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Gerontology
Aging and Social Isolation
This article relates to gerontology because it discusses two studies of aging men (58 black men aged 65 to 96), and discusses whether they are isolated from their family or not. It relates to aging because it involves studying the aged and how family structure changes as people age. This study involves statistics, gerontology, and sociology, and used demographics as the basis for the questions and results of the study. The article is from a respected journal on aging, and so, the credibility of the article is not in question. This study indicates that family relationships are an important issue as a person ages, and that most black men enjoy close familial relationships. Thus, this is not only an aging issue, it is a family issue. However, it is not a male issue, as the study indicated black women enjoy essentially the same close relationships with family members.
The article summarizes the results of this study, and looks into the relatively few other studies conducted among black families with aging relatives. They conclude that aging black men enjoy good relationships with their wives, and close bonds with their children and other nearby family members. Black women enjoy most of these same relationships, which the study creators did not anticipate. The studies also discovered that even those aging blacks with few family members are good at establishing a network of close friends and distant relatives for support and kinship. For example, the study found if a man has no children, he might become increasingly close to his nieces, nephews, and cousins in an attempt to create a network of support and family ties. To the people in the study, kinship and family seems to become more important as they age, and without a network of friends, the aging person can become lonely, depressed, and disassociated from the outside world. One of their important results notes that more studies about black family relationships should be conducted over a larger demographic area.
References
Johnson, C.L. (Summer 1999). Family life of older black men. In Journal of Aging Studies, 13, p145. Retrieved September 07, 2006, from Expanded Academic ASAP via Thomson Gale: http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A55240799&source=gale&userGroupName=lom_accessmich&version=1.0
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