How Older Men With Multimorbidity Relate to Successful Aging

Objectives: Research on successful aging gives limited attention to the role of suffering from multiple chronic conditions (multimorbidity) in combination with notions of masculinity. We address this by bringing into focus how older men with multimorbidity within the Nordic Model welfare system relate to successful aging. The objective is to bring new insights into key elements of how masculinity, multimorbidity and cultural context create alternative individual versions of successful aging.

Method: The article draws on a long-term fieldwork (18 months) among older men (n=7), who were part of a larger study that also included older women. The fieldwork consisted of 28 interviews with participating men. These data were supplemented by 124 hr of informal chats and observations as well as 32 hr of clinical encounters with health services. Data analysis followed a thematic approach.

Results: Analysis revealed that older men with multimorbidity understood core components of successful aging, yet did not closely follow them, and instead came up with alternative, gendered interpretations. This process involved three themes centered around independency of: (a) unaided successful aging, (b) vicarious successful aging, and (c) masculine successful aging.

Discussion: Our study contributes to research on perceptions of successful aging with insights to the role of cultural context, gender and multimorbidity. Living with multimorbidity challenges the ability of the men to positively frame themselves as successfully aging older adults; however, they navigate this dilemma by constructing their own experiences in their own terms of independence.