title: Meaning of aging in women's lives.
abstract: As limited resources led me to combine teaching and research responsibilities, my students have been participating in an assignment that involves listening to aging women in order to discover how women explain the aging process. We have conducted 329 comprehensive interviews of women who were living in the decade of their sixties, seventies, eighties, or nineties. In this sample of predominantly southern women in the United States, meaning of age is explained in a process involving both looking back (reminiscence) and looking ahead (preminiscence) at one's life course with specific references to changes in one's body, family, home, and keeping the faith.
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC 28403-5625, USA. covane@uncw.edu
authors.forename: Eleanor Krassen
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Covan
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001828:Body Image; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008875:Middle Aged; D012649:Self Concept; D012944:Social Support; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D016387:Women's Health