Families and the Elderly along the Shores of the Mediterranean: Old and New Forms of Relatedness

The ageing population is posing increasingly similar challenges to the societies on both shores of the Mediterranean, where families remain the primary welfare agencies. The socio-demographic and ethnographic evidence surveyed in this article reveals that although old forms of relatedness such as co-residence in extended families continue to play a role, they are complemented by coping strategies in which a familistic ideology favors the “extension” of families through new forms of relatedness ranging from close residential proximity between children and parents to live-in homecare where domesticity may catalyze kinning processes between elders and their caregivers.