When it comes to ground-breaking research, or any research at all, Atlantic Canada is often overlooked – but not by Deborah van den Hoonaard. The St. Thomas University gerontologist recently published a book about an “exotic” topic: widowers. “They are invisible,” she said. “No one had done it before.”
A gift of a writer’s journal describing the author’s first year as a widow sparked van den Hoonaard’s interest in the subject. She said reading it was so moving that she realized there was virtually no research about widows, especially from a qualitative, not statistical perspective. She wrote a book about her research on the issue, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2001, entitled “The Widowed Self: The Older Woman’s Journey through Widowhood.” This April, University of Toronto Press published “By Himself: the Older Man’s Experience of Widowhood”.
Van den Hoonaard, who is a member of the Baha’i Faith, said that its teachings regarding the equality of women and men and the elimination of prejudice inspired her to work to dispel stereotypes about widowhood. She thinks that the challenges faced by widowed and older people echo current problems that the Baha’i Faith seeks to address. Since gender and inequality issues affect widowhood greatly, the principle of equality of the sexes will help to remove these obstacles. Beyond that, van den Hoonaard said, “I think the Baha’i community has given people the opportunity to connect on a spiritual level that transcends age and marital status, and that has a lot of potential.” The Baha’i belief that the life of the soul continues after death would also hopefully make the emotional aspects of widowhood easier to deal with, she said.
The results of Van den Hoonaard’s research presented her with interesting contrasts. She said that women are often more prepared for the loss of their spouse because they’re more likely to be affected – senior widows outnumbered senior widowers four to one in 2001. Women are “very creative in the way they navigate their relationships” and are able to form new friendships. She also observed that women experience a tremendous sense of accomplishment doing traditionally “male” activities because these are highly valued in our society.
The 26 widowers that van den Hoonaard interviewed, some from Atlantic Canada and some from Florida but all over the age of 60, showed a strong desire to project masculinity. She said that they would learn how to cook and clean, for example, but because our society does not value what women do, the men were afraid of doing too many things that could be perceived as feminine. Prejudice around aging reinforces older men’s feelings of needing to represent masculinity as its traditional markers like strength, youth, employment and marriage are more likely to disappear, according to van den Hoonaard.
Her findings showed that it is true that men tend to remarry sooner than women after being widowed. But, she said, this isn’t because they forget their wives, just that their natural way to relate personally is with a woman in a couple relationship. It’s not that they become helpless without their wives, but again, they do not get the same pleasure from learning new tasks as women do after being widowed.
Some of the widowers expressed a newfound appreciation for how much work their wives used to do around the house and that they didn’t help enough. “Talking about issues of equality often doesn’t get past housework, so that’s a really big recognition for them,” van den Hoonaard said.
Van den Hoonaard’s research method is designed to encourage the people being interviewed to talk about what matters to them, in recognition of the fact that they are experts in their own lives. She feels this qualitative approach is an important step towards removing prejudice towards aging because it is respectful and humanizing. As a gerontology professor, she said, she also has the opportunity to eradicate this prejudice among her students, who often do not even realize it exists. “Research shows that age segregation contributes to ageism,” she said. “Baha’i communities tend to have age integration so they have a lot to contribute in that area,” although awareness is still a challenge there as well.
Van den Hoonaard presented Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh and the exemplar of the Faith’s teachings, as a model for old age and retirement. He was unjustly imprisoned until age 65, when His “retirement” was to be released from prison in poor health. Yet He decided to travel to Europe and North America to share Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings by giving public talks almost every day, which He had never done before. “This is what old age should be like,” she said, pointing to a life whose purpose is to serve others selflessly according to one’s capacities and opportunities, irrespective of age.
Van den Hoonaard has been a Canada Research Chair in Qualitative Analysis since 2006, and is hoping for a renewal of the position in 2011 so that she can continue her research and the operation of the Atlantic Centre for Qualitative Research and Analysis, which she founded in her capacity as a Research Chair. She has written many journal articles based on her research about the challenges and strategies of older women’s everyday lives and the ethnography of a retirement community. In 2006, she co-authored the book “The Equality of Women and Men: The Experience of the Baha’i Community of Canada” with her husband Will van den Hoonaard. She is working on another book, tentatively called “The Changing Face of Aging”, which will explore societal changes affecting seniors.