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SIGNIFICANT LOSS IN OLD AGE: SIBLING AS A SOURCE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT
Abstract
Old age is associated with a number of significant losses, the loss of spouse being regarded as the most important. Seniors respond to the death of their life partners in various ways. Even though the grieving process is a highly individual matter and the manifestations of grief are multi-determined, in accordance with the existing knowledge, it is possible to postulate a hypothesis that siblinghood in old age may be an important salutoprotective factor and a source of natural (informal) social support for widowed seniors. Not enough attention has been paid to this aspect in the Czech, Slovak and Polish social-scientific research, but the topic has already been dealt with in other countries. That is why the text will include a secondary analysis of foreign studies. The main objective of the article is to reflect and describe the importance of siblinghood when coping with the loss of spouse in old age, based on the partial results of a qualitative research of widowed seniors carried out under the project titled Graying Siblinghood: Sociological Study of Siblinghood in Late Adulthood Funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GA CR).
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References12
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