Anne Barrett

• Florida State University

The increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes induced by climate change, heighten the importance of understanding the emergency preparedness and needs of older adults with disabilities. This segment of the population faces an elevated risk of injury or death in hurricanes and other weather‐related emergencies, but little is known about their...

Among the leading causes of motor vehicle injury and fatality is drowsy driving. Most studies, however, focus on young drivers or those in shift positions (e.g., truck drivers). Little is known about how sleep quality affects the driving behavior and injury risk of older adults. Their risk may be heightened by the increased susceptibility to sleep...

Aging beyond youth presents challenges for women, who often struggle to remain visible and valued in an ageist society. Much of the literature has focused on women’s engagement with age-related beauty work, with less attention given to the encounters with ageist beauty norms that motivate it. Studies also have given limited attention to the range o...

Little is known about widowhood's effects on externalizing expressions of distress, like substance use, among sexual minorities. Our study is the first to address this issue using a large national sample of LGB individuals living in the United States. Using the 2010 Aging with Pride: National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study ( n = 2,258),...

Relatively little is known about how social relationships affect later life planning. Our study focuses on an underexamined aspect of social relationships, frequency of contact – not only with family members but also with friends. Using data from a survey of Floridians aged 50 and older conducted between December 2020 and April 2021 (n = 3,832), we...

Golf carts are rising in popularity among older adults, not only for use on the course but also for traveling short distances. Alongside their rising popularity are increases in related injuries, which have been the focus of the relatively small literature on golf carts. Little is known, however, about the frequency or social patterning of older ad...

Older adults tend to avoid driving in situations like heavy traffic or bad weather, but women do so more than men. Explanations for this gender difference, however, have received limited research attention. Using data from an online survey of Floridians aged 50 and older that was conducted between December 2020 and April 2021 (n=3,726), we examined...

Popular, long-time Canadian broadcaster, Lisa LaFlamme, was fired in August 2022, with some observers suggesting that CTV National News did not renew her contract because she had “let her hair go gray” during the pandemic. Over the next several months, an international public outcry ensued on Twitter. Our study involved an analysis of over 400 of t...

Despite the disproportionately high hurricane mortality rates for older adults, we know little about how hurricane preparedness and evacuation decisions are influenced by social relationships, specifically interaction with family and friends. Using data from an online survey of Floridians aged 50 and older that was conducted between December 2020 a...

The immense stress of widowhood can lead to unhealthy coping strategies, including substance use. Relatively little is known, however, about widowhood’s effects on substance use among sexual minorities. Of the few studies examining LGB widowhood, none employ large, nationally representative samples or consider whether effects depend on current part...

Chronic pain, which affects more than 1 in 4 middle-aged and older adults, can have profound implications for everyday activities, like driving. Although research has revealed pain’s effect on driving performance, less is known about driving-related behaviors and self-assessments that are part of the process of transitioning from driving. We addres...

A dominant aging narrative emphasizes what individuals should do to age well, namely remain active and productive. Underlying these promotional messages, however, are others about what should be avoided. At their core is a proscription against becoming dependent, thus “burdensome.” To critically examine this aging narrative, we develop the concept...

The dominant cultural definitions of sex, which is heteronormative, has implications for preventive health screening among LGB+ women. Medical recommendations for women’s screening exclude some same-sex behaviors from this definition, and they center on reproduction – both of which can discourage LGB+ women’s preventive health screening. Qualitativ...

The extension of life expectancy highlights the importance of understanding how people conceptualize – and plan for – their later years. We address this issue using data from an online survey of over 3,400 Floridians aged 50 and older that was conducted between December 2020 and March 2021 and funded by the Florida Department of Transportation. We...

Background and Objectives Chronic pain, which affects more than one in four middle-aged and older adults, can have profound implications for everyday behaviors, like driving. The literature examining it, however, is relatively small and is limited by its reliance on patient populations and lack of attention to some driving-related behaviors and sel...

An extensive literature examines subjective aging – a construct encompassing many aspects of individuals’ views of aging, such as attitudes toward older adults, age identity, aging anxiety, and awareness of age-related change. A factor receiving attention in this research is gender, with studies revealing much about differences in women’s and men’s...

Increasing life expectancy has led, in many countries, to new arrangements to meet the growing need for care in later life. In Italy, with the second oldest population in the world, family members, especially women, provide the majority of care. Paid care workers, however, are increasingly filling in where families cannot. Known as “home eldercare...

The construct of age occupies a curious position in mainstream sociology: It is omnipresent but theoretically underdeveloped. The most prevalent approaches—age as control variable and age as life course—elide the aspect of age most relevant to the discipline, namely its operation as a system of inequality. Building on the foundation laid by scholar...

Medical sociology gives limited attention to age—a surprising observation given the aging of the population and the fact that age is among the strongest determinants of health. We examine this issue through an analysis of articles published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior ( JHSB) and Sociology of Health & Illness ( SHI) between 2000 and 20...

Cultural constructions of gender and age may be challenged within politically and socially progressive leisure environments, like Key West, that promote social deviance and out-group acceptance. However, this possibility receives limited scholarly attention. Addressing this gap, our study applies a framework that highlights gender and age as perfor...

Health behaviors, which predict physical and mental health, are patterned by social factors, with some groups engaging in more health-enhancing behaviors than others. LGB+ people face more economic and social barriers to participation in healthy behaviors, along with the stress of discrimination that could lead to unhealthy behaviors to cope. Altho...

Physical pain is a gendered experience: Women report higher levels of it than do men. This pattern may stem from differences in experiences of the body. Women are socialized to be attentive to its functioning, appearance, and sensations, while men are discouraged from paying much attention to their bodies. Little is known, however, about the precis...

The pandemic’s numerous effects on everyday life include reductions in driving and changes in the use of other transportation modes, like getting rides from family and friends, walking, and biking. Aside from broad patterns, however, little is known about these changes, including how they affected different groups of the population and how they fel...

The expansion of life expectancy has precipitated a cultural transformation of the life course – altering the perceived temporal contours of middle and later life. However, our understanding of these perceptions is limited by the absence of a framework within which to examine them. This paper builds on the life course perspective – which emphasizes...

Few studies of widowhood’s effects on psychological well-being focus on sexual minorities. Of those that do, none employ large, nationally representative samples, and none examine whether the effects depend on current partner status. Using the 2010 Ageing with Pride: National Health, Ageing, and Sexuality/Gender Study (n = 2,325), we examine the as...

An extensive literature examines subjective aging – a construct encompassing many aspects of individuals’ views of aging, such as age identity, aging anxiety, awareness of aging, and views of life stages. A factor receiving attention within this research is gender, with studies revealing much about gender differences not only in subjective aging bu...

Objectives: Popular responses to the pandemic illustrate ageism's pervasiveness and the extent of collective acquiescence to its newest expressions. We explore these themes by analyzing Twitter reactions to "calculated ageism" - a term we use to refer to a political figure's edict that older adults should sacrifice their lives if it will mitigate...

Women have navigated the world with much less freedom than men—with restrictions particularly great for their solo, or independent, travel. Although much research documents women’s experiences of these constraints, less is known about travel media’s framing of women as solo travelers—with online media an especially neglected research area. Drawing...

Background and objectives: Grandparent-adult grandchild relationships may not be captured in existing grandparenting typologies, which focus on early stages of these relationships. Our study develops a typology for later stages, estimates the prevalence of grandparents in each category, and examines associations between category membership and gra...

Increasing numbers of women, of all ages, are choosing to travel alone – a trend accompanied by online articles providing advice to them. However, we are aware of only one study examining these articles, and it gave no attention to age. We conduct a content analysis of 75 online articles directed at solo women travelers, including 29 written for ol...

Marital status is associated with psychological well-being, with the married faring better than the formerly and never-married. However, this conclusion derives from research focusing more on negative than positive well-being. We examine the association between marital status and negative well-being, measured as depressive symptoms, and positive we...

Population aging has led, in many countries, to new care arrangements to meet the growing need. In Italy, with the second oldest population in the world, family members, especially women, provide the majority of care; however, paid immigrants are increasingly filling in where families cannot. Known as “badanti,” most of these careworkers are middle...

Death of a partner – one of the most stressful events many people will ever experience – has profound effects on psychological well-being. However, research on widowhood focuses almost exclusively on heterosexual couples, with little known about these studies’ applicability to the LGBT population. Further, the few studies of partner loss among LGBT...

Background and Objectives Prior research examining predictors of older adults’ transition from driving has not considered age-related perceptions, such as age identity, that could shape decisions to limit, or self-regulate, one’s driving. Our study examines this possibility, testing the hypothesis that older (or less youthful) identities predict gr...

Objectives: Although changes in body functioning and appearance signal the aging process to ourselves and others, studies give limited attention to the effect of bodily experiences of aging on age identity. Our study examines the effect on age identity of three categories of aging body reminders: everyday body problems, body repairs, and body aids...

Studies of the link between housework and sex sometimes reach divergent conclusions- partly resulting from varying perspectives on this relationship. We identify three perspectives found in prior studies of housework and sex-temporal, distributional, and fairness-each reflecting a different view of the processes linking these two domestic realms. T...

Objectives: Pets influence evacuation decisions, but little is known about pet-friendly emergency shelters’ availability or older adults’ need for them. Our study addresses this issue, focusing on the most densely populated area of Florida (Miami-Dade) – the state with the oldest population and greatest hurricane susceptibility. Method: We use Geo...

One of the strongest and most consistent predictors of self-regulated driving is gender, with women more likely than men to limit their driving in situations like bad weather or at night. However, studies have focused more on documenting these gender patterns than on explaining the processes underlying them, which may vary in their implications for...

Objectives: Dominant views of aging generate anxiety for many adults-especially women, who face greater disadvantages in later life compared with men. However, little is known about changes in these concerns over time and their variation across women. Employing a feminist perspective on age relations, our study examines three social contexts affec...

The past few decades have seen increased scholarly attention to gay and lesbian individuals' aging experiences; however, few studies examine differences in subjective aging by sexual minority status. We identify four perspectives on the association between sexual minority status and subjective aging—double jeopardy, crisis competence, gender intera...

Our study examines explanations for the "paradox" of older women's better emotional well-being compared with younger women. We consider the role of subjective experiences of aging in a society that devalues older women. Using a sample of women (n = 872) from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (1995-1996 and 2004-2006),...

Objectives: Research on the health-enhancing effects of later life activities gives limited attention to the age-segregated nature of many organizations; such consideration draws into focus identity processes contributing to these benefits. Studies also focus more on social than on educational organizations. We address these limitations by examini...

Studies of intensive mothering suggest that fulfilling societal expectations of the “good mother” diminishes maternal psychological well-being; however, studies tend to focus on young mothers. We examine the association between intensive mothering and psychological well-being using a sample of mothers in midlife (n = 1,388) drawn from the 2004-2006...

Having more physical limitations predicts greater depressive symptoms. However, relatively few studies examine self-conceptions as potential explanations for this association. Using ordinary least squares regression on panel data collected in Miami-Dade County, Florida (2001 and 2004, N = 1,362), we examine the effect of functional limitations on f...

In our society that values men over women and youth over old age, sexism and ageism intersect to erode women's status more rapidly and severely than men's. However, limited attention is given to women's responses to their devaluation, particularly collective efforts to either resist or accommodate dominant beliefs about ageing women. We examine mem...

Subjective age, a component of subjective aging, has received growing empirical attention locally and globally. Reflecting the age individuals perceive themselves to be, subjective age involves the experience of time along multiple dimensions—including lifetime, marked by movement through developmental life stages and socially structured, historica...

Evidence is accumulating on the effects of subjective aging-that is, how individuals perceive their own aging process-on health and survival in later life. The goal of this article is to synthesize findings of existing longitudinal studies through a meta-analysis. A systematic search in PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, and Pubmed resulted in 19 lo...

We consider members of the "forever young" cohort's negotiation of aging by examining how shifts in their views of the life course and their location in it influence their physical health. Using OLS regression (Midlife in the United States, 1995-1996 and 2004-2006; n = 1,257), we compare Early and Late Baby Boomers' subjective life course, measured...

Rising numbers of single middle-aged and older adults encouraged a proliferation of online dating websites targeting this population. However, few studies examine aging adults’ involvement in online dating. This study uses semistructured interviews with 18 online daters aged 53 to 74 and 2 romance coaches to examine how aspects of their online expe...

Although studies document the health-enhancing effects of social engagement, they reveal little about the underlying mechanisms operating within specific organizational contexts. Limited attention is given to the role of inequality--particularly age and gender--in shaping either the organizations to which we belong or their consequences for our wel...

Population aging, in conjunction with social and cultural transformations of the life course, has profound implications for social systems—from large-scale structures to micro-level processes. However, much of sociology remains fairly quiet on issues of age and aging, including the subfield of social psychology that could illuminate the impact of t...

Few studies examine social factors shaping our conceptions of the life course, particularly the boundaries of life stages. The existing literature tends to focus on either young adulthood or old age, primarily relying on cross-sectional data. Using two waves of data from Midlife in the United States (1995–1996 and 2004–2006), we examine how three s...

We examine 4 potential explanations for the lower quality of life reported by older adults with greater visual impairment. Using 2 waves of data from a nationally representative sample of older persons (a subsample of the Americans' Changing Lives Study, 1986 and 1989), we run residual change regression analysis to assess the extent to which the ef...

Although social scientists have long assumed that intimate social relationships are more closely associated with women's than men's mental health, recent research indicates that there are no gender differences in the advantages of marriage and disadvantages of unmarried statuses when males' and females' distinct expressions of emotional distress ar...

Objective: The authors examine associations of three sources of women's aging anxiety—declining attractiveness, health, and fertility—with social contexts of their lives, including locations in systems of inequality, connections to institutions, relationships, and health. They also explore links between aging anxieties and distress. Method: Employi...

Much of the literature on teaching gerontology derives from experiences in face-to-face settings. There is limited discussion of either the applicability of teaching techniques drawn from the traditional setting to the online environment or the development of novel strategies to engage distance students of aging. We developed and assessed an exerci...

Few studies examine how the gendered nature of aging impacts young adults--shaping their images of later life, attitudes toward elderly persons, aging anxieties, and conceptions of the start of "old age." We examine gender differences in young adults' views of elders and the aging process using a survey of college students and content analysis of s...

This study examines a domain of life—involvement in paid work—that has not been explored in prior research addressing the mental health consequences of widowhood. We argue that experiences in the paid labor force increase women's economic, social and psychological resources, which compound over the life course and ease their adjustment to widowhood...

We examined how organizational characteristics, transition experiences, and social relationships impact three subjective measures of well-being among assisted living residents: life satisfaction, quality of life, and perception that assisted living feels like home. Data were from 384 assisted living residents interviewed for the Florida Study of As...

Using data collected from undergraduates at two large, public universities (N = 183), we examined features of student drawings (e.g., facial expressions) as reflections of dominant views of the elderly. Sketches depicted both negative (e.g., frailty) and positive stereotypes (e.g., kindness). They also illustrate gender inequality; for example, men...

Our study has two goals: to evaluate variation in symptoms of substance abuse/dependence by family structure and to examine several potential explanations for this association, including differences in socio-economic status, social support, social stress and perceived approval and use of substances by family and friends. Ordinary least squares (OLS...

Although numerous studies reveal differences in mental health by the structure of one's family of origin, there remains debate regarding the processes generating these patterns. Using a sample of young adults (19-21 years) in Miami-Dade County in Florida, this study examines the explanatory significance of three presumed correlates of family type:...

This article investigates the theoretical and empirical relationship between age identity and subjective well-being (SWB) in a cross-national context. Feeling younger than one's actual age is considered a self-enhancing illusion that contributes to SWB even beyond factors predicting age identities and SWB, such as health and socioeconomic status. A...

This study uses Norwegian administrative data in an analysis of sick leaves and receipt of health-related benefits over a period of five years surrounding marital dissolution. Expanding the literature on the poorer health of divorced compared with married individuals, it examines previously unexplored indicators of poor health and employs data coll...

Prior work reports that women maintain younger identities than men; however, few studies have explored factors that may produce gendered self-perceptions of age. Drawing on several theoretical streams, including perspectives on the self (e.g., situational identity, the self-enhancement principle, role-identities, and social identity) and the life c...

Some research reports that divorce exerts greater negative effects on the mental health of Whites compared with African Americans. However, this literature is limited by inadequate attention to temporal dimensions of marital dissolution, in particular stages of the process and duration in each stage. This study incorporates stage and duration into...

This study compares age identities of middle-aged and older adults in the United States and Germany. Differences between countries in social systems and cultural meanings of old age are expected to produce different age identities. Data are from respondents between ages 40 and 74 in the United States (MIDUS; n = 2,006) and Germany (German Aging Sur...

This study examines health inequality as a potential explanation for socioeconomic differences in age identity. The following dimensions of health are examined: comparative self-rated health, self-assessed changes in physiological well-being, prospective self-rated health, perceived control over health, chronic conditions, and parents' health. Comp...

Adolescence is the segment of the life course when gender differences in mental health emerge and gender becomes a more salient factor shaping orientations toward oneself and views of one's place in the social world. This study uses mixture modeling, to identify trajectories of masculinity and femininity between ages 12 and 25, and OLS regression,...

This study expands the marital status and mental health literature by examining several dimensions of marital trajectories, including the number and type of prior marital losses and duration in current status. Data are drawn from the Piedmont Health Survey of the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study, collected in 1...

Using data from the 1982 National Long-Term Care Survey, this study examines the relationship between marital status and two dimensions of caregiving networks, size and composition. Results indicate that widowed and never married people have helping networks that are larger than those of married people. Diversity across marital statuses in sources...

This article examines the role of social support (measured as presence of a confidant, perceived social support, and frequency of informal interaction) in determining life satisfaction among the never married. Using data from Wave I (1986) of Americans’ Changing Lives, social support of the never married (n = 266) is compared with that of the marri...

Typescript (photocopy). Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [111-116]).