persons living in the Philadelphia area. Informants were interviewed in their own homes, in three sessions each lasting a minimum of six hours. The authors, two anthropologists and a psychologist, focus on environmental factors that affect older peoples' independence and ability to live alone. Specifically, they examined how concepts of freedom of choice and desire for independence are actually realized in the daily lives of at-risk older persons... Recommended for gerontology programs." --L. A. Baumhover, Choice "Elders Living Alone is a study of elderly people, mainly debilitated, living alone in Philadelphia... [It[ provides a caveat against using one's own value screen to judge the personal satisfaction provided by apparently marginal living conditions. It vividly demonstrates the pathological intensification of the American value of independence in the case of the frail elderly. In so doing, the book serves as an indictment against key values in bourgeois culture." --Andrea Sankar, American Anthropologist "This book summarizes data from in-depth, open-ended interviews conducted on 52 frail and functionally impaired older persons living in the Philadelphia area. Informants were interviewed in their own homes, in three sessions each lasting a minimum of six hours. The authors, two anthropologists and a psychologist, focus on environmental factors that affect older peoples' independence and ability to live alone. Specifically, they examined how concepts of freedom of choice and desire for independence are actually realized in the daily lives of at-risk older persons... Recommended for gerontology programs." --L. A. Baumhover, Choice "Elders Living Alone is a study of elderly people, mainly debilitated, living alone in Philadelphia... [It[ provides a caveat against using one's own value screen to judge the personal satisfaction provided by apparently marginal living conditions. It vividly demonstrates the pathological intensification of the American value of independence in the case of the frail elderly. In so doing, the book serves as an indictment against key values in bourgeois culture." --Andrea Sankar, American Anthropologist