This research seeks to explore the development of the Marital Life Course Perspective as a conceptual framework for describing and understanding marital life events and marital transitions. The study’s orientation is guided by the Life Course Perspective (Glen Elder Jr.) as a theoretical framework and draws on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Jonathan Smith) and Concept Analysis (Walker & Avant) as methodological approaches. One hundred and thirty (130) academic works that use the term marital life course in their texts constituted a literature-dataset for a Concept Analysis (Walker & Avant, 1988; 2011) that tracked the theoretical development of the Marital Life Course Perspective since 1980 (George, 1980, p. 80). The residents of retirement centres and old age homes in East London and Buffalo City (all older than 65 years of age) were invited to share a retrospective history of their relationship experiences, about their multiple marital life events and the marital transitions that shaped their marital life course. The 16 women who participated in the in-depth interviews had all been previously married more than once and were currently single due to divorce or the death of their husbands. This empirical data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as a guide (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). After the analysis and synthesis of both datasets the following proposed operational definition of the Marital Life Course Perspective was constructed: The Marital Life Course Perspective is a conceptual framework for describing and understanding marital life events and marital transitions. As a subset of the Life Course Perspective, the Marital Life Course Perspective seeks to understand all stages of the marital experience within their wider social and cultural contexts, which are shaped by the historical dimension of a cohort’s specific time and geographic location. Marital life events include, but are not limited to, marital status changes. An individual may experience multiple marriage life events throughout their life, each with associated role transitions that vary according to their temporality and the individuals whose lives are linked to the marital experience. Well-being and transition outcomes across the marital life course may be promoted or impeded by an interplay of risk and protective factors, and agency-related capacity or resilience.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:20384 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Rautenbach, John Victor |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Health Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Doctoral, DPhil |
| Format | xii, 436 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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