THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF “HOME ” TO OLDER WIDOWS

Elderly widows are increasingly choosing to remain alone in their homes following the deaths of their husbands. For a number of reasons they are a more vulnerable group than married older women, and thus were expected to have less positive attitudes toward being homeowners. In the present study widows (N = 70) who live alone were compared to married women (N = 74) who who lived with only their husbands. Both groups lived in single-family dwellings. Subjects responded to an empirically derived Likert-type scale which measures four factors relat-ing to “attachment to home. ” Results indicated that widows had sig-nificantly higher scores on the Traditional Family Orientation factor and on the Competence in a Familiar Environment factor. One explanation of these findings i s that the home may take on new meanings for widows as they reflect on earlier family experiences or as they discover that they can competently manage an independent lifestyle for themselves. Recent demographic trends indicate that there is an increasing number of older persons in the population and that this group is predominantly women. Most of these older women are widows who will, for a variety of reasons, never remarry. Studies of the morale or subjective well-being of older per-sons have generally found widowed persons measuring lower than their married peers (Larson, 1978). Morgan (1976) argues that much of the dif-ference can be attributed to lower income, lower work involvement, less family interaction, and other factors related to widowhood, rather than to widowhood alone. Regarding those persons who are widowed, there is continuing controversy as to whether men or women have the more difficult circumstances. Berard