The Adjustment of the Older Woman: Effects of Chronic Ill Health and Attitudes toward Retirement

Abstract

While the general portrayal of today's aging woman in the literature is a rather bleak one, the few studies that have been concerned with her adjustment to retirement have revealed discrepant findings. The present study investigated affect and temporal experience as indicators of adjustment through structured interviews with fifty-two female retirees. Data were analyzed by a 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA comparing groups in terms of Health, Willingness to Retire, and Time Since Retirement. In general, it was found that both healthy and ill females who had not initially wanted to retire, did not adjust over time to the retirement state. Even above the median time since retirement, these women experienced negative affect and a constricted and discontinuous sense of time passage. Second, and in contrast with the findings of an earlier study with male retirees, chronically ill females were not uniform in terms of maladjustment. A significant portion of ill female interviewees were seemingly able to surmount the effects of bodily disease and adjust to the requirements of role transition in an adaptive manner. Differential needs of the aging male and female in this cohort were emphasized, and implications for intervention were drawn.