May 2003
| This laterlife...14
People of 45 and over are more likely than other age groups to volunteer
or help other people. On an average day, they
will spend 4 minutes volunteering, 8 minutes helping others and 44 minutes socialising
according to National Statistics figures.
 The family is getting a new shape say researchers
at Oxford University. They are calling it the ‘bean-pole’, an elongated family
grouping with few children and more great grandparents. Changing life expectancy and the
falling birth rate are the reasons. In the future, there will be fewer aunts, uncles and
cousins to provide useful networking and friendships, but more grand and great
grandparents should aid understanding between the generations. And to balance things out,
there will also be more stepfamilies, including stepbrothers and sisters, to help bring up
the numbers in the younger generations.
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But – oh dear – an NOP poll for
the Salvation Army says that more than a quarter of people in Britain have lost
contact with a close relative, having gone missing or simply moved away by accident or
design. Children lose touch with parents after
separation or divorce. Family members drift apart and leave no forwarding address when they
move. The poll found that 27 per cent of people
polled had lost touch with a child, sibling, spouse or parent and almost half of them
wanted to re-establish contact. The Salvation
Army has a success rate of 87 per cent on the 5000 cases it handles each year around the
world. It charges £35 for a registration fee
(less for those on benefits) . Go to www.salvationarmy.org.uk/en/departments/familytracing.
Or there’s always the option of a DIY search on the internet.
Quickquotes:
‘Getting
old is not for cissies’, actor Pierce Broman aged 50
‘In
my job becoming old and becoming extinct are one and the same thing’ Cher
Nobody
was taking any notice of what I was doing. I’d
stopped showing and closed my London shop…I thought if I gave my archive to a museum
such as the V & A it would disappear into a drawer because I wasn’t exactly in
the news…’ Zandra Rhodes, 63,
on why she has opened her own Fashion and
Textile Museum in London.
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