Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2021, 57(2): 165-191 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2021.012

Social Participation of Older Adults in Relation to Their Partnership History

Petr Fučík

Fakulta sociálních studií, Masarykova univerzita, Brno

How will the instability and diversity of family forms today impact the nature of people's close social relationships in the future when they are older? In this article I examine how the social participation of older adults is impacted by their different partnership histories. I am particularly interested in whether there are any differences in the social participation (activities involving contact with family, friends, acquaintances, children, grandchildren) of people who experienced divorce in life (I use a decomposition of the divorce rate to distinguish between those who had this experience when they were relatively young, middle-aged, or older). The data source for this analysis is the panel survey 'Dynamics of Change in Czech Society' and especially one unique component of the survey, which are the diaries on how people spend their time. Out of the total sample of respondents who maintained daily diary entries, I analyse the responses of those over the age of 60. The hypotheses that a lower level of social participation would be observed among people who had experienced divorced and that divorcing later in life would have a stronger negative effect on social participation are not confirmed by the data. The level of social participation measured using time-use diaries is found to be comparable across different partnership histories and irrespective of when in life a person gets divorced. In the conclusion of the article, I discuss these findings in a criticism of the overly negative paradigm that governs research on divorce in the social sciences.

Keywords: social participation, old age, divorce, partnership trajectory/history, consequences of divorce

Received: April 1, 2021; Revised: April 10, 2021; Accepted: April 12, 2021; Published: May 17, 2021  Show citation