Extended Abstract
Introduction: Increasing life expectancy has led to an increase in life span and an increase in the number of elderly people in the world. Today, it is more likely to be predicted that a large number of people will reach the age of old age or, according to Giddens and Bardsal (2006), the third age of their lives with health and leisure, and this group is becoming a social and influential group. The increase in the number of elderly people has been accompanied by changes in social values ​​and lifestyles, which in some cases have led to the rejection of the elderly by family members and their turning to the choice of living alone and independently. Many thinkers believe that social exclusion is a dynamic and systematic process and that social institutions of society are involved in this (Devicienti & Poggi, 2011; Raghfar, 2005; Rodgers, Gore, & Figueiredo, 1995). According to the 2016 census, the population of Iran 65 years and older was 6.1 percent, while this ratio in 1986 was equal to 3.1 percent. Simultaneously with the increase in the number of elderly people in the country, empirical studies show that the proportion of elderly women is increasing more sharply compared to older men alone (Alizadeh, Fakhrzadeh, Sharifi, Zanjari, & Ghassemi, 2013; Kosheshi, Khosravi, Alizadeh, Torkashvand , & Aghaei, 2014). The death of a husband and the marriage of children are the main reasons for their loneliness. This loneliness is accompanied by challenges and worries such as inability to meet daily needs, fear, lack of companions, and lack of communication and participation in society. On the other hand, loneliness provides a person with benefits such as physical and mental peace, an opportunity to pursue delayed desires, and the growth of creativity. Understanding the situation of the elderly, not through the perspective of an outside observer, but through the perspective of the elderly themselves, is of great importance for the success of aging programs and social policy for this group. Issues such as the material and spiritual support of the family and the community and how the elderly person experiences communication with family members, especially children, can certainly play an important role in the quality of their experience of loneliness and old age. For this reason, an interpretive phenomenological approach has been chosen to study the lived experience of lonely elderly women in Boukan. Field observations show that this group of women is expanding in this city. Therefore, the main question of the research is what the experience of Boukanian lonely elderly women is, how do they understand and interpret their relationships with relatives and neighbors, and what are their most important concerns about their living conditions?
Method: This research has been done using the interpretive phenomenology (IPA) method of Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2009). The field of study of this research is Boukan city located in the south of West Azerbaijan province. The population of this city according to the latest census of the country is 251409 people and its aging ratio is equal to 5.8 (Center, I. S, 2017). The study population of this study is all women over the age of 60 living in Boukan who live alone and have good physical and mental health for the interview. Ten of these women were selected by purposive sampling method and studied using in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed thematically and MAX QDA 12 qualitative data analysis software was used to facilitate and retrieve the concepts more accurately.
Findings: Demographic findings of the participants show that 9 participants were widowed and one was divorced. Three of them had no children and 7 had children. 7 people were illiterate, 2 people had primary education and one person had secondary education. In terms of living conditions, 6 people lived in a private house, 2 people lived in a rented house and 2 people lived in a house owned by their children. In terms of source of income, 5 of them had a source of income and the other 5 did not have a specific source of income.
Finally, from the total of the interviews, 12 basic concepts were extracted and abstractly categorized into 5 categories, including "feeling of abandonment", "feeling of rejection", "feeling of loneliness", " concerns about decrepitude and overload" and " concerns of dying alone" it was.
Discussion: Given the social context of the research, choosing a lonely and independent life for older women is an unconventional yet widespread practice. The majority of the participants in this study talked about their children's family conflicts over the issue of their upbringing, and finally decided to choose an independent and lonely life in order to maintain the family and avoid chaos in their children's lives. They interpreted the proposal of remarriage by the brides or those around them as their exclusion from the family, and considered remarriage a disgrace to them and a consequence of its defeat. Thus, the choice of living independently and alone was considered the best possible state. According to the research findings, it was found that the neighborhood network has provided a lot of emotional and material support for the elderly, but this network has been accompanied by changes in relationships and is not formed in people's homes as in the past, but more in alleys and public spaces. It is formed using telecommunication means. Another point about neighborhood relations is that older women who lived in rented houses had less financial and emotional support from their neighbors due to instability in the establishment and lack of neighborhood interests. According to the research findings, children's support for their elderly mothers is greatly influenced by the material and cultural conditions that govern their children's lives. The more chaotic the financial situation of the children, the more limited the service opportunities for these women. This finding is consistent with the following findings (Imanzadeh & Alipour, 2017; Kosheshi et al., 2014). Therefore, one of the ways out of this situation is to improve the general standard of living of families, which improves the situation of the elderly in the form of leaks. One of the policies that can be useful in this regard is the allocation of care allowances for the elderly for families. Even according to some researches, the cost of caring for the elderly within the family is less than the cost in the institutional care system (Akbar Azizi Zain, Abolghasem, & Jafar Sadegh, 2015).
 
Keywords: Abandonment, Women, Ageing, Loneliness, Social exclusion
 
Ethical Considerations
Funding
There is no funding for this research.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
The authors of this article have followed all principles of research ethics, including informed consent, good behavior and avoiding harm to participants, confidence building and non-distortion of data. In addition, all the names were coded to protect the privacy of the contributors. We sincerely thank all the participants and individuals in the research for trusting the researcher and providing true information.