The Quality of Postparental Life: Definitions of the Situation

THE life cycle of the family may be thought of as the sequence of realignments of family structure and relationships ranging from the time of marriage through the death of one or both partners. In a stable society, such a sequence remains relatively fixed. A body of cultural norms related to appropriate family organization and intra-family relationships develops. Obligations, responsibilities, and privileges appropriate to each phase of the family cycle become established, and anticipatory socialization for each phase takes place during the preceding period. When, however, the society itself is in a state of general transition rather than stability, the phasing of the family cycle may change, and discontinuities in socialization from phase to phase may occur. Thus, for example, rapid advances in medical and related areas of knowledge during the preceding half-century have been followed by sharp increases in life expectancy, resulting in an increased population of aged couples, many of whom remain healthy and active. This phenomenon, in effect a new stage of the family cycle, has received (and continues to receive) considerable attention from both medical and social science. Although certainly striking, this is not the only, and perhaps not the most radical, modification of the family cycle to occur during recent generations. This paper is concerned with an emergent phase of the family cycle referred to by Cavan as the postparental: postparental couple are the husband and wife, usually . . . in their forties and fifties. . .. The most obvious change