Role Continuity or Crisis in Later Life? A Corsican Case

Abstract

A controversy in gerontology has centered on the relative abilities of men and women to adapt to growing older in society: while some claim that women suffer less trauma because of their “smoother life cycle” from birth to death, recent critics suggest that repeated role inconsistency rather than continuity is a key to female adaptation. The effect of role continuity is examined in a rural Mediterranean society by combining the techniques of participant-observation, interviews, and self-assessed life satisfaction scores (fifty-seven men and women). Continuity in a woman's core role of housewife may exist, but she also faces lifelong discontinuity in her ability to participate in and identify with the conflicting roles which make up her core role set. It is this socialization to flexibility and repeated role variation that makes Niolan women assess themselves as more successful than their male counterparts in later life.