メルボルンの高齢女性のパーソナル・ネットワークとソーシャル・サポート

抄録

Kendig et al. conducted a survey on personal networks of the elderly in Sydney in 1981. The purpose of this paper is to confirm whether their findings are still applicable to elderly women in Melbourne or not. For this purpose, I carried out a survey of elderly women aged between 65 and 79 in a local government area, an inner suburb of Melbourne, in 2005-6. The analysis of the data revealed the following four points: Firstly, the personal networks of elderly women consisted mainly of kinship relationships, followed by friendship relationships. They had most of their social relationships within Melbourne, and had maintained 72.6% of friendship relationships within 10 kilometres of their residence. Secondly, though only 16.2% of elderly women lived with their child(ren), there were many elderly women whose child(ren) resided within 5 kilometres of their residence. Because of this, the elderly women who lived with their child(ren) and/or whose child(ren) resided within 5 kilometres of their residence amounted to 65.4%. Thirdly, elderly women who migrated from a non- English speaking country tended to live with their child(ren) and most of their children tended to reside within 5 kilometres of them. Therefore, such elderly women had many kinship relationships within 5 kilometres, and maintained few kinship relationships at a distance. Fourthly, relatives were a powerful source which provided elderly women with various kinds of social support, because their child(ren) tended to reside nearby. On balance, the “community saved” perspective is more consistent with the data in Melbourne than are either the“ lost” or the“ liberated” perspectives. Elderly women in Melbourne had a stronger tendency to live with their child(ren) than elderly people in Sydney and there was a stronger tendency for adult children to reside near their elderly parents among the former than among the latter.