Irmgard Schroll-Decker: A New Start From the Age of 35 Years On

Nowadays women, who are bringing up children and are therefore staying at home for some years want to return to their job or to find some other occupation (either payed or honorary) when their children have left home. This „empty-nest” situation is a very difficult period, because women are destined, to change their patterns of family duties, to get aware of their needs, to find new aims for the next years until they stay at home with their retired husband, to begin new hobbies, even a kind of further education or a course of retraining or a voluntary task. In Germany there is a model, called „a new start from the age of 35 years on”, that takes about 12 weeks and wants to help women to cope with their situation. Four times a week women are getting part-time lectures in practical psychology, organization and management oft time and housework, the situation on the labour market and how to cope in an interview for a job, in understanding the language of the body etc. There are two weeks for taking part in a practical course. The article gives a view about the schedule of the „new start” and describes the results of one course for women in the „empty nest”. They are interviewed twice: at the beginning about their biographical background and their respective problems and two weeks before the course finishes about how they get along with their difficulties and their personal aims. Women can exactly describe their situation, they gain a lot of self-reliance through the course and are then prepared in confronting with obstacles.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 96. Number 2. 117-138. (1996)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Irmgard Schroll-Decker, Universität Regensburg, Lehrstuhl Pädagogik I, D–93040 Regensburg.

 
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