Retirement rhythms: Retirees’ management of time and activities in Denmark

Aske Juul Lassen*, Kenneth Hudlebusch Mertz, Lars Holm, Astrid Pernille Jespersen

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

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Abstract

We scrutinize how the everyday lives of well-educated and healthy Danish retirees are structured and experienced and study how they organise their days and weeks. Our aim is to investigate how retirees manage and organise time and the ways these relate to societal rhythms in order to contribute to theories of retirement and social gerontology. We have combined qualitative (individual interviews, focus group interviews, design games and drawings) and quantitative (activity monitoring, sleep quality and health markers) data from 13 participants over the age of 65 years, who are research participants in a RCT. Our interdisciplinary data set allows us to analyse and compare subjective experiences of everyday activities with objective measures of daily activities. The older adults lead busy lives with many diverse activities and use these to structure their everyday lives in ways resembling the rhythms of the labour market with organised and busy mornings and loose afternoons and evenings. We discuss how our findings relate to continuity theory and suggest that Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis allows us to study the retirement rhythms of older adults as part of both biological, social and societal rhythms. This has practical as well as conceptual implications.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftSocieties
Vol/bind10
Udgave nummer3
Sider (fra-til)68
Antal sider16
ISSN2075-4698
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 16 sep. 2020

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