VERY OLD PARENTS AND THEIR OLD CHILDREN: A GROWING AND GLOBAL PHENOMENON

摘要

Social relationships in very late life are an important public health issue, given the extensive and prolonged care needs of very old adults and the profound physical and emotional consequences for the involved caregivers, typically children who have also reached old age. Very old parents and their “old” children are a growing group in industrialized countries worldwide. However, virtually nothing is known about the nature and implications of this relationship constellation. The proposed symposium offers insights from four countries to address this gap in the literature. Jopp and colleagues present findings on support exchanges in Swiss older parent-child dyads, using a novel methodological approach of observing real-time supportive behaviors in the context of an interaction task. Boerner and colleagues report findings from standardized support assessments and qualitative interviews, highlighting the notable presence of downstream support (parent to child) among very old parent-old child dyads in Greater Boston, USA. Ribeiro and colleagues draw on qualitative interviews with children caring for a centenarian parent in Portugal, to portray how these children view their caregiving role and the contribution centenarians make to the family system. Han and Kim present findings on Korean very old parent-child dyads. Qualitative interviews yield evidence of both continuity and change in parent-child relationship dynamics, with increase in mutual understanding representing an element of positive change and assigning caregiving roles among children representing sources of strain. Findings will be discussed with a comparative eye for similarities and differences in observations across national cultures as well as methodological approaches used.