The Research Of Social Support For The Elderly Who Travel Together

With the further development of an aging population, the phenomenon of old widowed is increasing, and older marriage and family problems gradually emerges. In reality the needs of the elderly people to remarry is more intense, but they have no choice have to cohabitation because of various social factors."Old-age travel together " has emerged as a quasi marriage model in the old remarried group. It means that the old people do not receive a marriage certificate when they are living together and its aim is to achieve the mutual care in the later stages of life.This paper adopts methods of both literature and half-structured interview. By consulting related books, academic periodicals, newspapers and websites in the " old-age travel together the author has a basic understanding of the current research status. And then the author make use of snowball sampling method to choose five groups (ten people) from elderly people who cohabitation in X City, S province.At the same time, we have a deep interview to know the reasons of cohabitation and their life situation. Through the research we can find that some old people is voluntary to choose this way and some are forced to because of reasons such as property, parental relationship, marriage fears and so on. Meanwhile its social support status is basically enough after they cohabitation. But because this relationship is unstable, their life is faced with some potential problems. And in the process,it has formed a pattern of life like this:older men provide economic security while women provide care resources. To some extent there are gender inequality and older women are in the inferior position."Old-age travel together " as a new social phenomenon, its existence has certain rationality. But it’s a risky way because it is against traditional ethics and lack of legal basis. So it is not suitable for all the old people. The author suggests the old people should have a thoughtful consideration of cohabitation or remarried problem from the objective reality. They had better use legal means to ensure a happiness life.