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ADULT CHILDREN’S PERCEPTIONS OF UNWANTED ADVICE FROM AGING PARENTS
Abstract
Parents and adult children often provide advice to one another in everyday interactions. However, few studies have examined how received advice is perceived (i.e., whether the advice was solicited or not). Unwanted advice can be a source of tensions in parent-child interactions, and may represent longstanding problems in dyadic relationships. Using data from Family Exchange Study (Wave 2), the current study examined how adult children’s perceptions of unwanted advice from parents are associated with life situations and relationship characteristics. Adult children (N = 381, aged 45–65) reported how often they perceived unwanted advice from each parent (N = 491). Multilevel models revealed that adult children were more likely to perceive unwanted advice from aging parents when they suffer major life problems (e.g., divorce, major health problem, addiction). This association was also moderated by adult children’s relationship quality with older parents. Thus, adult children suffering problems were less likely to perceive advice from parents as unwanted when they had better relationships with parents. Our findings will contribute to the literature by considering how received support is perceived in parent-child relationships, which can be critical in understanding the implications of intergenerational support for well-being.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between grandparents’ use of relational maintenance behaviors (RMB) and their young adult grandchildren’s willingness to serve as future caregivers for their grandparents. Undergraduate students (N = 209) completed a questionnaire in which they reported on a specific grandparent’s use of RMB and how willing they were to serve as future caregivers for that specific grandparent. Results of a multiple regression analysis provided partial support for the hypothesized positive relationships between grandparents’ use of RMB and grandchildren’s willingness to serve as future caregivers for their grandparents.
This study focused on the negative reactions of older women with osteoarthritis to the receipt of instrumental support (i.e., physical assistance) from their husbands and the effects of such negative reactions on the women's psychological well-being and self-care. Applying a person-environment fit model, the authors predicted that women's negative reactions to spousal support would be determined by the fit between this support and the personal centrality (importance) of being functionally independent. Consistent with this prediction, women who received high levels of support from the husband and for whom being functionally independent was not highly central reacted less negatively to this support. More negative reactions to spousal support were related to greater concurrent depressive symptomatology and fewer self-care behaviors. In addition, negative reactions were predictive of the women's increased depressive symptomatology and decreased life satisfaction. Findings illustrate a useful theoretical approach to the examination of support from family caregivers.
Popular media describe adverse effects of helicopter parents who provide intense support to grown children, but few studies have examined implications of such intense support. Grown children (N = 592, M age = 23.82 years, 53% female, 35% members of racial/ethnic minority groups) and their parents (N = 399, M age = 50.67 years, 52% female; 34% members of racial/ethnic minority groups) reported on the support they exchanged with one another. Intense support involved parents' providing several types of support (e.g., financial, advice, emotional) many times a week. Parents and grown children who engaged in such frequent support viewed it as nonnormative (i.e., too much support), but grown children who received intense support reported better psychological adjustment and life satisfaction than grown children who did not receive intense support. Parents who perceived their grown children as needing too much support reported poorer life satisfaction. The discussion focuses on generational differences in the implications of intense parental involvement during young adulthood.
This chapter focuses on social support effectiveness, which emphasizes the extent to which support attempts meet the needs of recipients in terms of their quantity and quality. They provide a framework for understanding what contributes to support effectiveness and report evidence for their model in the context of partner support in pregnancy.
Previous research has found that financial transfers from parents to young adult children decline as children age and that age is one of the strongest predictors of support. Using data collected from young adults (ages 18 to 34) and their parents (ages 40 to 60; N=536 parent-child dyads), we explore the possibility that the relationship between age and financial support is mediated by offspring needs, acquisition of adult roles, or geographical and emotional closeness. We find that age-related declines in offspring's needs help to explain why financial support falls with age. However, offspring age remains a robust predictor of financial support after controlling for a wide range of factors, suggesting that age norms condition support from parents to offspring.
Basic psychological research on couples and families can be valuable in informing social policies and interventions. This article provides an overview of recent research addressing factors that contribute to satisfying and enduring adult partnerships. Surprisingly, evidence linking communication between intimate partners to the outcome of their relationships has been weak and counterintuitive. This has prompted several new lines of research on how intimate relationships change. Recent findings reviewed here highlight the value of (a) expanding conceptions of intimate communication by considering how social support and positive emotional expressions moderate the effects of problem-solving skills on changes in relationship quality, (b) examining partners' personal strengths and vulnerabilities as antecedents of aggression and hostile interaction, and (c) recognising the central role of chronic circumstances and acute stress in governing fluctuations in partners' judgements of relationship quality. The implications of these findings for strengthening intimate partnerships are outlined.
Objectives:
The effectiveness of advance care planning (ACP) may depend on family members' understanding of patient preferences. However, we know of no studies that explore the association between family relationship dynamics and ACP. ACP includes a living will, durable power of attorney for health care (DPAHC) appointment, and discussions. We evaluated the effects of three aspects of family relations--general family functioning, support and criticism from spouse, and support and criticism from children--on both overall ACP and specific DPAHC designations.
Method:
Using multinomial logistic regression models and data from a sample of 293 older adults, we estimated the effects of family relationship quality on the likelihood of completing ACP and appointing a spouse or adult child as DPAHC. Analyses controlled for demographic and health characteristics.
Results:
Better overall family functioning increased the odds of ACP. Higher levels of spousal support increased the odds of holding informal discussions, whereas spousal criticism reduced the odds of naming one's spouse as DPAHC. Both criticism and emotional support from children increased the odds that a child was named as DPAHC.
Discussion:
Family dynamics affect ACP in complex ways and should be considered when patients and their families discuss end-of-life care and make DPAHC designations.
Cancer diagnosis and treatments can profoundly and, sometimes, irrevocably alter people's lives. Cancer treatments are invasive, painful, and often create long-term negative side effects. Yet despite the dread, discomfort and dysfunction associated with this disease, some individuals are able to maintain or quickly reestablish their precancer emotional equilibrium. Understanding this adjustment process is a primary goal of psychologists and health care providers who conduct psychosocial interventions with cancer patients. By examining natural processes and predictors of adjustment in cancer patients, we can find clues to designing effective interventions. This chapter applies a social-cognitive processing theory of adjustment to stressors to explain how the social context of recovery influences emotional adjustment to cancer. The theory also is applied to understanding who benefits from psychosocial interventions for cancer and why. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors investigate the structure of intergenerational cohesion by examining social-psychological, structural, and transactional as-pects of adult child–parent relations. The authors use latent class analysis to develop a typology based on three underlying dimensions of intergenerational solidarity: affinity, opportunity structure, and function. The same five types are found for relations with both mothers and fathers: tight-knit, sociable, intimate but distant, oblig-atory, and detached. Relationship types are also differentiated by sociodemographic characteristics; relations with fathers and di-vorced parents tended to have the weakest cohesion. The authors conclude that adult intergenerational relationships in American families are structurally diverse but generally possess the potential to serve their members' needs.
Social support has been reliably related to physical health outcomes. However, the conceptual basis of such links needs greater development. In this article, I argue for a life-span perspective on social support and health that takes into account distinct antecedent processes and mechanisms that are related to measures of support over time. Such a view highlights the need to distinguish measures of perceived and received support and its links to more specific diseases (e.g., chronic, acute) and stages of disease development (e.g., incidence). I discuss both the novel implications of these theoretical arguments for research on social support and physical health, as well as the potential intervention approaches that are apparent from this perspective.
© 2009 Association for Psychological Science.
Emotional support from intimate partners has been shown to have both costs and benefits for daily anxious and depressed moods (N. Bolger, A. Zuckerman, & R. C. Kessler, 2000). We examine whether similar costs and benefits are found for practical support, and when fatigue, vigor, and anger are outcomes. Results are based on daily diary reports from 68 recent law school graduates and their intimate partners during the month before the New York State bar examination. Partners’ reports of practical support provision to the examinee were beneficial in that they were associated with decreased examinee fatigue and increased examinee vigor. In contrast, examinees’ recognition of emotional support receipt was costly in that it was associated with increases in anger, as well as anxious and depressed mood. Results highlight the distinction between emotional and practical support and are consistent with findings that suggest that invisible (provided but not recognized) support leads to the best outcomes.
Frank Furstenberg examines how the newly extended timetable for entering adulthood is affecting, and being affected by, the institution of the Western, particularly the American, family. He reviews a growing body of research on the family life of young adults and their parents and draws out important policy implications of the new schedule for the passage to adulthood.
Today, says Furstenberg, home-leaving, marriage, and the onset of childbearing take place much later in the life span than they did during the period after World War II. After the disappearance of America's well-paying unskilled and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs during the 1960s, youth from all economic strata began remaining in school longer and marrying and starting their own families later. Increasing numbers of lower-income women did not marry at all but chose, instead, non-marital parenthood—often turning to their natal families for economic and social support, rather than to their partners. As the period of young adults' dependence on their families grew longer, the financial and emotional burden of parenthood grew heavier. Today, regardless of their income level, U.S. parents provide roughly the same proportion of their earnings to support their young adult children.
Unlike many nations in Europe, the United States, with its relatively underdeveloped welfare system, does not invest heavily in education, health care, and job benefits for young adults. It relies, instead, on families' investments in their own adult children. But as the transition to adulthood becomes more protracted, the increasing family burden may prove costly to society as a whole. Young adults themselves may begin to regard childbearing as more onerous and less rewarding. The need to provide greater support for children for longer periods may discourage couples from having additional children or having children at all. Such decisions could lead to lower total fertility, ultimately reduce the workforce, and further aggravate the problem of providing both for increasing numbers of the elderly and for the young. U.S. policy makers must realize the importance of reinforcing the family nest and helping reduce the large and competing demands that are being placed on today's parents.
This qualitative study examines the role of parents with regard to their adult children, by exploring parents' experiences, meanings, and the underlying psychological processes of their parental role. In-depth interviews with healthy Israeli parents (N = 23) aged 56 to 69 explored their perceptions about their parental role. Narrative analysis techniques focused on the content and on the form of the narratives were applied. Five important internal dialectic dimensions emerged: emotional connection and separation; the child as narcissistic extension of the parent and the parent's desire to let the child individuate; growing importance of familial connections and the perceived generation gap; parents' balancing personal needs and the children's needs, and finally, maintaining a hierarchical stance and an equal stance. The results are integrated into the developing theory of intergenerational ambivalence, suggesting a dialectical configuration for the role of parent to adult children.
This research assessed how parents' transfers of sentiment, time, and financial assets to their adolescent/young adult children affect the children's propensity in middle age to provide social support to their aging parents. We tested whether the mechanism of long-term intergenerational exchange is better modeled as a return on investment, an insurance policy triggered by the longevity or physical frailty of parents, or the result of altruistic (or other nonreciprocal) motivations on the part of adult children.
Models were examined with 6 waves of data from the University of Southern California Longitudinal Study of Generations. The sample consisted of 501 children who participated in the 1971 survey and who had at least 1 parent surviving in 1985. Growth curve modeling was applied to predict average levels and rates of change in social support provided to mothers and fathers between 1985 and 1997 as a function of early parental transfers of affection, association, and tangible resources to their children.
Children who spent more time in shared activities with their mothers and fathers in 1971 provided more support to them on average. Receiving greater financial support from parents in 1971 raised the marginal rate at which support provided by children increased over time. Maternal health operated synergistically with early affection to produce greater levels of support. Both levels and rates of increase in support from children were positive, even for children who received no early transfers from their parents.
The results offer some support for investment, insurance, and altruistic models of intergenerational exchange. Sharing time in activities provides a direct return to the parent that is characteristic of an investment strategy, whereas financial transfers provide a time-contingent return that is characteristic of an insurance mechanism. That affection triggers greater support to more functionally impaired mothers suggests that emotionally investing in children as a health insurance mechanism may be based on the greater moral equity accorded to mothers. The motivation of adult children to provide social support to their older parents is partially rooted in earlier family experiences and guided by an implicit social contract that ensures long-term reciprocity.
Advantages and disadvantages of Web and lab research are reviewed. Via the World Wide Web, one can efficiently recruit large, heterogeneous samples quickly, recruit specialized samples (people with rare characteristics), and standardize procedures, making studies easy to replicate. Alternative programming techniques (procedures for data collection) are compared, including client-side as opposed to server-side programming. Web studies have methodological problems; for example, higher rates of drop out and of repeated participation. Web studies must be thoroughly analyzed and tested before launching on-line. Many studies compared data obtained in Web versus lab. These two methods usually reach the same conclusions; however, there are significant differences between college students tested in the lab and people recruited and tested via the Internet. Reasons that Web researchers are enthusiastic about the potential of the new methods are discussed.
The rapid growth of the Internet provides a wealth of new research opportunities for psychologists. Internet data collection methods, with a focus on self-report questionnaires from self-selected samples, are evaluated and compared with traditional paper-and-pencil methods. Six preconceptions about Internet samples and data quality are evaluated by comparing a new large Internet sample (N = 361,703) with a set of 510 published traditional samples. Internet samples are shown to be relatively diverse with respect to gender, socioeconomic status, geographic region, and age. Moreover, Internet findings generalize across presentation formats, are not adversely affected by nonserious or repeat responders, and are consistent with findings from traditional methods. It is concluded that Internet methods can contribute to many areas of psychology.
Receiving support in committed relationships has frequently been associated with negative psychological outcomes in the recipient, such as increased distress. The authors hypothesized that these negative effects could be offset by support recipients' reciprocation of support, that is, by creating a sense of supportive equity. To investigate this hypothesis, the authors obtained daily reports of mood and of received and given emotional support from both partners in 85 couples throughout a 4-week period. Reciprocity in support transactions was associated with higher levels of positive mood and lower levels of negative mood. In line with previous research, receiving support without reciprocation was associated with increases in negative mood. Giving support, regardless of receipt, was associated with a decrease in negative mood.
In this article we explore the ways in which mothers provide support differentially to their adult children and the factors that explain such differentiation.
We collected data for the present analysis during face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 556 mothers ranging in age from 65 to 78 residing in the greater Boston area.
We found substantial within-family variation in mother-to-child support. Multivariate analyses revealed a set of factors that explained within-family differences: Mothers were more likely to provide support to children who were daughters, unmarried, lived nearby, had health problems, and had provided the mothers with support.
These findings indicate that within-family differences in support to children continue across the life course. Such variations within the family underscore the importance of using designs that provide information on relationships between parents and each of their children, rather than focusing on single parent-child dyads.
A developmental-contextual model of couples coping with chronic illness is presented that views chronic illness as affecting the adjustment of both the patient and the spouse such that coping strategies enacted by the patient are examined in relation to those enacted by the spouse, and vice versa. The developmental model emphasizes that dyadic coping may be different at various phases of the life span, changing temporally at different stages of dealing with the illness as well as unfolding daily as spouses interact around dyadic stressors. In addition, couples engaged in dyadic coping are affected by broad sociocultural factors (culture and gender) as well as more proximal contextual factors (quality of the marital relationship and the specific demands of the chronic illness). The model provides a framework for understanding how couples coping with chronic illness may together appraise and cope with illness during adulthood and for determining when spousal involvement is beneficial or harmful to both patient and spousal adjustment. The developmental-contextual model to dyadic appraisal and coping has numerous research implications for the field, and the authors conclude with specific recommendations for future research.
Although social support is thought to boost feelings of closeness in dyadic relationships, recent findings have suggested that support receipt can increase distress in recipients. The authors investigated these apparently contrary findings in a large daily diary study of couples over 31 days leading up to a major stressor. Results confirm that daily support receipt was associated with greater feelings of closeness and greater negative mood. These average effects, however, masked substantial heterogeneity. In particular, those recipients showing greater benefits on closeness tended to show lesser cost on negative mood, and vice versa. Self-esteem was examined as a possible moderator of support effects, but its role was evident in only a subset of recipients. These results imply that models of dyadic support processes must accord a central role to between-individual heterogeneity.
The emotion of gratitude is thought to have social effects, but empirical studies of such effects have focused largely on the repaying of kind gestures. The current research focused on the relational antecedents of gratitude and its implications for relationship formation. The authors examined the role of naturally occurring gratitude in college sororities during a week of gift-giving from older members to new members. New members recorded reactions to benefits received during the week. At the end of the week and 1 month later, the new and old members rated their interactions and their relationships. Perceptions of benefactor responsiveness predicted gratitude for benefits, and gratitude during the week predicted future relationship outcomes. Gratitude may function to promote relationship formation and maintenance.
Relationships between young adults and their parents have received considerable media attention in recent years. However, research on relationships between young adult children and their parents during the transition to adulthood are scant. Using data from the Family Exchanges Study and national data sets, we document parental involvement in the lives of young adult children (aged 18–24). Parents and offspring are highly involved in one another’s lives as evident by their phone conversations (more than once a week) and frequent parental financial, practical, and emotional support. This involvement represents an increase from parental involvement 30 years ago. Students are more likely to talk with parents by phone, and nonstudents are more likely to see parents in person. Students received more support from their parents than nonstudents, and that support contributed to their life satisfaction. Parents also use student status as an indicator of the offspring’s potential future success and experience more positive relationships with grown children they view as on target for achieving adult milestones.
A theoretical framework is developed to explain how parent/adult child relationships affect adult children's and parents' psychological distress levels. Data from a 1986 national survey (n = 3,618) are analyzed to test hypotheses derived from this framework. Results show that (a) the quality of intergenerational relationships appears to be influenced by the structural circumstances of parents and adult children—especially as defined by divorced status, gender, and age; (b) the negative aspects of intergenerational relationships are more strongly associated with psychological distress of parents and adult children than are the positive aspects; and (c) the estimated effects of intergenerational relationships on distress levels sometimes depend on the structural circumstances of parents and children.
A dominant theme in the literature on relationships between elderly parents and adult children is the role of parents as sources of stress and burden for their offspring. In contrast, the present article examines the effects of adult children's problems on elderly parents' psychological distress. Using data from a recent national survey of the elderly in Canada, the study demonstrates that parents whose adult children experienced serious problems reported greater depression. Further, the effect appears to be direct, rather than mediated by such factors as parent-child conflict, lack of provision of support by the child, or the child's dependency.
SAS PROC MIXED is a flexible program suitable for fitting multilevel models, hierarchical linear models, and individual growth models. Its position as an integrated program within the SAS statistical package makes it an ideal choice for empirical researchers and applied statisticians seeking to do data reduction, management, and analysis within a single statistical package. Because the program was developed from the perspective of a "mixed" statistical model with both random and fixed effects, its syntax and programming logic may appear unfamiliar to users in education and the social and behavioral sciences who tend to express these models as multilevel or hierarchical models. The purpose of this paper is to help users familiar with fitting multilevel models using other statistical packages (e.g., HLM, MLwiN, MIXREG) add SAS PROC MIXED to their array of analytic options. The paper is written as a step-by-step tutorial that shows how to fit the two most common multilevel models: (a) school effects models, designed for data on individuals nested within naturally occurring hierarchies (e.g., students within classes); and (b) individual growth models, designed for exploring longitudinal data (on individuals) over time. The conclusion discusses how these ideas can be extended straighforwardly to the case of three level models. An appendix presents general strategies for working with multilevel data in SAS and for creating data sets at several levels.
This article extends previous research by examining the relationship between prospective accounts of intergenerational affection, normative expectations, and conflict on current patterns of supportive exchanges between parents and adult children. Research questions are addressed using data from 680 parent-child dyads participating in the 1988 and 1991 waves of the University of Southern California Longitudinal Study of Generations. Findings indicate that a history of affection in a parent-adult child relationship is associated with equitable and reciprocal exchanges of support and a greater likelihood of receiving and giving various forms of help and support. A strong sense of obligation to family at an earlier time period was related to exchange relationships with fathers but not with mothers: Duty-driven exchanges were less equitable, with adult children giving much more than they received. Earlier conflict in parent-adult child relationships did not interfere with contemporary exchanges of help and support.
Using the 1993 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the authors examine help given to older parents in typical American families. Daughters and sons not in couples were more likely to help than those in couples, and gave substantially more hours. In couples, daughters were less likely to help than sons, but they helped for considerably more hours. Black daughters helped at least as commonly as White daughters, and did so for substantially more hours than either White daughters or sons of either race. Results suggest that Black sons may help less commonly than White sons. Black sons who help, however, do so for at least as many hours as White sons. Findings suggest that changes in the Black American family have not produced the notable intergenerational relations breakdown anticipated by some researchers. Results also illuminate the important role of sons in family help and suggest that changing marriage patterns may not reduce help to older parents.
In this study, we integrate insights from the life-course and stress-process perspectives to argue that adult children's negative treatment of parents, as well as negative events that children experience, detrimentally affect elderly parents' mental health over time. We argue that these strains may affect mothers more than fathers, and blacks more than whites, because of the greater importance of the parental role to these groups in late life. Using data from more than 600 older African American and white parents over a four-year period, we show that negative treatment by adult children is positively related to changes in depression and anger, but effects on depression are limited to black parents and effects on anger are limited to mothers. Adult children becoming ill or unemployed positively relates to changes in distress over time, but only for black parents. Surprisingly, marital dissolution by adult children is related to decreases in anger for black parents. This research indicates that the social-psychological implications of the parental role do not end when children are adults; however, the influence on mental health in old age may vary by social status.
It is widely recognized that social relationships and affiliation have powerful effects on physical and mental health. When investigators write about the impact of social relationships on health, many terms are used loosely and interchangeably including social networks, social ties and social integration. The aim of this paper is to clarify these terms using a single framework. We discuss: (1) theoretical orientations from diverse disciplines which we believe are fundamental to advancing research in this area; (2) a set of definitions accompanied by major assessment tools; and (3) an overarching model which integrates multilevel phenomena.Theoretical orientations that we draw upon were developed by Durkheim whose work on social integration and suicide are seminal and John Bowlby, a psychiatrist who developed attachment theory in relation to child development and contemporary social network theorists.We present a conceptual model of how social networks impact health. We envision a cascading causal process beginning with the macro-social to psychobiological processes that are dynamically linked together to form the processes by which social integration effects health. We start by embedding social networks in a larger social and cultural context in which upstream forces are seen to condition network structure. Serious consideration of the larger macro-social context in which networks form and are sustained has been lacking in all but a small number of studies and is almost completely absent in studies of social network influences on health.We then move downstream to understand the influences network structure and function have on social and interpersonal behavior. We argue that networks operate at the behavioral level through four primary pathways: (1) provision of social support; (2) social influence; (3) on social engagement and attachment; and (4) access to resources and material goods.
Objectives:
Using a within-family perspective, we examine how mothers allocate support among their adult children, and we test alternative theories about support exchange.
Method:
We use a large-scale multiactor survey from the Netherlands in which mothers and children were interviewed independently. We analyze sibling pairs (aged 36 on average) who were connected to 604 mothers (aged 63 on average). Fixed effects regression models and instrumental variable models are used to examine effects of child characteristics on received support.
Results:
Mothers give more support to the child who lives without a partner, has children, has health problems, and is lower educated than to the child who does not have these characteristics. Children who more strongly support filial norms also receive more support. Support given to one child has a small positive effect on the support that the mother gives to the other child.
Discussion:
The analyses provide new and supportive evidence for the notion that parents are altruistically motivated. At the same time, older parents are motivated by exchange because they invest more in children who are more likely to reciprocate. Some evidence exists for the norm of equality.
As a complement to the other chapters in this volume that examine the role of young adults' families of origin in the transition to adulthood, this study examines direct material support provided by parents in the form of money, time, and shared housing. The primary objective of this chapter is to scientifically estimate the amount of assistance that children receive during young adulthood. Specifically, this study will address four questions: (1) How much familial assistance do youth receive during the transition to adulthood? (2) How much more assistance do children in high-income families receive during these formative years? (3) What is the pattern of familial support during the transition years, and do life-course events such as getting married, buying a home, or attending school explain the observed age pattern? (4) Has familial support increased in the past several decades? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The ‘sandwich generation’ has been conceptualised as those mid-life adults who simultaneously raise dependent children and care for frail elderly parents. Such a combination of dependants is in fact very unusual, and the more common situation is when adults in late mid-life or early old age have one or more surviving parents and adult but still partly dependent children. It can be hypothesised that for parents in this pivotal position, the demands from adult children and from elderly parents compete, with the result that those who provide help to one are less likely to provide help to the other. An alternative hypothesis, however, is that family solidarity has an important influence but is not universal, so that some pivotal-generation parents engage in intergenerational exchange in both directions, and there is a positive association between helping parents and helping children. To investigate this question, the paper presents an analysis of data from two broadly comparable national surveys, in Great Britain and the United States, on the care provided by women aged 55–69 years to their descendent and ascendent relatives. The results show that around one-third of the women reported providing help to members of both generations, and that around one-fifth provided support to neither. They broadly support the solidarity hypothesis, but provide some evidence that having three or more children is associated with a reduced likelihood of providing help to a parent.
Transfers of assistance from older to younger family members are an important, though often ignored, component of intergenerational exchanges. The ability to help younger family members, either financially or practically, may be influenced by the health and socio-economic status of older parents, but very little is known about these patterns. This article examines the effects of socio-economic and health status on the help that late mid-life parents in Britain and the United States give their children with money, domestic tasks, and grandchild care. Results for the different types of family support yield three main findings. First, there are relatively few differences between Britain and the USA in the factors affecting the provision of support. Secondly, socio-economic factors appear to be more important among married respondents while health is more important among the unmarried. Thirdly, children's co-residence has greater effects on the provision of domestic task help in Britain than in the United States.
Interest in applying the concept of ambivalence to the study of intergenerational relations has increased in recent years. However, few empirical studies of this issue have been conducted. Using data from a study of 189 mothers aged 60 and over, the authors examine sources of ambivalence regarding the quality of their relationships with adult children. They hypothesized that adult children's failure to achieve and maintain normative adult statuses and financial independence and mother's developmental stage will predict ambivalent assessments of the relationship. Regression analyses supported these hypotheses and also revealed that the variables predicting ambivalence differed from those that predicted closeness and interpersonal stress.
We challenge the common idea that solidarity has positive, whereas conflict has negative implications, by investigating intergenerational ambivalence – defined as the co-occurrence of solidarity and conflict – and relationship quality. We use representative data on non-coresident adult children and parents with high levels of contact (weekly or more; N = 2,694 dyads). Results show that over half of high contact parent–child ties can be characterized as ambivalent and of high-quality. The likelihood of negative instead of positive ambivalent ties is greater if adult children have few exit options because they are socially isolated or have a small number of siblings. Ties between fathers and sons, and those between caring daughters and aging parents also have a high probability of belonging to the negative ambivalent type.
Middle-aged parents' well-being may be tied to successes and failures of grown children. Moreover, most parents have more than one child, but studies have not considered how different children's successes and failures may be associated with parental well-being.
Middle-aged adults (aged 40-60; N = 633) reported on each of their grown children (n = 1,384) and rated their own well-being. Participants indicated problems each child had experienced in the past two years, rated their children's successes, as well as positive and negative relationship qualities.
Analyses compared an exposure model (i.e., having one grown child with a problem or deemed successful) and a cumulative model (i.e., total problems or successes in the family). Consistent with the exposure and cumulative models, having one child with problems predicted poorer parental well-being and the more problems in the family, the worse parental well-being. Having one successful child did not predict well-being, but multiple grown children with higher total success in the family predicted enhanced parental well-being. Relationship qualities partially explained associations between children's successes and parental well-being.
Discussion focuses on benefits and detriments parents derive from how grown progeny turn out and particularly the implications of grown children's problems.
Middle-aged adults engage in support exchanges with generations above and below. This study investigated (a) how support to one generation is associated with support to the other and (b) factors accounting for whether parents or offspring receive more support in a family.
Middle-aged adults aged 40-60 years (N = 633) completed telephone interviews regarding their relationships and support exchanges with each grown child and living parent.
Multilevel models revealed that most participants provided more support to the average grown child than to the average parent. Yet, a proportion of the sample reversed this pattern, providing more support to parents. Mediation models revealed that middle-aged adults provided greater support to offspring because they viewed offspring as more important than parents and offspring had greater everyday needs (e.g., being a student, not married). Parental disability accounted for greater support to parents.
Discussion integrates solidarity theory, developmental stake, and contingency theory. Most middle-aged adults provide more to grown offspring than to parents, consistent with their greater stake in their progeny. Middle-aged adults also respond to crises (i.e., parental disability) and everyday needs (i.e., offspring student status) in providing intergenerational support, in accordance with contingency theory.
Parents may provide many types of support to their grown children. Parents aged 40 to 60 (N = 633) reported the support they exchange with each child over age 18 (n = 1,384). Mothers and fathers differentiated among children within families, but provided emotional, financial, and practical help on average every few weeks to each child. Offspring received most assistance when they: (a) had greater needs (due to problems or younger age) or (b) were perceived as more successful. Parents received more from high achieving offspring. Findings support contingency theory; parents give more material and financial support to children in need. Motivation to enhance the self or to assure support later in life may explain support to high achieving offspring.
Ambivalence theory suggests that parents experience ambivalence due to conflicting desires to help children in need and to
launch children into adulthood. This study examined parents’ reports of their adult children’s problems and successes and
implications for ambivalence. Participants aged 40–60 years (302 men and 331 women from different families) reported on up
to 3 of their adult children (N = 1,251). Men and women differentiated among children in ratings of problems, successes, and ambivalence. Men and not women
reported greater ambivalence regarding children with more physical–emotional problems and less career success. Men and women
reported greater ambivalence regarding children with less relationship success. Consistent with ambivalence theory, individuals
feel more ambivalent regarding problematic and less successful children but men’s ambivalence appears to be more sensitive
to their children’s problems and successes than women's ambivalence.
In den letzten Jahren ist ein wachsendes Interesse an den familiären Generationenbeziehungen festzustellen. Dabei zeigt sich, daß diese Beziehungen entweder unter dem Gesichtspunkt von Solidarität oder demjenigen von Konflikt analysiert werden. Demgegenüber schlagen wir vor, dies unter der allgemeinen Hypothese von "Ambivalenz" zu tun, und wir erläutern dies anhand einer Diskussion exemplarischer Studien. (Das Papier ist eine Überarbeitung und Weiterführung der im Arbeitspapier Nr. 22 dargestellten Überlegungen.) Social scientific interest in intergenerational relationships between adults has increased in recent years. However, there is a lack of theoretical work that allows for the integration of research findings. Further, there has been a tendency to interpret intergenerational relationships within limited frameworks that emphasize either intergenerational solidarity or conflict. In contrast, we propose that ambivalence is a more useful organizing concept for understanding intergenerational relations. In this article, we argue that relationships between the generations in families are structured such that they generate various types of ambivalence. We then present three propositions regarding ambivalence in intergenerational relations, with illustrations from several exemplary studies. Implications of this conceptualization of intergenerational relations are discussed.
Although the perception of available support is associated with positive outcomes, the receipt of actual support from close others is often associated with negative outcomes. In fact, support that is "invisible" (not perceived by the support recipient) is associated with better outcomes than "visible" support. To investigate this paradox, we proposed that received support (both visible and invisible) would be beneficial when it was responsive to the recipient's needs. Sixty-seven cohabiting couples participated in a daily-experience study in which they reported on the support they provided and received each day. Results indicated that both visible and invisible support were beneficial (i.e., associated with less sadness and anxiety and with greater relationship quality) only when the support was responsive. These findings suggest that the nature of support is an important determinant of when received support will be beneficial.
A systematic review of the literature on social support shows that a stress-buffering effect is most consistently found when support is measured as a perception that one's network is ready to provide aid and assistance if needed. Two interpretations of this association are considered here: that the perception of support availability indirectly indicates actual network responses to stressful events that more directly promote healthy adjustment; and that the perception of support availability influences adjustment directly by modifying appraisals of the situation. No attempt has been made in the literature to discriminate between these two interpretations. One reason is that a strategy for critically evaluating the competing hypotheses has not yet been developed. A main contribution of our paper is that it exposits such a strategy. A rigorous evaluation of the competing interpretations requires a prospective research design and a data collection effort explicitly aimed at obtaining information about both actual support transactions and perceptions of support availability in hypothetical situations. The authors know of no data set that meets these dual requirements. As an illustration of the strategy suggested here, however, they analyze cross-sectional data from a large-scale national survey. Although limited, these data provide provisional information about the competing interpretations. Analysis shows that perceived support is, in general, more important than received support in predicting adjustment to stressful life events. They also present evidence that the influence of received support may be mediated by perceived support. These results demonstrate the power of the strategy and argue for a direct evaluation with more appropriate data.
Our purpose is to examine how culture-specific conceptions of mutual assistance in four ethnic groups reflect the nature of social exchange and its role in creating continuity.
We conducted five in-depth interviews over a 5-year period with 270 respondents aged 50 and up (59 African Americans, 85 Latinos, 78 Filipino Americans, and 48 Cambodian Americans). We asked both open-ended and semistructured questions to determine how respondents viewed their role in mutual assistance in the family.
Mutual assistance was a critical element in intergenerational relations in all four groups, as it represented continuity within the family and was a part of a broader cultural ethos of family relationships. There were differences between groups in overall approach to mutual assistance, the factors to which they assigned the greatest importance, and the degree of dissatisfaction expressed over family relationships.
Social exchange can be viewed not only as a means by which those who are old maintain power but as a major vehicle for perpetuating continuity across the generations. When social exchange breaks down, elders suffer from loss of power as expressed through role loss. Elders must have a negotiable commodity to exchange as well as the flexibility to adjust to changes in the extended family. Maintaining continuity of the family in the face of disruptive threats poses a particular challenge for elders.
In this paper data from a nationally representative British longitudinal study are used to analyse exchanges of support between Third Age parents (aged 55-75) and their adult children. Results show that between two thirds and three quarters of parents in this age group were involved in some sort of exchange relationship with at least one of their children. Generally, more Third Age parents were providers than recipients of help, but there was a strong reciprocal element to intergenerational exchange with, for example, married parents who provided support to at least one child being twice as likely as those who did not to receive support from a child, after allowance for a range of relevant parental and child characteristics. Parental characteristics associated with higher probability of providing help included higher income, home ownership and being married or widowed rather than divorced. Higher income and home ownership were, however, negatively associated with odds of receiving help from a child, again after adjustment for other co-variates, suggesting socio-economic differences in the balance of support exchanges. Children seem responsive to parental needs in that receipt of help from a child was positively associated with older parental age and with parental disability. The paper shows that in Britain, as in the USA, the balance of intergenerational exchanges involving Third Age adults is downward rather than upward, in contravention of depictions of older adults as 'burdens' on younger generations. Current demographic and social changes are, it is argued, likely to increase support demands from adult children to Third Age parents in coming decades.
This study examined associations between adult children's cumulative problems and their parents' psychological and relational well-being, as well as whether such associations are similar for married and single parents. Regression models were estimated using data from 1,188 parents in the 1995 National Survey of Midlife in the United States whose youngest child was at least 19 years old. Participants reporting children with more problems indicated moderately poorer levels of well-being across all outcomes examined. Single parents reporting more problems indicated less positive affect than a comparable group of married parents, but married parents reporting more problems indicated poorer parent-child relationship quality. Findings are congruent with the family life course perspective, conceptualizing parents and children as occupying mutually influential developmental trajectories.
Profiles in caregiving: The unexpected career
- C Aneshensel
- L I Pearlin
- J T Mullan
- S H Zarit
- C J Whitlatch
Aneshensel, C., Pearlin, L. I., Mullan, J. T., Zarit, S. H., & Whitlatch, C.
J. (1995). Profiles in caregiving: The unexpected career. new York,
nY: Academic Press.
Invisible support and adjustment to stress
- N Bolger
- A Zuckerman
- R C Kessler
Bolger, n., Zuckerman, A., & Kessler, R. C. (2000). Invisible support and
adjustment to stress. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 79,
953-961. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.953
Is there a method to our madness? The impact of data collection methodology on organizational survey results
- F Bucx
- F Van Wel
- T Knijn
Bucx, F., van Wel, F., & Knijn, T. (2012). Life course status and exchanges
of support between young adults and parents. Journal of Marriage
and Family, 74, 101-115. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2011.00883.x
Church, A. H. (2001). Is there a method to our madness? The impact of data
collection methodology on organizational survey results. Personnel
Psychology, 54, 937-969. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.2001.tb00238.x