Reconstructing the Public and the Private: The Home and Marriage in Later Life

Abstract

This chapter is based on research into the lives of a group of long-married couples. Investigating the significance of the home itself was not a central feature of the research design, yet as the data began to accumulate it became clear that the home was a major focus of the couples’ married lives. In this chapter I will discuss aspects of this centrality of home, and show the ways in which the meaning and experience of home are negotiated by husbands and wives, within certain constraints, in a process embedded in gender relations.