Abstract Book of the 2nd Global Conference on Aging and Gerontology
Year: 2025
DOI:
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Ageing in Isolation: The Care Crisis of the Middle-Class Aged in Kolkata
Assistant Professor Sinjini Roy
ABSTRACT:
The dropping fertility rate, smaller families, and growing incidents of migration of younger members, induced by economic reforms and globalization, have brought about irrevocable changes in the traditional Indian family system. The other factors contributing to the noticeable changes are the rising age of marriage, the large-scale acceptance of the one-child norm, and the growing practice of remaining single. The career-centric upbringing of children, who disperse to different parts of the globe, has become another reality in the neoliberal “risk” society. Many senior citizens in India now live alone in their houses, while their children are dispersed worldwide. After the death of a spouse, the surviving spouse lives alone in his/her house with hired service providers, and those with serious ailments depend entirely on trained nurses. Some senior citizens shift to old age homes to escape loneliness but that is never seen as a substitute for family care. The major finding of this paper is that the urban middle-class aged are trapped in a “care crisis” of their own making, with serious existential and psychological consequences. The empirical data for this paper were collected through intensive fieldwork as a part of my doctoral research in Kolkata from 2014 to 2016. The fieldwork was done in a middle-class residential area and two old-age homes.
keywords: Dropping fertility, globalization, migration, one-child norm, single-member households