Transitions in Later Life and the Re-configuration of Family Relationships in the Third Age: The Case of the Baby Boomers

In this chapter, we examine the consequences of demographic and social transformations on the reconfiguration of conjugal and family relationships in later life. In order to understand how ageing individuals and their families reshape these relationships the focus is on the ‘third age’ and, in particular, the experience of the 1946–1954 birth cohort of baby boomers. This generation took an active part in all the transformations that marked the second half of the twentieth century: the important growth of affluence and consumption, increased education, and women’s emancipation with entry in large numbers of women into professional occupations. These trends were accompanied by a rise in individualism and quests for new self-identities which in turn impacted on family life with the rise of unmarried cohabitation, and that of the rise of divorces and remarriages. Aspirations of autonomy and freedom that have been characteristic of the baby boomer generation are tempered with existing and new family obligations in later life. The baby boomer generation, which has now entered the period of the life course associated with the third age, has sought compromises between self-aspirations and intergenerational family solidarity