Overview

The ‘baby boom’ generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy and making families. With this cohort of men and women in Britain now entering mid and later life, they are also said to be revolutionising the experience of ageing. Are the romantic practices of this ‘revolutionary cohort’ breaking with tradition and allowing new ways of understanding and doing ageing and relating to emerge? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in salsa classes and life history interviews, this book documents the meanings of desire and romance, and ‘new’ intimacies, among women in mid and later life. Challenging notions of the revolutionary 'baby boomers', it details how these practices, experiences and identities are intersected and informed by age, class, whiteness, and a pervasive concern to remain respectable.

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9781526168061

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Reviews

'This sensational book analyses gendered ageing and embodiment through older women’s engagement with Salsa dancing. Milton skilfully interweaves generation, memory and new forms of intimacy in reframing normative ageing. This salsa ethnography reveals a world of safe sensuality through which older women navigate new intimacies through touch, flirting and friendship, alongside contempt often visited to ageing sexuality. A must-read, this book disrupts normative ideas of ageing and sexuality.' Sweta Rajan-Rankin, Reader, University of Kent 'Like all the best ethnographies, Sarah Milton’s beautifully written study combines a careful and detailed analysis with a compelling narrative. Attentive to the complexities of class, race, age and gender and their interactions, Milton provides her readers with a nuanced account of the lives of a group of women in middle age negotiating their social and intimate lives and reflecting on the conditions under which they make these negotiations.' Steph Lawler, Reader Emerita, University of York -- .

Author Information

Sarah Milton is Senior Research Fellow in the Sociology of Health and Illness at King’s College London. -- .

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