Joint Workpackage Leader - Formal & Informal Networks,
University of Surrey, UK

Food as glue in life transitions - how widows and widowers cope

"There are three principal transitions that people experience in later life. The major one is widowhood - from being married to living on their one. There were gender differences in how people coped with this and certainly food played an exceedingly important part in this.

The other was [the transition] from good, or reasonable, health to poor health and that was either themselves or their partners. Again, it made a difference whether it was the male or the female who was experiencing the poor health and who was actually looking after them.

The third one - although we had less to do with this - is the transition from living independently at home to one transition to start taking food in places like Day Centres, to having food brought in (as in 'Meals on Wheels') and finally to going into some kind of residential care, usually quite often via some sort of assisted living or sheltered accommodation.

What the widows talked to us about was once they didn't have anyone to cook for was actually a double edged sword - on the one hand it was a kind of relief and a release from the daily routine of having to find something that he liked and so on, but it was also a terrible loss.

Because food is one way that that women show they love people - they loved their parents when they came, they loved their husband, and they loved their children, through food, so it was a kind of double jeopardy in a way - they found that very difficult.

But for some of them [the feeling was] well now I can eat when I want to eat, I can eat as much as I want to eat. But time and again [most people told us] a cup of tea is never the same on your own, food wont taste the same now that I am not sharing it with anyone.

Men and women were different in the way that they dealt with living on their own. Women did tend to keep feeding themselves because in terms of food preparation, they tend to go into widow-hood without breaking step. They had prepared food before and they would prepare food afterwards so there was less of an issue about 'nutritional de-valuing'.

Men were a very interesting group - there were the men who really embraced a new skill, became 'experts' and really loved it and said to us 'I don't know what the fuss is all about, all you have to do is be organised'. Then there were those who said 'well, you gotta eat, so you gotta eat', so price, portion, preparation were the three things that came over with these 'Reluctants'.

And then there were the 'Resistors', who hardly ever cooked for themselves. These would be the ones who didn't do themselves too badly because they tended to go to places where they could buy food and they would maybe just buy in sandwiches at the weekend.

But the worrisome ones for service providers are those who just refuse to eat, or to cook for themselves at home. They were quite worrying.

One last transition is for people who find new partnerships and what we find is that the traditional gender roles in food preparation [tend to resurface]. Not so much in food purchasing - they go out together and buy stuff. But generally speaking the woman took over the kitchen even if the men had looked after themselves really well."

Biography
Kate had a background in nursing and health visiting before becoming a full time academic.
She is a lecturer in Social Policy and in the Sociology of Ageing, and is a co-director of the Centre for Research on Ageing (CRAG) at the University of Surrey, UK.
Her particular areas of expertise are qualitative research with older people, focusing on their health and social relationships, especially of older men.
She has published nationally and internationally and is co-editor with Sara Arber and Jay Ginn of Gender and Ageing: changing roles and relationships (2003) and with Graham Fennel of Intimacy in Later Life (2004).
She is President-Elect of the British Society of Gerontology.