Mens & Maatschappij - Volume 93, Issue 2, 2018

Combining multiple roles by older adults: does it reduce or enhance wellbeing?

Older adults increasingly combine employment with informal care and/or voluntary work. This is good for society but raises the question whether combining multiple roles is also good for individual well-being. Based on data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (N = 1885), associations between role combinations, role intensity (in employment, informal care and volunteering) and well-being are examined using role enhancement and role strain perspectives. We investigate if social network and mastery (the feeling of control over his or her life) buffer potential negative effects of role combinations and role intensity on well-being. Intensive informal care is related with more depressive symptoms, which is fully mediated by mastery. Fulltime employment is related with lower levels of depressive symptoms, and this is fully mediated by mastery. Social network size does not mediate any relationship between role combinations or role intensities and depressive symptoms. Both parttime and fulltime employment are negatively related to depressive symptoms. The study suggests that combining roles is positively related to well-being when role strain is low. Interventions should be directed at maintaining mastery among those providing intensive informal care, in particular when combined with employment and/or volunteering.

Income inequality and the increase in ‘emotional disturbed behavior’: A sociological search for explanations of the increase in police-reported ‘emotionally disturbed persons’

The Netherlands have witnessed a strong increase in the number of reports received by police on ‘emotionally disturbed persons’– or actually people with ‘misunderstood behavior’. Much speculation has followed on the underlying causes, but empirical and especially sociological attention for the phenomenon has been absent. The current paper is the first to study the wider social-economic roots of emotional disturbance calls, such as a higher level of income inequality. In order to study whether the number of calls is influenced by a higher income inequality, regression analyses were run among 376 municipalities between 2011 and 2014. A higher income inequality in municipality-years was indeed related to a higher number of calls. The main model revealed an estimated difference of 330 calls per 10,000 inhabitants between the most unequal (Wageningen, 2014) and equal (Pekela, 2012) municipality-years. The findings lend support for the inequality hypothesis and problematize the current individualistic approach to ‘misunderstood’ behavior.