Aging and the Family - Essay Example

The book emphasizes upon the issue that is often overlooked in the sociology and anthropological research studies. The family life related studies mostly focuses upon the responsibilities and problems of the people while managing their family lives however, the problems of lonely males are often not given much importance in the research studies. The author realized that there is a big gap in the literature that must be filled with the help of a detailed research work focusing upon the lives and experiences of the elderly males.

The book strives to present the individuals’ views about their own life and life patterns. Their activities and feelings are basically described in the book to let the readers feel the meanings of living alone in the elderly phase of the live and the problems the people have to bear in making their lives busy, interesting and exciting. The book also provides information that is necessary for running the senior centres. The book also lists out 16 pages long recommendations meant to the senior centres in which the author has attempted to suggest different activities that the senior centres should provide to the elderly alone people in order to keep them busy and satisfy with the lives.

The book has been written with the help of information collected from the interviews of 47 live alone elderly males in Philadelphia. The participants belong to the ages from 60 to 92. The book is based upon qualitative research approach and the author has conducted primary research to collect the information for writing the book. The book uses the interviews as research method and 47 out of 15,000 alone elderly males have been approaches and interviewed to have an insight over their problems and experienced that they faced while living alone in the elderly phase of their lives.

The people were approached for the interviews using different methods. 26 old