A Study On The Remarried Issues Of The Elderly In Rural From The View Of Social Work

The aging process over the world has significantly accelerated in the21st century. There has been an increasing expansion of the elderly population while also with a growing proportion of elderly widowed since1999when China proceeded to an aging society. Nowadays the social development and times progress are seeing a new trend of high-leveled and diversified personal needs, such as the need to remarry among the elderly of whom a healthy marital status has played a very important role in their physical and mental health. Some social survey data indicate that the physical and mental health of the elderly with spouse is better than those without, and accordingly the life quality is higher. Obviously the elderly will be both physically and psychologically upset by losing his or her spouse, and some are even unable to withstand the blow of death and passed away in no long time because the sudden disappearance of the spouse’s care and support will lead to a lack of security and thus loneliness. Therefore, the elderly remarriage is much more important and meaningful.The thesis mainly deals with the remarrying problems of the rural elderly. Taking seven widowed elders from a community of Town H, Zibo as interviewees, the author adopted the method of in-depth interviews to collect data required for the study. The thesis under the guidance of relevant social work theories pictures the status of the rural remarried elders, elaborates the various obstacles they meet in the process of remarriage, locates the reasons behind and make a tentative proposal of some measures. It consists of four parts:The first chapter firstly describes the research background, research theory and practice revelation, of which the concepts of "the elderly" and "remarriage" are clearly defined and stressed; and secondly gives a domestic and foreign literature review.Chapter two mainly talks about the study’s theoretical framework and methodology. First, the active aging theory, social support system theory and social reconstruction theory and their applicability are referred and illustrated. Second, the design and implementation of the study are unfolded progressively; on one hand, qualitative research method is adopted by the analysis of the information collected from in-depth interviews; and on the other the selection of research objects, the data collection process and data analysis are presented in detail;The third chapter is the core part, discussing the current situation and problems of rural elders’ remarriage. First, the thesis figures out the remarrying impetuses and remarriage types based on the data analysis. Second, probes into the remarriage problems and causes respectively from social and children support factors, and subjective and objective factors.The fourth chapter is to put forward strategies and recommendations for the rural elders’ remarrying in terms of the system construction, public opinion creation and social work intervention.