Abstract
Husbands and wives who coped with, the crises of the independence of their children and the retirement, further in old age, have to confront more serious crisis that is the death of their spouses. The purpose of this study is to examine problems of the preparation and adaptation for the death of their spouses. The investigation was conducted to the widowed over 60. Among them, those who had been over 55 when their spouses had died, under 20 years after their spouse's death, and had children were selected. The samples were 174 males and 207 females.
The results are summarized as follows :
Nearly half of them did not talk with spouses on problems after the separation by death. Among changes of life after spouse's death, it is remarked that anxieties about their old age and the feeling of loneliness have been increasing. Man's feeling of loneliness is stronger than woman's one. After spouse's death, children play an important role as the object of emotional tie, but do not match spouse. However, the influence of spouse's death on the idea concerning living with a child is not so much. Thirty % of males and 40 % of females still want to live apart from children.
