The social connectedness of older adults: A national profile

Much has been made of the prospect ofsocial isolation in later life. Several per-spectives depict old age as a time of loneliness and rolelessness. For example, Cumming and Henry (1961) gave a classic warning about older adults ’ irreversible descent into isolation through voluntary social disengagement. Subsequent work has repeatedly challenged such accounts by portraying aging in later life as an identity struggle, a constant effort to maintain social roles and activity in the face of difficult later