Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how Stop
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Kristin and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about widowhood
Speaker 1: by the request of a listener who herself is a widow.
Speaker 1: She's a younger widow, and if memory serves, she is
Speaker 1: actually a war widow. And we decided to look into
Speaker 1: this topic because even though it's something I don't feel
Speaker 1: like we talk about very often at all, it exists.
Speaker 1: There are there are many widows and widowers. This is
Speaker 1: an issue that's never going to go away, right and
Speaker 1: it reading reading about widowhood, the stats and hearing are
Speaker 1: reading first person accounts from widows and widowers about how
Speaker 1: society kind of reacts to them reminded me a little
Speaker 1: bit of the way that parents talk about miscarriage, in
Speaker 1: that nobody really knows what to say to someone who
Speaker 1: has lost a spouse, and that can leave a lot
Speaker 1: of people feeling really isolated, resentful, misunderstood. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of times people like things that Kristen I were
Speaker 1: reading um widows and widowers were saying, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just supposed to be over it because nobody
Speaker 1: wants to hear it anymore. And so we started digging
Speaker 1: into this topic and found that a lot of that
Speaker 1: sort of setting apart of people who have lost a
Speaker 1: spouse goes way way back. In fact, the word widow
Speaker 1: comes from the Latin word that means to set apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and even today, the expectations for how a widow
Speaker 1: in particular should act is largely dictated to by social
Speaker 1: customs where you're living. It varies widely around the world.
Speaker 1: Um So, just for some numbers. In the United States,
Speaker 1: as of September two thirteen, fourteen percent of unmarried Americans
Speaker 1: eighteen and older we're widowed. And this includes both men
Speaker 1: and women, right, And if you look at the age breakdown,
Speaker 1: because we tend to think of widows as older women,
Speaker 1: and that's certainly not solely the case. A third of
Speaker 1: women who have become widowed are younger than sixty and
Speaker 1: half of all women who will become widowed becomes so
Speaker 1: by the age of sixty five. And that's according to
Speaker 1: the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement. And you might think,
Speaker 1: why is a women's retirement site talking about widowhood, And
Speaker 1: it's because, as we'll talk about in a second. Widows
Speaker 1: face a lot of financial problems for for various reasons.
Speaker 1: Um but in two thousand nine alone, over fifty five
Speaker 1: thousand people thirty four and younger in the US were widowed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly like the stuff I've never told you
Speaker 1: listener who requested this episode. So looking outside of the
Speaker 1: United States were more of a global perspective. There was
Speaker 1: a two thousand u N report finding that widows comprised
Speaker 1: around the world, uh anywhere from seven to sixteen percent
Speaker 1: of all adult women. There was also a two thousand
Speaker 1: ten study out of the Loomba Foundation which estimated the
Speaker 1: number of widows around the world to be two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty five millions. So this is, you know, a
Speaker 1: massive number to state the obvious right. In India interestingly
Speaker 1: has the largest number of widows recorded in the world.
Speaker 1: That amounts to about thirty three million women, or ten
Speaker 1: percent of the female population in India, compared to only
Speaker 1: three percent of men. But only ten percent of those
Speaker 1: widows in India remarry, which again, stay tuned, We're going
Speaker 1: to talk a lot about remarriage, and we also to
Speaker 1: have to talk about widowhood in this current era of warfare.
Speaker 1: If you look at areas like Iraq and Afghanistan, widowhood
Speaker 1: is a massive social problem because a lot of these
Speaker 1: women are sent into poverty after they lose their husbands
Speaker 1: as casualties of war. So, for instance, uh the New
Speaker 1: York Times reported that in Iraq, one and eleven women
Speaker 1: between the ages of fifteen and eighty are widowed, and
Speaker 1: the United Nations estimated that in two thousand six, at
Speaker 1: the height of sectarian violence in Iraq, an estimated women
Speaker 1: became widows every day during that violence. And then if
Speaker 1: you look in Afghanistan, the United Nations estimates that there
Speaker 1: are up to two million widows living there, and there
Speaker 1: is an article on this published by p r I
Speaker 1: talking about how the widow's life often ends up becoming
Speaker 1: focused on begging, prostitution and trafficking and trying to find
Speaker 1: labor somewhere, but often dealing with issues of exploitation. And
Speaker 1: then you know, if you look at the Syrian conflict
Speaker 1: happening to this is also a massive problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: estimates are that there have been now up to one
Speaker 1: fifty thousand casualties from that conflict in sea area, and
Speaker 1: it's left a lot of women widowed, a lot of
Speaker 1: kids without fathers, and this is a huge problem. And
Speaker 1: you have there's actually something called the street of Widows
Speaker 1: in a refugee camp in Jordan's just because of how
Speaker 1: many you know, women and children have had to flee
Speaker 1: there after their husbands have been killed. Right, And that
Speaker 1: leaves whatever part of the world you come from, a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're widowed, that leaves the woman
Speaker 1: in a really precarious financial situation because a lot of
Speaker 1: the times the man is the sole breadwinner for the family,
Speaker 1: providing all of the money and supplies for both the
Speaker 1: wife and the kids. Um And in general, if we're
Speaker 1: looking specifically though back in the West and in America
Speaker 1: in particular, as women in general age, they become more
Speaker 1: vulnerable to poverty. Part of that is that we're outliving
Speaker 1: our husbands. Part of that is that maybe we're not
Speaker 1: making strong enough financial decisions when we're younger. Um and
Speaker 1: that group Wiser points out that nearly a third of
Speaker 1: single women over age seventy are living in poverty. And
Speaker 1: it's worse for older widows. If women become widowed after
Speaker 1: age sixty, they're usually in a worse financial situation unless
Speaker 1: they happen to have substantial savings, pensions, or life insurance.
Speaker 1: But those are all choices that they would have made
Speaker 1: long before their spouse died. Yeah, and globally, these kinds
Speaker 1: of burdens are worse for women in developing countries. This
Speaker 1: is an issue that the United Nations and nonprofit organizations
Speaker 1: and NGOs have really looked into, because again going back
Speaker 1: to that two thousand and ten study out of the
Speaker 1: Lumba Foundation, of those two five million women around the
Speaker 1: world that they estimate are widows, one hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: million of them are destitute. And the conditions are worse,
Speaker 1: they say, in areas like the Middle East where we're
Speaker 1: having so many women who are widowed due to warfare,
Speaker 1: or in Sub Saharan Africa where widows are more traditionally
Speaker 1: a and and by their husband's family. Or the issue
Speaker 1: of child widows, and we talked about child brides before
Speaker 1: on the podcast, and in Bangladesh, for instance, child widows
Speaker 1: between the ages seven and seventeen aren't uncommon, but when
Speaker 1: they become widows, they're often kicked out of school, they're isolated.
Speaker 1: It's the same kinds of issues happening over and over again, right,
Speaker 1: because we pointed out earlier that only ten percent of
Speaker 1: widows in India remarry, for instance, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that does have to do with the view of widows
Speaker 1: that they are somehow tainted, there's somehow like a poisonous
Speaker 1: plague on society that and they have to be cast out. Um.
Speaker 1: Thousands of widows in India, many of whom are uneducated
Speaker 1: and unskilled, end up being disowned by their relatives, even
Speaker 1: whether it's their own or their husbands. And they get
Speaker 1: thrown out of their own homes because of land and
Speaker 1: inheritance disputes. And not only that, but they tend to
Speaker 1: face physical and sexual abuse by relatives or end up
Speaker 1: migrating to cities to basically live on the streets and
Speaker 1: beg for money. Yeah, and we should note that there
Speaker 1: used to be a Hindu tradition of widows throwing themselves
Speaker 1: on their dead husband's funeral pyres and and that was
Speaker 1: outlawed in the nineteenth century. Um. But in the same way,
Speaker 1: it's like they're almost symbolically thrown on these pyres. Because
Speaker 1: for instance, there's this place called Vrindavan. It's a popular
Speaker 1: Hindu pilgrimage Center, and it's also become known as the
Speaker 1: City of Widows because it's become this place where around
Speaker 1: twenty thousand widows at a time are are flocking to
Speaker 1: this place because there's so many tourists and and you know,
Speaker 1: religious pilgrims who are going there that they can sustain
Speaker 1: themselves on like food offerings or uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: financial offerings that they might be able to beg for um.
Speaker 1: But it's there there's no social structure in place to
Speaker 1: take care of these women, right exactly. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's something that we've seen historically as far
Speaker 1: as widows oftentimes have ing to kind of band together
Speaker 1: to even be able to survive. But then you have example,
Speaker 1: other examples international examples of for instance, widows in Molly
Speaker 1: having basically passing down their poverty to their children. Because
Speaker 1: once you're a widow and you're abandoned by your peers
Speaker 1: or your family, it's hard to break out of that
Speaker 1: cycle of poverty. And if you look at West Africa,
Speaker 1: the Igbo culture, those widows they're suffer a disproportionate amount
Speaker 1: of ritual cleansing compared to widowers um. And basically anyone
Speaker 1: who fails to fulfill the requirements of the rituals risks
Speaker 1: social exclusion, and it's this whole list of things that
Speaker 1: they face. They have to wear rags, or they have
Speaker 1: to drink dirty water, things like that. But the most
Speaker 1: common UH ritual cleansing thing is scraping the widow's hair.
Speaker 1: UH Usually the deceased husband's female relatives will scrape off
Speaker 1: the widows body hair. And we should note that that
Speaker 1: some of these traditions are in place because of beliefs
Speaker 1: about the ritual cleansing being part of sort of excommunicating
Speaker 1: this woman from her husband's spirits so that he won't
Speaker 1: come back and hunter. But obviously there's a lot of
Speaker 1: brutality that goes into that and UM in some countries
Speaker 1: such as Ghana and Kenya, certain cultures there will also
Speaker 1: include cleansing sex, wherein the widow will be forced to
Speaker 1: have sex with either a brother in law or even
Speaker 1: the first like male stranger that she encounters as a
Speaker 1: part of these cleansing traditions. And so there have been
Speaker 1: some laws that have been enacted in these areas to
Speaker 1: put a stop to it. And obviously there are you know,
Speaker 1: nonprofits that are working to sort of re educate people
Speaker 1: on these kinds of mourning practices, but it's definitely something
Speaker 1: that is still happening, right. And what I found kind
Speaker 1: of both interesting and tragic about all this, which we
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned earlier, is just the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of the way that widows are treated today has
Speaker 1: so much to do with the way that we have
Speaker 1: historically treated them. And there was this great book. It
Speaker 1: was basically a compilation of chapters on widowhood by various authors,
Speaker 1: and it was edited by Jon Bremer and Laurence van
Speaker 1: den Bosch. It's called Between Poverty and the Pire Moments
Speaker 1: in the History of Widowhood, and it had this incredible
Speaker 1: rundown of basically the history of how widows are viewed
Speaker 1: and treated. Um they've always been considered a marginal group.
Speaker 1: That is nothing new. People have never quite known how
Speaker 1: to treat widows. Like I said earlier, the Latin term
Speaker 1: for widow comes from the word meaning to place apart,
Speaker 1: but the word for widower really didn't come around until
Speaker 1: much later. There is no masculine term in Latin or
Speaker 1: Greek to match the term, and in Anglo Saxon languages,
Speaker 1: a masculine form didn't appear until the late fourteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so Bremer and Van den Bosch arise that the
Speaker 1: reason why you have widowerhood having such a shorter linguistic
Speaker 1: history is that the very concept of widowhood affects male
Speaker 1: identity much less than widowhood has on female identity. And
Speaker 1: that's also a big reason why we're focusing more on
Speaker 1: widows as opposed to widowers in this episode, because a
Speaker 1: lot of times widowhood doesn't I mean not to say
Speaker 1: that that men historically and today don't grieve and feel
Speaker 1: a massive loss, but socially speaking, it's not as much
Speaker 1: of a blow for them, right, And Brimmer and vanden
Speaker 1: Bosch point out that because widows are sort of considered
Speaker 1: this marginal group, that's probably why they haven't received very
Speaker 1: much attention. Um and unlike widowers, their lives have been
Speaker 1: controlled by so many rules, both social and legal. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And another thing they point out too, is how a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you read a out widows historically
Speaker 1: or kind of think of them as a group, they're
Speaker 1: either framed as the poor widow or the super wealthy,
Speaker 1: privileged widow who doesn't have to deal with all of
Speaker 1: this other awful stuff that the poor widows have to
Speaker 1: deal with. But they say, in reality, you find widows
Speaker 1: among all social strata. But the fact that we really
Speaker 1: only hear about them kind of on the margins is
Speaker 1: yet more evidence of how they're often overlooked even by scholars.
Speaker 1: And how widows are defined really depends on what country
Speaker 1: you're in, and then what country you're in, that depends
Speaker 1: on what culture in that country you're talking about. In
Speaker 1: ancient Assyria, for instance, the term was reserved for previously
Speaker 1: married woman who had no male protection or means of
Speaker 1: financial support. Basically, you were only a widow if your
Speaker 1: husband and your father in law were dead and you
Speaker 1: had no sons, So that was like a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: high bar to to constitute being a widow then, you know.
Speaker 1: Kristen mentioned that the separation between the war classes and
Speaker 1: the upper classes as far as widowhood is concerned, and
Speaker 1: Roman upper class widows were able to live quite comfortably,
Speaker 1: But that whole ideal in the Roman culture of the
Speaker 1: woman who had been married only once really could only
Speaker 1: be an upper class phenomenon because that meant that you
Speaker 1: had enough money or your family had enough money to
Speaker 1: let you maintain that ideal of like the chaste never
Speaker 1: remarried widow, right, because if you're looking into the history
Speaker 1: of widowhood, you're looking at the role of these women
Speaker 1: who don't have, you know, male financial support, which would
Speaker 1: have been crucial in these times when women were really
Speaker 1: relegated to just looking over domestic affairs. Their roles were
Speaker 1: to be housewives and mothers. And so if they are
Speaker 1: not either, and yet they are older than what are
Speaker 1: they gonna do? So one answer to that question mark
Speaker 1: of whoa, what do we do with widows? They can't
Speaker 1: be there wives anymore, their kids are grown up? What
Speaker 1: do we do? That's when you see a lot of
Speaker 1: tie ins with religions where widows are almost kind of
Speaker 1: analogous to how you have devout virgins. In some religions
Speaker 1: you have the rise of the the the chaste widow
Speaker 1: who sort of upheld in society as a woman set apart. Right,
Speaker 1: But people have these stereotypes, always have, probably always will
Speaker 1: about where women who aren't confined to safe, normal marriage,
Speaker 1: where those women fit. And in ancient Israel for instance, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as speaking about ideals, you know,
Speaker 1: the the ideal Roman widow never remarried. Well, the ideal
Speaker 1: widow in ancient Israel was one who was solitary and chased.
Speaker 1: You know, she probably stayed at home by herself all day,
Speaker 1: just praying, but more popular imagery associated her with loose morals.
Speaker 1: So what does that say that we we we want
Speaker 1: you as the widow to stay home and just meditate
Speaker 1: on your husband's memory, but in reality we probably think
Speaker 1: you're sleeping around and we don't like you for it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's that fear of that that Bremer and Van and
Speaker 1: Bosh talk about in the book. It's this cultural fear
Speaker 1: of the widow because we know that since she was married,
Speaker 1: there was a very good chance that she consummated that
Speaker 1: marriage and has had knowledge of sexual relations before. And
Speaker 1: so they talked about how this sort of cast the
Speaker 1: widow as this woman in between because she's not a virgin,
Speaker 1: she can't be. She'll never be entirely chased because of that.
Speaker 1: And one example that they give of this is in Islam,
Speaker 1: how Mohammed's first wife as a widow, but his daughter
Speaker 1: is upheld as the you know exemplar you know female
Speaker 1: in the religion because his wife would have already you know,
Speaker 1: been she she had already done it, done it. To
Speaker 1: put it not very eloquent. Well, um, I mean speaking
Speaker 1: of of class divides and being impure and whatnot. I mean,
Speaker 1: even among the upper casts in India, Hindu widows did
Speaker 1: not get reincorporated into society because they were considered in pures.
Speaker 1: So you're sort of just screwed on so many levels
Speaker 1: and all of these different cultures. And again speaking of class,
Speaker 1: if we look toward Dutch culture in the eighteenth and
Speaker 1: nineteenth centuries, for instance, widows from the nobility had a
Speaker 1: much different experience than those of the lower classes, who
Speaker 1: were considered to be among unfortunate persons, a group that
Speaker 1: also included orphans on the chronically ill. They ended up
Speaker 1: receiving a lot of benefits, social benefits, financial help, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But it was only because they widows
Speaker 1: were somehow classed with like really sick, unfortunate people who
Speaker 1: couldn't care for themselves and were a burden to society. Well,
Speaker 1: because in a lot of ways, it did put you
Speaker 1: in that position of not being able to care so
Speaker 1: well for yourself because unlike a widower who probably had
Speaker 1: a trade and would continue working in that trade, regardless
Speaker 1: of whether or not his wife was alive. Widows would
Speaker 1: have to find some other means of financial support, and
Speaker 1: Bremer and Van and Bush do note that there were
Speaker 1: some guilds that had special allowances for widows. Uh that
Speaker 1: you see widows entering into more traditionally masculine like labor
Speaker 1: fields in certain areas, But by and large, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of times unless unless you are a wealthy widow,
Speaker 1: a merry widow, as they're sometimes stereotyped you, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a tough road to hoe, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these times, you know, you didn't even have a
Speaker 1: chance to get out from under being viewed as an
Speaker 1: unfortunate widow because there were things like morning dress which
Speaker 1: completely separated women from the rest of society. Um early
Speaker 1: Christian morning dress was was such that it basically defeminine
Speaker 1: as to widows and Hindu women in some Brahmin casts,
Speaker 1: which are the upper upper class casts, had to shave
Speaker 1: their heads, so they were again kind of separated. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting to see is that if you look outside
Speaker 1: of traditionally monogamous cultures into say some Polynesian cultures, widows
Speaker 1: are afforded a lot more freedom for instance, in some
Speaker 1: of these Polynesian cultures, widows are really seen is no
Speaker 1: different than other women. But it's notable that in these cultures, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not expected that men and women will only have
Speaker 1: sex with like one monogamous partner for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives. Um, And so widows, divorced women and even
Speaker 1: younger unmarried women are all, you know, having sex and
Speaker 1: it's not looked down upon. Yeah, I mean, if sex
Speaker 1: is seen as a normal, healthy thing that consenting adults
Speaker 1: engage in, which my my, imagine that, Caroline. But if
Speaker 1: if sex is viewed as a normal activity for everyone,
Speaker 1: including women, imagine that as well. Um, and monogamy is
Speaker 1: really not expected of anyone, then that's one less thing
Speaker 1: that you have to look down on someone for, you know,
Speaker 1: and so they have a little bit more flexibility in
Speaker 1: in bouncing back, so to speak, from being widowed. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of widowhood and sex, let's talk about remarriage, because
Speaker 1: you would assume I would kind of assume that reading
Speaker 1: about how you know, societies have sort of traditionally viewed
Speaker 1: widows with uh, you know, a little bit of trepidation
Speaker 1: because they're not entirely sure. I would assume that there
Speaker 1: would be a super high remarriage rate for widows because
Speaker 1: she's like, oh, well, you know, just get her married again,
Speaker 1: get her back into her proper social role. And for instance,
Speaker 1: in Islam, widows remarriage is encouraged. Um, But you don't
Speaker 1: actually see these kinds of Even if remarriage is encouraged,
Speaker 1: when you look at the actual statistics, it's not so common.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned how in India, you know, only ten
Speaker 1: percent of widows get remarried. In ancient Israel, the ideal
Speaker 1: widow was someone who was chased and didn't remarry. So
Speaker 1: the attitude generally historically about widows remarrying has kind of
Speaker 1: been like, okay, well, if you have to, that's that's
Speaker 1: good because then you'll be married and if you have
Speaker 1: any sexual activity it will be confined to marriage. But honestly,
Speaker 1: saying chased would earn you more respect, particularly in Hebrew
Speaker 1: and early Christian societies, because you know, they said remarriage
Speaker 1: is better than sleeping around, especially if you're young. Because
Speaker 1: kind of people look at young widows is like, well
Speaker 1: we don't want to you know, have you sleep around?
Speaker 1: We should probably get you remarried to someone. Um, but
Speaker 1: when you that's sometimes that's only possible for upper class women.
Speaker 1: If you look at China during the Ching period, which
Speaker 1: was sixteen ve elite women widowed before age thirty were
Speaker 1: honored as exemplary if they remained chased until fifty. And again,
Speaker 1: like we said before, I mean sometimes that is only
Speaker 1: possible if you're part of that elite class, if you
Speaker 1: have enough money and social standing to be able to
Speaker 1: not remarry. And the pattern of widowers being far likelier
Speaker 1: to remarry than widows is not a new phenomenon. If
Speaker 1: you look, for instance, at eighteenth century France, of widowers
Speaker 1: in their twenties remarried compared to sixty percent of widows
Speaker 1: in that age group. Um. And then if you move
Speaker 1: up to widowers and widows in their forties, of the
Speaker 1: men get remarried compared to just of the women. So
Speaker 1: it's clear that like the older you get, the wider
Speaker 1: that gap grows. It's the same in Dutch society in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century you have three times as many widows
Speaker 1: as widowers. But why why was widowerhood such a less
Speaker 1: permanent situation than widowhood. They're all these theories on age.
Speaker 1: You know, women of appropriate marrying age, young pretty things
Speaker 1: were we're drying up. Basically, Uh, you have theories about
Speaker 1: women outliving men, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but women in Western
Speaker 1: Europe really didn't start outliving men until relatively recently. Instead,
Speaker 1: the author's posit, we have these issues of gender norms
Speaker 1: and ideals, power relations behind people of different ages, and
Speaker 1: sexual division of labor that influenced the frequency of remarriage
Speaker 1: and whether it's even proper. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that all of that relates a lot back to a
Speaker 1: sexual double standard, wherein you know, like after it is
Speaker 1: known that a woman has sex, especially back more in
Speaker 1: in these historic days when we're closer to the era
Speaker 1: of you know, women very much as second class citizens
Speaker 1: and treated as property in marital arrangements, because you have
Speaker 1: to remember that getting married for love is a much
Speaker 1: newer phenomenon. This wasn't coming about until like the eighteenth
Speaker 1: and nineteenth centuries with the Industrial Revolution, and so you know,
Speaker 1: if women are being considered property, then of course a
Speaker 1: widow is going to be considered quote unquote damaged goods
Speaker 1: as opposed to a widower who he's just another guy.
Speaker 1: Right now, Kristen mentioned as far as property goes um,
Speaker 1: she mentioned the guilds in Dutch society that sort of
Speaker 1: helps support widows of various classes, and sometimes looking at
Speaker 1: those professional groups, especially if you move over to France
Speaker 1: and England, a lot of times women would end up
Speaker 1: entering some of those professions in their husbands places. But
Speaker 1: something interesting happens with gender identity. UM. Women who were
Speaker 1: reclassified as basically honorary men when they took over for
Speaker 1: their husbands in their various professions or businesses or whatever,
Speaker 1: we're essentially flouting their female identity, and so you could
Speaker 1: argue that maybe that even makes them less remarriageable in
Speaker 1: a way, and in addition to perhaps taking over their
Speaker 1: husband's jobs in some cases you and this is something
Speaker 1: that you'd still see today. In eighteenth century France, it
Speaker 1: was again very common for widows and spinsters all that word,
Speaker 1: to be living together in order to share chores, the
Speaker 1: cost of housing and also provides some sort of family
Speaker 1: unit for each other. There. There these it was very
Speaker 1: uncommon for women to be living on their own away
Speaker 1: from a father or a brother who had some financial means,
Speaker 1: or a husband, and so that marginalizes them if it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of women folk living together cat ladies, right. Well,
Speaker 1: it also marginalized them too, And this is this is
Speaker 1: pretty obvious. I would think when a lot of women
Speaker 1: are faced with Okay, I have no man to care
Speaker 1: for me or provide for me, but I have to
Speaker 1: put food in my kid's mouth, a lot of them
Speaker 1: would choose basically turn to professions that marginalize them themselves,
Speaker 1: whether that's prostitution or theft. Because, um, in eighteenth century France,
Speaker 1: in Britain, you have a lot of widows in the
Speaker 1: judicial record for prostitution and theft, and why is that
Speaker 1: They kind of have to do whatever they can to
Speaker 1: feed their families. So the question then is clearly the
Speaker 1: history of widows is one of marginalization unless you're an
Speaker 1: upper class woman. But even if you're an upper class woman,
Speaker 1: there's still all these social rules for how long you
Speaker 1: have to be in mourning, whether or not you know
Speaker 1: you you have to be perceived as chased, or whether
Speaker 1: you can remarry. It's really not up to you what
Speaker 1: happens with your life. So the question is that was
Speaker 1: what life was like for widows then? And we've talked
Speaker 1: some about how you still see roots of those traditions
Speaker 1: still in developing nations. But what about today in the
Speaker 1: West more what what what is it like for widows?
Speaker 1: And we'll talk more to about widowers when we come
Speaker 1: right back from a quick break. So one thing that
Speaker 1: was never discussed in ancient Assyria as far as widows go,
Speaker 1: was something called the widowhood effect. This gets a lot
Speaker 1: of attention now from psychologists, from doctors who have noticed
Speaker 1: that spouses who are left behind face a huge number
Speaker 1: of both mental and physical, a lot of emotional too, uh,
Speaker 1: problems after their spouse dies. It's it's more than just
Speaker 1: the depression that you would expect when your spouse passes away.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different effects that you can face.
Speaker 1: And Harvard did a study in November um which looked
Speaker 1: at data from a University of Michigan Health and retirement
Speaker 1: study following more than twelve thousand people over the age
Speaker 1: of fifty for ten years, kind of looking at their
Speaker 1: relationships as they aged and what happened after a spouse dies,
Speaker 1: and they found for this widowhood effect quote unquote widowhood
Speaker 1: effect that when a spouse died, the surviving spouse faced
Speaker 1: a higher risk of dying over the next few months
Speaker 1: as well. That's pretty scary. Actually, um. They found out
Speaker 1: widows and widowers both were more likely to die than
Speaker 1: people whose spouses were still living. On average, that effect
Speaker 1: was strongest during the first couple of months after spouse's death,
Speaker 1: during which time they had a sixty six percent increased
Speaker 1: chance of dying. And the authors point out, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: this could be a grief related thing, or it could
Speaker 1: actually be a physical thing that when you've been caring
Speaker 1: for a sick and dying spouse, you just haven't taken
Speaker 1: care of yourself, and after they pass, maybe you just
Speaker 1: don't even want to. Yeah. I mean, it's this whole
Speaker 1: idea of whether you can die from a broken heart,
Speaker 1: and this research suggests that, in a way, you kind
Speaker 1: of can. There was a ad published in the journal
Speaker 1: Demography in two thousand nine looking at that issue of
Speaker 1: perhaps the spouses that have been left behind, who haven't
Speaker 1: been taking care of themselves so much, because if they've
Speaker 1: been really caring and also grieving for the loss sometimes gradual,
Speaker 1: sometimes more acute, of a spouse, they have probably been
Speaker 1: looking or overlooking excuse me, their own health care needs.
Speaker 1: And this is a more pertinent issue too, they found
Speaker 1: for widowers. So they found that men who have lost
Speaker 1: a spouse suffer more from a decline in their quality
Speaker 1: of informal care kind of taking care of themselves on
Speaker 1: the day to day, also coordinating between formal and informal care,
Speaker 1: so making sure they get to their routine doctor's visits,
Speaker 1: and also make sure that they're brushing their teeth two
Speaker 1: times a day, all three times a day after a
Speaker 1: particularly garlicy lunch. Um. And also they suffer from a
Speaker 1: decline in advocating and communicating in medical settings. And this
Speaker 1: kind of points to I mean, this is also very heteronormative,
Speaker 1: uh finding, because it's looking at male female relationships obviously,
Speaker 1: but they think that this really illustrates women's centrality in
Speaker 1: that what's termed the household production of health. It's often
Speaker 1: the wife looking after the dad. This makes me think
Speaker 1: of Caroline, how my parents, who have been married decades,
Speaker 1: My mother still makes my father's sandwiches, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what he would do if she Honestly, if she
Speaker 1: dies before my father, I don't know what he would do.
Speaker 1: When my grandmother died, my grandfather didn't know how to
Speaker 1: work the oven or the microwave anything he was at
Speaker 1: a loss um. Another thing that you know scholars who
Speaker 1: study these basically divisions of well household labor, but also
Speaker 1: household roles, gender roles. One thing that they point to
Speaker 1: a lot of times is that the wife typically heads
Speaker 1: up the social calendar. It's the woman who tends to
Speaker 1: reach out and have more social connections, dragging as in
Speaker 1: my parents case, dragging the begrudging men along to the
Speaker 1: block party with her. But it tends to be um
Speaker 1: and not that this applies to everyone, but then it
Speaker 1: tends to be the man who makes more money controls
Speaker 1: more of the finances, so woman cruise director, man head
Speaker 1: of finances. So when they were looking at couples who
Speaker 1: have this particular divide of labor, they found that men
Speaker 1: tend to experience widowhood or widowerhood really as a more
Speaker 1: emotionally distressing event than women. And this is a a
Speaker 1: study from the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. But
Speaker 1: they make sure to stress that men and women experience
Speaker 1: both marriage and widowhood differently. Imagine that and that includes
Speaker 1: the pros and cons of both. So basically what they're
Speaker 1: saying is that when a man dies, leaving his wife behind.
Speaker 1: Her stress comes from the financial strain. But when a
Speaker 1: woman leaves a man behind, his stress comes from that
Speaker 1: lack of a social network. Maybe he doesn't have as
Speaker 1: many people coming to visit as she would, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Maybe he's not good if he's not good
Speaker 1: at reaching out to go to the doctor. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: not as good as reaching out to friends for support. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this more about how the existence
Speaker 1: of a social support network prior to losing a spouse
Speaker 1: really predicts how well they will. You know, a widow
Speaker 1: or widower will transition perhaps into another relationship, another romantic
Speaker 1: relationship in their life. And speaking of widowers and romantic
Speaker 1: or perhaps just purely sexual relationships, we would like to
Speaker 1: note that, according to a study published in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine in the American Journal of Public Health, widowhood and
Speaker 1: older men but not women, is correlated to an increased
Speaker 1: risk for s t I S and is finding was
Speaker 1: particularly pronounced after the introduction of the first oral erectile
Speaker 1: dysfunction drugs. So Grandpa's out there taking viagra. Don't forget
Speaker 1: that s t I S still exist at the retirement home, right, Grandpa.
Speaker 1: Grandpa's getting frisky. Now that we have poisoned your brain
Speaker 1: with images of people getting s t I s in
Speaker 1: nursing homes, we should talk about dating and remarriage for
Speaker 1: for widows and widowers. Yeah, I mean, the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is there is a major gender imbalance, particularly
Speaker 1: if you are over sixty five. According to census data
Speaker 1: from two thousand three, women over sixty five out number
Speaker 1: men roughly one and a half to one, and by
Speaker 1: eighty five that has grown to women outnumbering men four
Speaker 1: to one. Um So The Senses also estimates that each year,
Speaker 1: out of every one thousand widowed men and women sixty
Speaker 1: five and older, only three women but seventeen men remarry.
Speaker 1: So still remarriage at that age isn't super high, but
Speaker 1: still a lot more common for widowers to marry. So
Speaker 1: so what's going on here? What? What? What's the deal
Speaker 1: with widower's interests in dating and remarriage compared to widows well?
Speaker 1: As Debora Carr from Rutgers University points out talking about
Speaker 1: these statistics, the numbers of people who are getting remarried
Speaker 1: don't necessarily indicate the number of people who are interested
Speaker 1: in it or interested in romance in general. She points
Speaker 1: out that men's widowed men's interest in dating and remarriage
Speaker 1: really depends on the amount of social support they receive
Speaker 1: from friends. So six months after they've lost their spouse,
Speaker 1: men are significantly more likely to want to remarry, But
Speaker 1: only those men with lower average levels of social support
Speaker 1: from friends want to remarry. So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And that ties back into the whole thing of women
Speaker 1: being the social directors of having all of those social connections,
Speaker 1: so that if her husband dies, she's more okay. She
Speaker 1: still has a lot more people around her than he does.
Speaker 1: And so perhaps men widowers not wanting to be alone
Speaker 1: are more likely to be like, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: get remarried. I don't want to be alone. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think it has to do with probably familiarity as well.
Speaker 1: If you've been married to someone for forty plus years
Speaker 1: and that person dies, like, that's all you know is
Speaker 1: that structure of coming home to or just staying at
Speaker 1: home all day with this other person. That's how you socialize,
Speaker 1: That's that's who you interact with. You're not probably by
Speaker 1: the time you're like eighty five, you might not be
Speaker 1: going out. You might your cruise director, your cruise lineup
Speaker 1: might not be as bumping as it used to be. Um,
Speaker 1: so so to me, it makes it makes so much
Speaker 1: sense of especially looking looking at my my parents who
Speaker 1: are getting older. Yeah, car right, that it's that emotional
Speaker 1: support that tends to even out the numbers. Widowers and
Speaker 1: widows who have similar levels of emotional closeness with their
Speaker 1: friends really don't differ in their desire to get into
Speaker 1: a relationship after their spouse dies. But what about younger widows,
Speaker 1: because we mentioned at the top of the podcast that
Speaker 1: this topic was requested from a younger widow. Um, there
Speaker 1: are I mean, going back to those statistics we were
Speaker 1: talking about two in terms of widows during wartime in
Speaker 1: the United States, there have been now over six hundred
Speaker 1: casualties from the awards in Iraq and Afghanistan, And so
Speaker 1: clearly there are their widows stateside, and they're younger widows
Speaker 1: who are dealing with this as well. And there was
Speaker 1: also a statistic, you said, Caroline, of fifty six thousand
Speaker 1: widows under thirty five in the United States in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine alone. But according to a study that came
Speaker 1: out in the Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, there's still some
Speaker 1: appears to be some conflict, not surprisingly with remarriage. So
Speaker 1: it found that women express more negative feelings about forming
Speaker 1: new romantic relationships. We tend to be a little more
Speaker 1: hesitant no matter our age. But speaking of age, the
Speaker 1: younger we are as women, the likelier we are to remarry. However,
Speaker 1: for men, the greatest predictors of them remarrying if they
Speaker 1: are widowers is a higher monthly income and a level
Speaker 1: of education. So it's kind of interesting to see how
Speaker 1: it's money for men age for women. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: and that is something I think that goes back all
Speaker 1: the way to ancient assyria um and consistent with other studies,
Speaker 1: that same clinical psychiatry study that Kristen decided, looking at
Speaker 1: those first two years of widowhood, that first early window
Speaker 1: found that by twenty five months after the spouse's death,
Speaker 1: of men and of women were either remarried or involved
Speaker 1: in a new romance. And so there's that same there's
Speaker 1: that same divide again. Yeah. And one story that I
Speaker 1: read before we came into the podcast studio. More recently,
Speaker 1: this was reported on in the BBC about how there's
Speaker 1: some proposed legislative changes in the UK that would allow widows,
Speaker 1: like military widows to remarry and continue receiving their deceased
Speaker 1: husband's pensions, because there have been cases where women who
Speaker 1: have been you know, receiving these pensions from the government
Speaker 1: for their husband's deaths have not been able to afford
Speaker 1: to remarry because they would take such a financial hit
Speaker 1: losing that pension. And these women aren't money grubbers, They
Speaker 1: simply want to start this new chapter of their life.
Speaker 1: But because for so long, you know what, widows tend
Speaker 1: to face such a huge financial burden, and at least
Speaker 1: in this case, that the social support has not really
Speaker 1: been there. It's kind of been like, will help you
Speaker 1: as long as you don't remarry, which doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a much of a fair deal. That seems like everything
Speaker 1: we just talked about for the past couple of centuries. Well,
Speaker 1: and on top of the lack of more like federal support,
Speaker 1: perhaps government support for for widows, just think about the
Speaker 1: day to day social support in terms of I'm sure
Speaker 1: for even though there aren't discreete rules in American culture
Speaker 1: to the same extent as you might see in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, developing nations where you have these distinct cleansing
Speaker 1: rituals that you have to go through. I think there's
Speaker 1: still this question of well, how long do I need
Speaker 1: to be in mourning? How long you know, when can
Speaker 1: I start to date? How soon is too soon? And
Speaker 1: what are people going to think if I do want
Speaker 1: to start dating again. I mean, well they think that
Speaker 1: I'm just Are people going to think that I just
Speaker 1: don't care anymore about my diseased spouse? What? I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they're caught in limbo something. It's it's got to
Speaker 1: be rough, because one's going to judge you almost at
Speaker 1: every step of the way. I would think as far
Speaker 1: as if you're dating too early, maybe maybe your husband's
Speaker 1: family thinks you're dating too early, or maybe your friends
Speaker 1: don't think you're dating early enough. Maybe they think you
Speaker 1: need to get back out there and just stop talking
Speaker 1: about it, stop thinking about it, get over it. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's having not been in those shoes.
Speaker 1: It's it's I don't you know, how can you tell
Speaker 1: somebody to get over it? Yeah? Prolific writer Carol Brady Fleet,
Speaker 1: who wrote the book Widows, where Stiletta is a practical
Speaker 1: and emotional guide for the young widow, basically says you
Speaker 1: know you're not a weirdo if you want to to
Speaker 1: date or remarry eventually. And for all of those people
Speaker 1: giving you different types of advice on how you should
Speaker 1: live your life and get over it or not get
Speaker 1: over it, she says to to really kind of take
Speaker 1: them into account, accept the advice and the words of wisdom,
Speaker 1: and kind of find your own appropriate path. She she
Speaker 1: warns you that your friends are gonna move on before
Speaker 1: you do. That doesn't mean you should hold onto the
Speaker 1: people who are jerks and don't support you. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you need to reevaluate some of your friendships after
Speaker 1: you go through this life experience, but you know, she
Speaker 1: she warns readers that you know, it's it's a hard
Speaker 1: road and it's kind of you're kind of on it
Speaker 1: by yourself. Well, and what stood out to me as
Speaker 1: opposed to a lot of the topics that we talk
Speaker 1: about on the podcast. It's usually full of articles and
Speaker 1: advice on you know, best practices like what to do.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of research on it, but it's
Speaker 1: not so much in this case. There's lots of information
Speaker 1: on how widows have it really hard and how there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them, and we just don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, and and it seems like from there
Speaker 1: it's just people shrugging their shoulders and saying, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like there's this massive gap
Speaker 1: of I mean, because you can really never prepare for
Speaker 1: it fully because who really wants to think about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless you are dealing with a spouse who
Speaker 1: has some kind of long term illness, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit more preparation for that. But it's not like when
Speaker 1: you get married, you're like, well, let's start planning ahead
Speaker 1: for when you die, because that will happen. Um. So
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. I just feel like there's
Speaker 1: there needs to be more resources, more conversation, more uh,
Speaker 1: more allowance for widows and widowers to take care of
Speaker 1: themselves in whatever way that is appropriate for their individual situations.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff out there, relatively speaking about
Speaker 1: the financial aspect, because I think it's such a common
Speaker 1: thing for women to run into the issue of like,
Speaker 1: oh no, like my husband was the one who either
Speaker 1: made more money, or he controlled the finances, or he
Speaker 1: wrote the checks, and suddenly I'm left with no safety net.
Speaker 1: So I think there is a lot of stuff among
Speaker 1: like financial people on how to help widows or financial
Speaker 1: people giving advice to women who have lost a spouse. UM,
Speaker 1: but there is sort of a big gap, You're right,
Speaker 1: and in the more like the emotional side of things. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's time to ask our listeners what needs to
Speaker 1: be done, because I'm I'm sure that there are some
Speaker 1: widows and widowers listening, or you know, people who have
Speaker 1: seen their parents go through the loss of a spouse. Um,
Speaker 1: how how do we process this? How do we how
Speaker 1: can we be better for people in our families, in
Speaker 1: our communities, in the world at large who deal with
Speaker 1: the loss of a spouse. Let us know. Mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com is where you can send us
Speaker 1: your letters. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast or send us a Facebook message as well. And
Speaker 1: we have a couple of messages to share with you
Speaker 1: right now. So we've got a couple of letters here
Speaker 1: from our episode on Girls and a d h D.
Speaker 1: This one is from Amanda, subject line a d h
Speaker 1: D thank you to exclamation points. She writes, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your episode on women and Girls and
Speaker 1: a d h D. I received my a d h
Speaker 1: D diagnosis at age six and spent much of my
Speaker 1: elementary school years on riddlin. I stopped medicating in middle school,
Speaker 1: and I'm now an adult and have learned to manage it,
Speaker 1: but I still live with a d h D. Every day,
Speaker 1: I have what I like to call the spacey kind.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult for me to maintain focus. For instance,
Speaker 1: and this happens every single day. A colleague will approach
Speaker 1: me at my cubicle to discuss an issue, but another
Speaker 1: conversation will be happening a few cubes over, and I
Speaker 1: can't help but have one ear in each conversation. It's
Speaker 1: simply impossible for me to listen to only the person
Speaker 1: talking to me, and it makes it hard when they
Speaker 1: walk away and I have no idea what they said. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's great to hear attention as being drawn to women
Speaker 1: in a d h D because it is so often
Speaker 1: identified with hyperactive men and boys. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful. Thank you, Amanda. So I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from Ashley who says, as a female with
Speaker 1: a d h D, it was very hard for me
Speaker 1: to get an actual diagnosis so that I could get help.
Speaker 1: In school, I have several teachers who just write it
Speaker 1: off as I am you mentioned a little bit dreamy
Speaker 1: or an airhead, because I don't show any signs of hyperactivity.
Speaker 1: I do, however, understand the imposter syndrome feeling as I
Speaker 1: make a's and b's in school, but I have to
Speaker 1: work so hard for them that I spent upwards of
Speaker 1: fifteen hours a week studying and doing homework while little
Speaker 1: Susie classmate makes a's and b's without making hardly any effort,
Speaker 1: which makes me kind of angry actually because of the
Speaker 1: competitive and perfectionist traits that I have. Also because of this,
Speaker 1: I have had to take an antidepressant a d h
Speaker 1: D pill mix. This has absolutely been a wonder drug
Speaker 1: for me. And when reading the forums, when I was
Speaker 1: looking at what kind of pills I was going to
Speaker 1: have to take, I discovered there are so many people
Speaker 1: like me who have to take an antidepressant and a
Speaker 1: d h D pill, which for me is well beutron.
Speaker 1: This made me feel a lot better about it. Again,
Speaker 1: thank you for covering this topic on your podcast, as
Speaker 1: I hope many girls and women will feel better that
Speaker 1: they are not alone, as it is a terrible feeling
Speaker 1: that everyone seems to quote have it together and you don't. Oh,
Speaker 1: and she says, ps. I have also been given the
Speaker 1: little key ring with the remote in case you lose
Speaker 1: your keys. I lost the remote too. Don't feel bad.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Ashley, and thanks to everybody who's written
Speaker 1: into its mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where
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