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Abstract
Our understanding of occupational responses across the life course is in its infancy. The occupational responses of women in mid‐life and aging have received little attention. The focus of this paper is on the occupational responses to mid‐and later life of a particularly neglected group of women: those with disabilities. For women in the general population, mid and later life are characterized by a host of intrinsic changes (physical and psychological) along with extrinsic or environmental changes (children leaving home, divorce, socio‐cultural expectations, aging parents). These changes have the potential to impact occupational behaviour. Women with disabilities have spent a lifetime orchestrating themselves and their environments to enable meaningful and satisfying occupational engagement. There is a need to understand how they adapt with age and to identify the resources and barriers to their continued occupational participation through mid and later life. Using focus groups and telephone interviews of 29 women with spinal cord injury (age range 35–70, mean age 50 years), this study reports on four aspects of the women's experiences: personal mid‐life factors and triggers to occupational change, adaptive occupational responses, implications of the occupational adaptations, and critical resources for occupational adaptation in mid‐life. The findings suggest that the women are dealing simultaneously with issues of the disability, mid‐life, and later life. As a result they feel they have little in common with other groups of women. Age‐related changes mean they have to relinquish valued roles and occupations, they feel isolated and misunderstood, and they share profound fears of future losses in personal control and occupational engagement.
