Later-Life Cohabitation in Progress: Navigating Agency through Everyday Care and Gender Dynamics

This paper explores gender dynamics of cohabitation as a new "peer-ageing" strategy in urban China, highlighting the emotional value of companionship in later-life partnerships. It presents cohabitation not only as an innovative eldercare strategy but also as a living arrangement that provides emotional and physical support. Matchmaking is one of the most popular methods for older singles in urban China to find a cohabiting partner. However, other contingent methods exist, such as introductions by friends or reconnecting with old friends or colleagues. Drawing upon rich fieldwork data collected in Beijing in 2023, including interviews and participant observation in elders’ matchmaking corners, this paper reveals that once a cohabitation unit is formed, cohabitors must negotiate their agency within the context of mutual dependence in daily life, particularly in light of the deinstitutionalization of marriage in later life. It begins with introducing the initial stage of “contract” drafting, then focuses on how male and female cohabitors share the responsibility of caring for one another while navigating their agency and gendered responsibilities through everyday family processes. It also examines how intergenerational relationships, involving family members, adult children, and grandchildren, influence these dynamics. This paper explores how the older cohabitors’ agency is negotiated in the daily lives of cohabitors and how intergenerational relationships reveal and impact the agency of older cohabitors within the family, highlighting the processes, challenges, and opportunities for seeking agency within the dynamics of family life. Furthermore, this paper compares other forms of later-life cohabitation strategies, including homosexual, homosocial, and group cohabitation. It compares the informal care received through heterosexual cohabitation with its agentic strategies and alternative possibilities, providing a supplementary extension to the discussion. Overall, men and women navigate agency and the accompanying gendered expectations differently, remaking gender norms through the process of negotiating care in later-life cohabitation.