Aging and the Reproduction of Exclusion: A Study of the Experience of the Elderly in Karaj City from Exclusion in Family Relationships

Structural and value changes in the society had strong impacts on internal relations of the family including the relations with the elderly within the family. Considering the ever-increasing growth of the elderly population, paying attention to their quality of life (including exclusion) is one of the basic factors in their social health. This paper aims at describing and interpreting the elderly experiences of exclusion in family relationships. As far as research method is concerned, as a qualitative research the paper has adopted descriptive phenomenology method. Successively, targeted sampling method with maximum variation strategy has been used for selecting 12 elderly men and women of 60 years and older in Karaj city. They are interviewed according to semi-structured in-depth interview technique; and the interviews were analyzed by Colaizzi strategy.As a result, exclusion was understood as four emerging themes including "feeling of being remove", "loneliness and lack of social embededness", "living with age stigma" and "suffering and fear of being burdened". The research results emphasized on the the comprehensive essence of the experience of exclusion of the elderly in family relationships. It shows that aging and reproduction of exclusion are related, and indicates that the exclusion of the elderly is a totality with a set of overlapping elements and dialectical and fluid relationships, in which exclusion in one dimension, causes exclusion in other dimensions as well.