MERRIL SILVERSTEIN University of Southern California
ROSEANN GlARRUSSO California State University, Los Angeles
Aging and Family Life: A Decade Review
In this review, we summarize and criticallyevaluate the major empirical, conceptual, andtheoretical directions that studies of agingfamilies have taken during the first decadeof the 21st century. The field has benefitedfrom an expanded perspective based on fouroverarching themes: (a) complexity in emotionalrelations, (b) diversity in family structures andhouseholds, (c) interdependence of family rolesand functions, and (d) patterns and outcomesof caregiving. Although research on agingfamilies has advanced theory and appliedinnovative statistical techniques, the literaturehas fallen short in fully representing diversepopulations and in applying the broadest set ofmethodological tools available. We discuss theseand other frontier areas of scholarship in lightof the aging of baby boomers and their families.
In this review, we summarize and criticallyevaluate the major empirical, conceptual, andtheoretical directions that social scientific studiesof aging families have taken during the firstdecade of the 21st century. Scholarly interest inaging families has accelerated in recent years,spurred in part by rapid population aging andincreased global concerns about the vitality of
Davis School of Gerontology, University of SouthernCalifornia, 3715 McClintock Ave., Los Angeles, CA90089-0191 ([email protected]).
'Department of Sociology, California State University,Los Angeles, 5151 State University Dr., Los Angeles,CA 90032 ([email protected]).
Key Words: aging families, caregiving, intergenerationalrelations, marriage, siblings, widowhood.
systems of care and support for the aged, aswell as structural and compositional changes infamilies first experienced in large numbers bythe baby-boom cohort that now stands on thethreshold of old age.
Improvements in life expectancy havechanged the structure of multigenerational fami-lies; joint survivorship within and across genera-tions has resulted in extended periods of supportexchanges (including caregiving) and affectiveconnections over the life span. At the same time,relationships in aging families have becomemore ñuid and less predictable, as reduced fer-tility and increased rates of divorce, remarriage,and stepfamily formation have altered the micro-context in which intergenerational, spousal, andsibling relationships fijnction. The implicationsof increased diversity in kinship structures forsuch practical outcomes as support and care-giving to older family members have yet to beparsed but remain important concerns in lightof declining filial commitment and the aging ofsupport providers and recipients.
Despite efforts to represent aging familiesmore holistically, empirical research in thisarea still tends to be segmented by relationaltype, specifically affiliations between parentsand adult children, grandparents and grand-children, husbands and wives, and siblings.Our reading of the literature over the pastdecade across relational domains pointed to fouroverarching themes that organize our criticalreview of established and emerging areas ofscholarship: (a) complexity in emotional rela-tions, (b) diversity in family structures andhouseholds, (c) interdependence of family rolesand functions, and (d) patterns and outcomes in
Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (October 2010): 1039- 1058DOLlO.l 111/J.1741-3737.2010.00749.X
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caregiving. Another overarching characteristicof research published on aging families in thepast decade is an increased focus on globalconcerns, specifically on how family relation-ships of older adults function differently acrossnational populations and political regimes. Thisinternational research informs our review and isintegrated throughout the thematic sections.
Although, strictly speaking, all families stud-ied over time are aging, we limit our review topublications that study families of middle-agedand older individuals, including relationshipsthose individuals maintain with younger fam-ily members. This review primarily draws onarticles published in two streams of scholarshipusing a complementary strategy to maximize thenumber of citations in the highest impact jour-nals between 2000 and 2009. Searches were con-ducted in Family Studies Abstracts and Abstractsin Social Gerontology using the EBSCO hostsearch engine (http://web.ebscohost.com/). Wefocused on three journals concerned with familyrelationships {Journal of Marriage and Family{JMF^, Family Relations, and Journal of Fam-ily Issues, searching the terms aging, aged, andelderly) and four journals devoted to scholarshipin social and behavioral gerontology {Journalof Gerontology: Social Sciences, Journal ofGerontology: Psychological Sciences, Researchon Aging, and Ageing and Society (searchingthe terms family, intergenerational, older par-ents, grandparents, adult children, grandchil-dren, siblings, spouses, and marriage). Whentopics were sparsely represented, we turned toother social and behavioral science journals asnecessary. Because of space constraints, illus-trative publications rather than an exhaustivelist are cited. In selecting research to discuss,we attempted to strike a balance between repre-senting the main substantive topics found in theliterature and highlighting those topics judged tobe at the frontier of family research.
Emotional Complexity of Relationshipsin Aging Families
Over the past 10 years, greater attention hasbeen devoted to complexity in aging familyrelations deriving from conflicting emotions inintergenerational ties, conflicting reports aboutthese ties based on generational perspective,and patterns of change in the perceived qual-ity of marital relations. In this section, wereview conceptualizations of later-life family
relationships and supporting empirical evidencethat have advanced the field by challenginglong-standing assumptions about harmony inthe emotional content of adult intergenerationalrelations, agreement in the perception of rela-tionships across generations, and the presenceof a late-life rebound in marital satisfaction.
Solidarity and ambivalence. Conceptualizingand measuring the multiple complexities offamilies in later life has long been a chal-lenge for social and behavioral researchers.The most prominent conceptualization over thepast several decades has been the intergener-ational solidarity paradigm—a comprehensivescheme for describing sentiments, behaviors,attitudes, values, and structural arrangementsin parent-adult child relationships (Bengtson,Biblarz, & Roberts, 2002). However, in the1990s, it was formally observed that familymembers may simultaneously hold both warmand antagonistic feelings toward each other—anemotional discordance identified as ambivalence(Leuscher & Pillemer, 1998). Intergenerationalambivalence soon became a significant focusin family research, and in 2002, a featuredsection devoted to this topic appeared in JMF.The ambivalence perspective was portrayed as acompeting theoretical orientation to that of theintergenerational solidarity paradigm (Connidis& McMullin, 2002) but was also viewed as com-plimentary to an enhanced conceptualization ofsolidarity that included conflict in its formula-tion (Bengtson, Giarrusso, Mabry, & Silverstein,2002). Continuing scholarly integration betweenthese two approaches has benefitted familyresearch by diversifying the conceptual toolboxavailable to intergenerational researchers whoare studying emotional ties in aging families andtheir consequences for well-being (Lowenstein,2007).
Scholars have used several types of mea-surement strategies to identify intergenerationalambivalence: direct strategies that ask respon-dents to rate the degree to which they havemixed feelings toward a parent or child (Pillemer& Suitor, 2002) and indirect strategies that askrespondents to independently rate the degree ofcloseness and conflict with a parent or child.The latter approach has used additive scalesthat describe the intensity of opposing feelings(Willson, Shuey, Elder, & Wickrama, 2006)and categorical techniques—often employingthe solidarity model—to identify ambivalent
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types of relationships in which affection andconflict are both strong (Van Gaalen & Dysktra,2006).
Research aiming to identify specific issuesthat induced parental feelings of ambivalencehave suggested reasons related to adult chil-dren's busy schedules, choice of romantic part-ners, and parenting styles (Peters, Hooker, &Zvonkovic, 2006), and tensions between normsof solidarity and parents' expectations that theirchildren be more independent (Pillemer et al.,2007). Adult children were more likely to feelambivalent about older parents to whom theywere providing extensive support and who werein declining health, which suggests that parentaldependence and role-reversal caused mixed feel-ings in these relationships (Fingerman, Chen,Hay, Cichy, & Leflfowitz, 2006).
Intergenerational ambivalence as a concep-tual tool has found broadened application withregard to the larger social forces that shapefamily life. For instance, institutional pressures(e.g., the demands of work) that exert com-peting claims on time and resources of familymembers are thought to induce stress—whatis termed structural ambivalence (Connidis &McMullin, 2002). Another broadened conceptu-alization known as collective ambivalence hasbeen defined as the amount of variation in thequality of intergenerational relationships acrossmultiple children in the same families (Ward,2008). The concepts of structural and collectiveambivalence extend the ambivalence paradigmbeyond interpersonal relationships to the moreexpansive and complex social contexts withinwhich these relationships are embedded.
Ambivalence in intergenerational relation-ships has been found in several investigations tohave negative consequences. Fingerman, Pitzer,Lefkowitz, Birdett, & Mroczek (2008) foundthat having stronger ambivalent feelings aboutfamily members in other generations was asso-ciated with worse psychological well-being.Ward (2008) found that collective ambivalencehad a similar negative association with well-being outcomes. A five-nation study of olderparent-child relations that included measuresof intergenerational solidarity or conflict andambivalence in its protocols found that loweraffection and greater ambivalence independentlypredicted poorer quality of life in the elderly,though the effects were marginal relative tothe adverse influence of poor health and loweconomic resources (Lowenstein, 2007).
Because sibling ties are closer than manyfamily relationships, they also are subject to feel-ings of ambivalence (Connidis, 2007). Mixedfeelings toward siblings may stem from per-ceptions of parental favoritism—current or past.Retrospective accounts of maternal favoritismin childhood better predicted sibling tension inmiddle age than did current accounts of mater-nal favoritism (Suitor et al., 2009). Thus, siblingswere more likely to have good relationships withone another in later life if they felt their mothertreated them equitably in childhood.
Relational perspectives. Complexity has alsobeen examined in terms of differences in how thepartners involved perceive their mutual relation-ship. Empirical research from the past 10 yearshas made strides in recognizing that incumbentfamily members potentially use different sub-jective criteria to evaluate relationships. Studiesthat employ dyadic designs capable of com-paring assessments across relational partnershave suggested that relying on reports from asingle informant may produce unique results.For example, Giarrusso, Feng, and Bengtson(2004) found that emotional cohesion betweenparents and their adult children declined overthree decades when assessed from the point ofview of the younger generation but not from thatof the older generation. Although dyadic report-ing discrepancies of this type may be viewed asevidence of bias, they are also informative abouttheoretical propositions. For instance, the gen-erational stake hypothesis posits that parents aremore strongly incentivized to emotionally investin their children than children are incentivizedto emotionally invest in their parents.
Reporting discrepancies have also been foundwith respect to social support exchanges. Adultdaughters tended to overreport the amount ofsupport they provided to older mothers whencompared against the amount of support theirmothers claimed to receive (Lin, 2008). Simi-larly, evidence from The Netherlands showedthat both older parents and their adult chil-dren overreported the amount of help given andunderreported the amount of help received, withgreater intergenerational correspondence amongthe better educated (Mandemakers & Dykstra,2008). The tendency to view oneself (relatively)more as an altruistic provider of support andless as a dependent receiver may be better inter-preted within a cultural or social psychologicalframework than purely as a systematic bias.
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Marital quality, age, and aging. How emotionalties between spouses change over the course ofa marriage has long been a topic of inquiry infamily science. Most cross-sectional studies ofmarital satisfaction have suggested a U-shapedcurve with satisfaction high during the early andlate stages of marriage and low during the mid-dle stage (Corra, Carter, Carter, & Knox, 2009).However, research using longitudinal data hassuggested that this pattern is overstated and pos-sibly incorrect. For example, VanLaningham,Johnson, and Amato (2001), using national dataover a 17-year period, found that marital happi-ness declined beyond the early years of marriagebut continued to decline or remained flat overthe later years. Other researchers using the samelongitudinal data set, but over a 20-year period,found more stability than change in trajecto-ries of marital happiness; marital quality slightlyincreased in the later years of marriage and onlyminimally regained any of its earlier decline(Dush, Taylor, & Kroeger, 2008). In general,these longitudinal studies provide a serious chal-lenge to the long-held belief that marital qualityrebounds in old age.
Health and stress appear to play a role in howmarital quality changes over time and into laterlife. Husbands and wives who reported a strongerdecline in their spouses' health experienceda greater reduction in their perceived maritalquality (Yorgason, Booth, & Johnson, 2009).Marital quality was found to be more stronglyassociated with chronological age than withmarital duration (Umberson, Williams, Powers,Chen, & Campbell, 2005), which suggests thatresearchers tracking marital trends focus moreon life-span changes than on length of marriage.Umberson, Williams, Powers, Liu, and Need-ham (2005) found that marital quality declinedprecipitously over an 8-year period in response tostress. In addition, they found that the marriagesof those who experienced low levels of stress inchildhood were less adversely affected by stressexperienced in adulthood. Longitudinal researchon marriages generally supports a modest con-tinuous decline in marital quality with aging, butit also has suggested that poor health and stress,as well as coping resources forged earlier in life,play significant roles in the rate of this decline.
Diversity in Family Structures and Households
In this section, we address the implications offundamental changes in family and household
structures over the past few decades for howelders maintain family relationships and draw onfamily support. Chief among these changes areincreased rates of divorce, remarriage, stepfam-ily formation, cohabitation, and childlessness.
Divorce and stepfamily formation. Complexfamily structures resulting from marital dis-ruption and remarriage have variegated familyforms such that lines of responsibilities maybe blurred or uncertain between generations.A major question addressed in the literatureis whether family disruption and reconstitutionreduce the amount of intergenerational supportavailable to adults as they age. Research hasrevealed detrimental effects of parental divorceand stepfamily formation on support that adultchildren provide to their elderly parents, whichhas raised concerns about the support portfolioof future cohorts of vulnerable elders with his-torically high rates of divorce and remarriage(Pezzin, Pollak, & Schone, 2008).
The impact of parental divorce is not equiv-alent for the intergenerational relationships ofmothers and fathers. A significant gender dif-ferential was found with adult children havinglower contact with divorced fathers and highercontact with divorced mothers when comparedto the amount of contact with their stably mar-ried equivalents (Shapiro, 2003). A study offrail older parents found that, of all the gender-by-marital status combinations, divorced fathersreceived the lowest level of personal care fromtheir children (Lin, 2008). Taken together, theevidence suggests that marital disruption hasmade the filial safety net of elderly men moreporous.
However, evidence also suggests that emerg-ing cohorts of elderly parents, includingolder fathers, may be less socially disad-vantaged than those who came before them.Research in the United Kingdom has shownthat parental divorce had negligible effects onintergenerational support and contact in early oldage (Glaser, Tomassini, & Stutchbury, 2008).The authors conclude that the power of divorceto weaken intergenerational ties has moderatedbecause marital disruption is more normativein contemporary cohorts and therefore moresocially acceptable.
Filial commitment of adult stepchildren totheir aging stepparents has been shown to beparticularly fragile. Research has found thatnorms of obligation toward older stepparents
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were consistently weaker than they were towardolder biological parents (Coleman, Ganong,& Rothrauff, 2006). Indeed, research hasdemonstrated that many stepchildren do notdefine their stepparents as parents or even asfamily (Schmeeckle et al., 2006), which suggestsa potentially muted intergenerational response toelderly stepparents with exigent needs.
Cohabitation. One of the newer changes in theliving arrangements of aging families over thepast several decades is the increase in cohab-itation among middle-aged and older adults.Cohabitation among mature adults has becomeincreasingly common (Brown, Bulanda, & Lee,2005), though there are substantial differencesacross nations. For example, cohabiting unionsare twice as prevalent among older adults inFinland as in the United States (Moustgaard& Martikainen, 2009). Further, new forms ofcohabitation have emerged in northern and west-em Europe, whereby partners maintain separatehouseholds and finances while living togetherintermittently, a phenomenon known as liv-ing together apart (De Jong Gierveld, 2004).Although it remains to be seen whether thismore unusual type of partnership will diffuse tothe mature population of the United States, itis clear that cohabitation will increase in olderage groups as younger cohorts with more liberalattitudes toward relationships ultimately age intotheir later years.
Concerns over cohabitation among the agedcenter on whether being in a nonmarital unionadversely affects the social, psychological, andphysical well-being of the cohabitants. Researchin the United States has found that middle-agedand elderly cohabitors have lower psychologicalwell-being and poorer quality partner relation-ships than their married counterparts (Brown,Bulanda et al., 2005). Hansen, Moum, andShapiro (2007) questioned whether this latterfinding would hold true among middle-agedadults in Norway, a country where cohabitationis relatively common. Their results revealedthat married and previously married cohabitingNorwegians did not differ in their relationshipquality, which led the authors to concludethat cohabitation was not qualitatively differentfrom marriage. Never-married cohabiting Nor-wegians, however, reported significantly lowerrelationship quality than did the other twogroups, which suggests that poorer relationshipoutcomes for midlife cohabitors may be due to
social selection of independent-minded peopleaway from marriage and into cohabitation.
Another Scandinavian study, this one inFinland, attempted to discover whether theprotection marriage confers against admissionto long-term-care facilities extended to olderadults in cohabiting relationships (Moustgaard& Martikainen, 2009). Older cohabitors were atgreater risk of being institutionalized than weretheir married counterparts because cohabitatingunions were less likely to contain a partner com-mitted to being a caregiver in the home. Theoverall evidence suggests that instability in non-marital unions has deleterious consequences inlater life, at least in current cohorts of olderindividuals.
Childlessness. The rapid rise of childless indi-viduals, particularly in the developed world,has produced a fundamental change in familystructure through the truncation of intergenera-tional lineages. Only a handful of studies haveexamined whether child-free older adults sufferdisproportionately from distress or lack care-givers to help them. One study found that thesupply of available children was of little conse-quence to the psychological well-being of agingindividuals (Bures, Koropeckyj-Cox, & Loree,2009). Evidence from Amsterdam suggests thatthe disadvantage of having smaller-than-averagesupport networks may have been compensatedby greater disposable income among childlesselders (Dysktra & Wagner, 2007). However,in Australia, Finland, and The Netherlands,childless individuals were more likely than par-ents to engage in risky health behaviors, whichargues for the social control ñinctions of parent-hood (Kendig, Dykstra, van Gaalen, & Melkas,2007). Overall, the balance of research revealsfew serious deficits in old age related to child-lessness, possibly because childless individualshave adapted along the life course by enhancingtheir financial resources and developing socialalternatives to children.
Interdependence of Family Roles and Functions
In this section, we review literature that empha-sizes how role responsibilities are allocated andcoordinated in aging families. Research hasshown that family actors and relationships areinterdependent with each other and with the pol-icy environments in which they are embedded.Under this rubric, we consider studies that have
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focused on mutuality between different types ofintergenerational relationships, between inter-generational and intragenerational relationships,between family members in linked generations,and between family and government support ofvulnerable elders.
Grandparents and grandchildren. Recent lit-erature on grandparent-grandchild relation-ships has revealed them to be emotionallyclose and predominantly companionate innature (Mueller, Wilhelm, & Elder, 2002) buthighly sensitive to changes in family con-figurations and circumstances (Kemp, 2007;Silverstein & Marenco, 2001). The middleparental generation forms an important rela-tional bridge that links the two nonadjacentgenerations, as demonstrated by research show-ing that conflict between parents and grand-parents may have negative consequences forthe quality of grandparent-grandchild relation-ships (Monserud, 2008). Marital discord inthe parental generation also has been shownto have adverse effects on the quality ofgrandparent-grandchild relationships, particu-larly on the paternal side of the family (Amato& Cheadle, 2005).
The adult children of grandparents are notthe only the actors mediating relationships inthe three-generation family system. One studyfound that grandparents' relations with theirchildren-in-law were even more powerful medi-ators of grandparent-grandchild ties than wererelations with their own children (Fingerman,2004). Grandchildren serve a linking fonctionwith respect to the two older generations. Thesimple presence of a young grandchild in thefamily has been shown to increase the amountof contact between the parents and grandpar-ents of that child (Bucx, van Wei, Knijn, &Hagendoom, 2008).
Grandparents convey core moral values totheir grandchildren (King, 2003) and have beenfound to influence their grandchildren's religiousorientations by strengthening or weakening theinfluence of parents (Copen & Silverstein, 2007).Systemic perspectives on multigenerationalfamilies gain insight by considering how a thirdgeneration mediates and moderates relationshipsbetween two generations.
in-law relationships. Scholars have come torecognize that intergenerational relationships arealso acquired through marriage, and they have
begun to investigate in-law relationships withregard to support to aging parents and parents-in-law. A more complete rendering of intergen-erational relations must take into account the factthat couples may have four (or more) parents toconsider when dividing their time and energy.Findings in the United States have shown thatwives tended to give greater priority to assistingtheir own parents, whereas husbands providedassistance more equally between their own par-ents and their parents-in-law (Lee, Spitze, &Logan, 2003). Other research has found thatmarried couples were more responsive to thesupport needs of wives' parents even under con-ditions of equal competition between the needsof parents and those of parents-in law, thusrevealing a strong matrilineal preference in theprovision of assistance to aging parents (Shuey& Hardy, 2003).
However, in a patrilineal culture such asChina, daughters-in-law more than daughtersare important sources of support to their elderlyparents-in-law. Not having a daughter-in-lawas a support provider was found to increasedepression in rural Chinese elders (Cong &Silverstein, 2008). By contrast, older adults inurban China had better subjective well-beingwhen they lived with their daughters than whenthey lived with their daughters-in-law (Chen &Short, 2008). Research into the complex andculturally sensitive role of children-in-law hasemerged as an important topic with strong genderovertones in the elder support literature.
Sibling relationships. Sibling and parent-childrelationships have been found to be interdepen-dent with each other. Adult children who hada poor-quality relationship with their parentstended to rely more on more their siblings foremotional support than did those with a betterquality relationship—a compensatory mecha-nism more common among brothers than sisters(Voorpostel & Blieszner, 2008). There is alsoevidence that attributes of sibling relationshipsinfluence how intergenerational relationships aremaintained. Having a sister, a stepsibling, andan emotionally close relationship with a siblingwas found to be associated with lower amountsof contact with parents (van Gaalen, Dykstra, &Flap, 2008).
Marriage and widowhood. Family events andcircumstances outside the marriage itself influ-ence the quality of marital relationships. For
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instanee, Bookwala (2009) found that marriageswere adversely affected when daughters pro-vided care to older parents, whereas marriagesof similarly situated sons tended to adapt tothe added demands of earegiving. However, themarital quality of older couples did not appearto suffer when adult children became moreintimately involved in their lives by becom-ing residential partners (Ward & Spitze, 2004),which suggests that the impact of intergener-ational dependence on marriage may not besymmetrical for parents and children. The effectsof family Stressors on well-being appear to bemultiplicative with respect to spousal and inter-generational relations. Stress induced by maritalconflict exacerbated emotional distress felt byadult children newly caring for their older par-ents (Choi & Marks, 2006).
Widowhood is a transition closely followedby the reconfiguration and adaptation of familyroles and fiinetions. Research has shown thatwidowed persons are less likely than theirmarried counterparts to have a confidant butmore likely to receive support from children,friends, and relatives (Ha, 2008). The two-wayflow of intergenerational support altered whenparents became widowed, such that dependenceof parents on adult children increased anddependence of adult children on parentsdecreased (Ha, Carr, Utz, & Nesse, 2006). Rolesoutside the family changed as well following theloss of a spouse. Widows were more likely thanmarried individuals to pursue volunteer rolesthat tended to protect them against depressivesymptoms and enhance feelings of self-efficacy(Li, 2007). Similarly, those widows who gavehelp and support to others experienced a declinein depressive symptoms following spousal loss(Brown, Brown, House, & Smith, 2008).
The transition to widowhood is often consid-ered among the most stressful transitions in laterlife. Perhaps because it can often be anticipated,characteristics of the prewidowed period havebeen found to influence the well-being of thesurviving spouse. One study found that when aspouse died a “good” death, free from physicaldiscomfort and in the company of loved ones,the bereavement period of the surviving spousewas eased (Lee & Carr, 2007). Many aspectsof spousal loss and adjustment are different forsurviving husbands and wives—both prior toand subsequent to widowhood. For instance,research has shown that widowers but not wid-ows experienced anticipatory depression prior
to spousal loss (Lee & DeMaris, 2007) and,following widowhood, increased their partici-pation in housework (Utz, Reidy, Carr, Nesse,& Wortman, 2004). Adjustment to widowhoodalso followed different paths on the basis of gen-der. Men who were instrumentally dependent ontheir wives and women who were emotionallydependent on their husbands both showed bet-ter adjustment to widowhood when they learnedthey could manage on their own (Carr, 2004).This finding suggests that successful coping withthe loss of a spouse may involve altering tradi-tional gender orientations.
Reciprocity and altruism between generations.Research has generally found strong interde-pendence in flows of time and money supportbetween parents and their adult children. Moststudies examining intergenerational resourcetransfers have found evidence for motivationsbased on altruism and reciprocity. An altruismperspective posits that each generation providesto the other on the basis of need: Parents pro-vide money to adult children with the fewesteconomic resources, and adult children providesocial support and care to parents who are in theworst health. On the basis of these criteria, evi-dence for altruism in adult parent-child relationsis irrefutable (Künemund, Motel-Klingebiel, &Kohli, 2005). A reciprocity perspective positsthat money transfers from parents to children arelater reciprocated by the beneflciaries, who givefreely of their time to visit or provide assistanceto their aging parents. One study establishedlife-cycle reciprocity of this sort, flnding thatyoung-adult children who received more emo-tional and financial support fi'om their parentsprovided more social support to their parentsdecades later (Silverstein, Conroy, Wang,Giarrusso, & Bengtson 2002). This evidencesuggests that reciprocal exchanges between gen-erations stretch over a large part of the family lifecycle. In the United States, this pattern—knownas time-for-money exchange—has held up wellacross several investigations, although parents inAfrican American and Hispanic families tend tocompensate for their lower-than-average finan-cial resources by providing in-kind support (e.g.,housing) instead of monetary support to theirehildren (Berry, 2006).
The empirical literature has increasinglytaken into aecount the often-unacknowledgedfact that parents differentiate among their adultchildren when providing help and support. Such
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differentiation by parents often occurs alongthe lines of both need (based on a child'spoor health and low financial resources) andreciprocity (based on whether the child providedhelp to the parent) (Suitor, Sechrist, & Pillemer,2007). Another study found that young-adultchildren who returned to the parental nesttended to be those who earlier had poor qualityrelationships with their parents, which offersevidence of selective altruism toward so-calleddifficult children (Ward & Spitze, 2007). Inaddition, structural features of relationships havealso emerged as determinants of which childparents favor or rely on. Research has foundthat the youngest child in the family tended tobe the one with whom parents were emotionallyclosest, and the oldest child tended to be theone to whom parents would most likely turn forneeded support (Suitor & Pillemer, 2007).
Intergenerational relations and the politicaleconomy. Relationships in aging families havebeen found to be dependent on the largersocial contexts in which they are embedded.Cross-national studies have suggested that botheconomic development and sociocultural factorsare responsible for variation in intergenerationalsupport and contact (Broese van Groenou,Glaser, Tomassini, & Jacobs, 2006). Themost common narrative in this literaturederives from political economy theories thatcharacterize nations by the degree to whichcare responsibilities are allocated among state,market, and family—a spectrum bracketed atone extreme by social democratic states withstrong public welfare provisions and at the otherextreme by residualist states with relatively weakpublic safety nets. Several multinational studieshave documented the interconnection betweenfamily functions and government structures,showing that older parents tended to have greaterinteraction with, live closer to, have strongerexpectations of, and receive more care from adultchildren when they lived in nations with lessgenerous social welfare regimes (Hank, 2007;Lowenstein & Daatland, 2006).
A similar political economy paradigm hasbeen used to explain the direction of financialtransfers between generations. In Western Euro-pean countries and the United States, financialtransfers are far more likely to flow down-stream—from parents to adult children—thanin the other direction because of generouspublic and private pension schemes available
to older citizens in those nations (Albertini,Kohli, & Vogel, 2007). Families in develop-ing countries also engage in time-for-moneyexchanges; however, the direction of resourceflows differs from that found in developedcountries. In developing countries, parents tendto provide household labor and/or child-careservices to their adult children, and adult chil-dren provide money to their parents in return(Frankenberg, Lillard, & Willis, 2002). Cul-tural values emphasizing filial duty are in linewith the absence of public resources, as familiessurvive through mutual exchange across genera-tions (Sun, 2002). However, in more traditionalsocieties that experience abject poverty, adultchildren used their scarce resources for the bet-terment of their children rather than their elderlyparents (Aboderin, 2004).
Rapid social and economic change indeveloping countries has opened up lines ofinquiry about whether the traditional familysafety net is secure for older persons in suchregions. Declining family size and rates ofintergenerational coresidence are among themajor concerns. However, research has foundthat adult children's expressions of filial pietyin China were the same or greater in single-child families as in multichild families, whichsuggests that deficits in support may be less thanexpected for aging parents whose fertility wasguided by the one-child policy (Deutsch, 2006).
The elasticity of filial norms has been noted intraditional but rapidly developing and developednations. Evidence from rural Brazil has revealedthat intergenerational coresidence in farmingcommunities is based more on meeting the needsof adult children than on the needs of older adults(VanWey & Cebulko, 2007). In Japan, wherecoresidence between older parents and theiradult children has dramatically declined overthe past three decades, norms now legitimate atype of shared living arrangement based moreon the needs of younger generations and lesson cultural mandates to honor the aged (Takagi,Silverstein, & Crimmins, 2007). Similar declinesin multigenerational coresidence occurred over amuch longer period in the United States, largelydue to increased economic opportunities foryoung adults and reduced control of parents overthe lives of their adult children (Ruggles, 2007).
When taken together, findings from inter-national family research demonstrate that acountry's level of economic development, polit-ical structure, and cultural norms influence
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transfers of resources up and down generationallines.
Patterns and Outcomes of Caregiving in AgingFamilies
In this section, we discuss trends in caregiving inaging families that include adult children caringfor their elderly parents, spouses caring for eachother, and grandparents caring for their grand-children in custodial and supplemental capaci-ties. We focus on social characteristics that havebeen found to differentiate levels of involvementin caregiving activities and that lead to differen-tial outcomes in caregivers. Although an obviousimplication of aging is that mature adults tend tobecome recipients of care over time, older adultsare also key providers of family care.
Older adults as recipients of care. Family care-giving to impaired older people has becomeincreasingly common, as life expectancy hasnearly doubled over the past century (Wolff &Kasper, 2006). Caregiving represents a broadrange of activities, including providing per-sonal care, doing household chores, preparingmeals, shopping, taking care of finances, pro-viding companionship, checking up regularly,arranging and supervising activities and outsideservices, and coordinating medical care (Roberto& Jarrott, 2008).
Literature of the past decade has attemptedto consolidate and distill what has been learnedfrom the many studies focusing on caregiving.One of the most consistent findings in the elder-care literature is that women provide more familycare than men (Silverstein, Gans, & Yang, 2006).A meta-analysis of several hundred caregivingstudies found that female caregivers providedmore hours of care; were more likely to providepersonal assistance; and as a result, experi-enced greater burden and more depression thanmale caregivers (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2006).Caregivers increasingly face the dilemma ofbalancing their labor-force participation againsttheir caregiving duties, a Stressor that tends toaffect women more than men. Not surprisingly,caregivers who worked full-time provided loweramounts of care, and their care recipients wereat greater risk of having unmet needs than wereother caregivers and recipients (Scharlach, Gus-tavson, & Dal-Santo, 2007). Characteristics ofcare recipients also make a difference in the care-giving experience. A meta-analysis found that
caregivers to dementia victims suffered greaterstress and worse physical and mental health thancaregivers to recipients without dementia andnoncaregivers (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2003b).
Caregiving is increasingly viewed as a teameffort, with multiple family (and nonfamilymembers) trading off and coordinating their careefforts. Although the structure of caregiving istypically hierarchical, with a main care providerwho coordinates the efforts of subordinatecaregivers, research has indicated a good degreeof turnover in the composition of caregivernetworks, as well as in primary providers, overtime. In one national study, more than halfthe personnel of care networks—including morethan one fourth of primary caregivers—changedin composition over a 2-year interval, thisrotation ostensibly helping avoid caregiverburnout (Szinovacz & Davey, 2007). However,the number of care providers per recipient hasdeclined in recent years. Through the decadeof the 1990s, there was a 50% increase in theproportion of primary caregivers who had nosecondary partner available to help shoulder theload, a worrisome trend that may portend greaterstress for caregivers and a weaker safety net forcare recipients (Wolff & Kasper, 2006).
Siblings often negotiate among themselvesas to who will provide care to an aging par-ent, which sometimes introduces conflict intothe family (Connidis & Kemp, 2008). Wheninequalities occur in the division of labor amongadult siblings, primary caregivers may ask theirless involved siblings to contribute more orchange their cognitive appraisal of the situa-tion to justify the inequity (Ingersoll-Dayton,Neal, Hall, & Hammer, 2003). Even if siblingsfind a way to deal equitably with their caregiv-ing responsibilities, advance directives for healthcare that involve appointing one child durablepower of attorney may undermine children'srelationships with one another (Khodyakov &Carr, 2009).
Positive consequences of caregiving havereceived attention in the literature. Althoughintensive care is often demanding and stress-ful, it has been shown to enhance subjectivewell-being and to produce uplifts in mood, asthe very act of helping a loved one provides anintrinsic reward (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2003a).Taking a life-span approach to the topic offamily elder care, Roberto and Jarrott (2008)noted that the emerging literature on caregivergrowth demonstrates a clear, positive impact of
1048 Journal of Marriage and Family
caregiving, including improvements in problem-solving abilities, increased self-understanding,and a growing sense of competence.
Spouses as caregivers. Although spouses aresecond to adult children in their prevalence asprimary caregivers, this statistic is somewhatmisleading because only half of frail older adultsare married with a spouse available to care forthem. One study found that, among marriedmiddle-aged and older adults with a seriousfunctional impairment, a spouse was caring forabout 80% of them (Lima, Allen, Goldscheider,& Intrator, 2008).
The literature commonly compares spousecaregivers with other types of family caregivers,most often adult children. Research has shownthat the increase in depressive symptomsfollowing the transition into caregiving wasthe same for spouse and adult-child caregivers(Marks, Lambert, & Choi, 2002). However,other research has revealed differences inpositive outcomes of caregiving based onthe caregiver's relationship with the recipient.For instance, adult children derived greateremotional rewards from caregiving than didspouses (Raschick & Ingersoll-Dayton, 2004),which suggests that positive and negativefeelings about caregiving may mix differentlydepending on the relationship involved.
Among spousal caregivers, gender differ-ences have been found with regard to the impactof caregiving on their daily lives. Wife care-givers tend to suffer greater adverse effects thanhusband caregivers, such as in the extent towhich caregiving duties restrict outside activities(Choi, Burr, Mutchler, & Caro, 2007). Pinquartand Sorensen's (2006) meta-analysis of gen-der differences in spousal caregiver outcomesfound that wives generally experienced greatercaregiver burden and depression than husbands,but gender differences were smaller for spousesthan they were for other caregiver relation-ship types. The smaller gender differentialfor spousal caregivers was attributed to therelatively strong responsibility that spouses feelfor their partners.
The experience of spousal caregiving also hasroots in the precaregiving period of marriages.Spouses who had higher levels of marital dis-agreement prior to caregiving reported a greaterdecrease in happiness and a greater increase indepression following their assumption of care-giving responsibilities than did spouses withmore favorable marital experiences (Choi &
Marks, 2006). Caregivers who reported lowerquality marital relationships were also morelikely to end their caregiving activities thanwere those who reported higher quality maritalrelationships (Duchareme et al., 2007).
Spousal caregiving appears to be sensitiveto national context, as well. A study of matureadults in The Netherlands and Germany—twoculturally similar nations—revealed that Ger-mans depended on their spouses for support morethan the Dutch did; the authors attributed the dif-ference to the weaker public support system inGermany than in The Netherlands (Stevens &Westerhof, 2006).
Grandparents as custodial caregivers. Thenumber of grandchildren being raised by grand-parents has increased in all socioeconomic strataand ethnic groups but increased most dramat-ically in inner-city African American familiesstarting in the 1980s, when those communitieswere hit particularly hard by the crack-cocaineepidemic, HIV/AIDS, lack of employment,and incarceration of men (Fuller-Thomson &Minkler, 2001). That African American grand-mothers step in to raise their grandchildrenmore often than other racial/ethnic groups docontinues a long history of extended-familyresilience as an adaptation to persecution andeconomic deprivation. Although much atten-tion has focused on the vulnerabilities ofgrandparent-headed African American families,custodial grandparenting remains most numer-ous in White non-Hispanic families (Deleire &Kalil, 2002).
Caregiving grandparents face challenges thatpredate their caregiving activities. Studies haveshown that caregiving grandparents are morelikely than their noncaregiving counterpartsto live below the poverty line, receive pub-lic assistance, have less than a high schooleducation, and lack access to adequate med-ical care and supportive services (Baker &Silverstein, 2008). Pathways into caregivingthat involve drug and/or alcohol abuse in theparental generation produce the most negativepsychological outcomes in custodial grandpar-ents, which provides evidence of accumulateddisadvantages in this group over time (Goodman& Silverstein, 2002).
Evidence suggests that the high demand ofgrandchild care takes a toll on the physicaland mental well-being of custodial grandpar-ents (Hughes, Waite, LaPierre, & Luo, 2007).Because grandchildren being cared for by
Aging and Family Life 1049
grandparents are at particularly high risk ofexhibiting behavioral and emotional problems,it is not surprising that grandparent caregivershave even higher levels of stress than parentalcaregivers (Musil, Youngblut, Ahn, & Curry,2002). Intrafamily strain and poor quality inter-generational relationships also contribute to thepoor physical and mental health of caregiv-ing grandparents (Musil, Warner, Zauszniewski,Jeanblanc, & Kercher, 2006). Adopting the care-giver role unexpectedly or off-time has beencited in the literature as a source of stress forgrandparent caregivers as well (Landry-Meyer& Newman, 2004).
Although most research has tended to focuson the difficult precursors and stresses ofcustodial grandparenting, attention also hasalso been devoted to studying the resourcesthat may offset negative outcomes. Supportnetworks have been found to have palliativeeffects on the emotional well-being of caregivinggrandparents by buffering the deleterious effectsof caregiving stress (Gerard, Landry-Meyer, &Guzell, 2006). Engaging in external activitiesmay link grandparent caregivers to social aswell as tangible resources that can proveto be beneficial (Baker & Silverstein, 2008).Research has shown that grandparent caregiverswho relied on extended family for help andparticipated in special programs fared betterthan those who didn't avail themselves ofsuch resources (Lumpkin, 2008). The intrinsicsatisfaction derived from caring for a grandchildhas been found to ameliorate distress by reducingthe sense of burden and increasing positive affect(Pruchno & McKenney, 2002).
Although stress is generally high amonggrandparent caregivers, notably those with thefewest resources, such as African Americans(Ross & Aday, 2006) and Native Ameri-cans (Letiecq, Bailey, & Kurtz, 2008), someevidence suggests that caregiving grandpar-ents from cultures with a strong extended-family tradition adapt more successfully to theircustodial role than do grandparents from cul-tures without this tradition. African Americancustodial grandmothers, for example, were moreapt to know others raising grandchildren and tohave themselves been raised by grandparents,thus legitimating this family form (Pruchno &McKenney, 2002). A cross-cultural comparisonfound that African American grandmothers whowere sole providers for their grandchildren andHispanic grandmothers who were coparenting
their grandchildren (with mothers) were lessdistressed than comparable White grandmothers(Goodman & Silverstein, 2006), which pro-vides evidence that cultural expectations for carearrangements have mental health implications.
Custodial grandparenting is far more commonin less developed regions of the world than it isin the United States. Households consisting ofolder adults and grandchildren of deceased par-ents are quite common in sub-Saharan Africacountries with high rates of AIDS infection(Zimmer & Dayton, 2005). Many older womenin poor African nations are left to care for theirgrandchildren with few government benefitsand largely devoid of kinship support systems(Oppong, 2006). In rapidly developing nationsof Asia such as China, it is common for ruralgrandparents to care full-time for their grand-children so that their adult children can seekemployment opportunities in more prosperousurban regions (Silverstein, Cong & Li, 2006).
Grandparents as supplemental caregivers. Car-ing for grandchildren on a supplemental basisis quite common around the world. In theUnited States, 40% of grandparents provide atleast 50 hours of care per year for the chil-dren of working parents (Hughes et al., 2007),whereas in Europe, 40-60% of grandparentstake care of grandchildren at least occasion-ally (Attias-Donfut, Ogg, & Wolff, 2005).Increased women's labor-force participation andthe growth of single-mother households in theUnited States has provided grandparents withexpanded opportunities to provide complemen-tary care for grandchildren, such that the preva-lence of grandparents who provide extensive butnot primary care exceeds that of custodial grand-parents (Fuller-Thomson & Minkler, 2001). Ina study of 10 European nations, grandparentsin countries with more generous social policiestoward children were more likely than thosein countries with less generous policies to pro-vide any care for grandchildren but less likelyto provide care on a daily basis (Hank &Buber, 2009). Higher rates of female labor-forceparticipation in more liberal states ostensiblyincreased the demand for occasional servicesof grandparents, whereas the greater availabil-ity of low-cost day care suppressed the demandfor full-time care of grandparents. Evidence ismixed concerning whether providing part-timecare to grandchildren is stressful to grandparents.Hughes et al. (2007) found in a national sample
1050 Journal of Marriage and Family
that, in eontrast to full-time caregiving, part-timecaregiving produced few negative effects ongrandparents.
Children exposed to stressfijl family con-ditions tend to turn to their grandparents foremotional support (Wood & Liossis, 2007) andappear to benefit in their psychosocial devel-opment by doing so (Deleire & Kalil, 2002).Evidence shows that strong attachments tograndparents enhanced the mental health ofadolescent grandchildren who grew up in asingle-mother family (Silverstein & Ruiz, 2006)and who were raised by a depressed mother(Ruiz & Silverstein, 2007). Thus, grandparentsserve as key resourees to their grandchildren inaecordance with emergent family needs.
Supplemental care provided by grandpar-ents has been found to have positive effectson intergenerational relationships. For example,grandchildren who received early eare fromgrandparents tended to have closer relations withthem in adulthood than do grandchildren who didnot reeeive such care (Brown, 2003). In Taiwan,adolescents raised in households in which grand-parents resided were more likely than other ado-lescents to be solicitous toward their extendedfamily members (Yi, Pan, Chang, & Chan,2006). There is some evidenee that grandchil-dren eared for by grandparents later reciprocateby providing care to those grandparents as theyage (Fruhauf, Jarrott, & Allen, 2006). An intrigu-ing body of research suggests that the parents ofgrandchildren being cared for by grandparentsare the true benefieiaries of such eare and aretherefore most likely to reciprocate in this way(see Friedman, Hechter, & Kxeager, 2008). Thus,exchange motives may coexist with altruism inexplaining why grandparents devote themselvesto the well-being of their grandchildren.
DISCUSSION
In this review, we summarized and criticallyevaluated the empirical literature that has shapedand advaneed the study of aging families over thepast decade. Mostly relying on research articlespublished in top-tier family and gerontologicaljournals, we organized our discussion intofour thematic areas that cut across differentrelationships in older families. We revisit thesethemes in our discussion, first focusing onmajor substantive issues and gaps in coverage,then reviewing progress and limitations inthe overarehing theoretical and methodological
orientations on which the substantive literaturerests, and finally forecasting where we think theleading edge of family scholarship in this areamay be heading.
Substantive Issues
Our review suggests that research over thepast decade has gone far toward advaneingour understanding of variation and change inaging families based on emotional complexity,structural diversity, role interdependence, andpatterned earegiving. We comment on each ofthese areas in turn.
The surge of literature on intergenerationalambivalence reminds us that most familyrelationships involve a dose of dissonance,harkening back to ideas first put forth by Sig-mund Freud about conflicting impulses towardone's closest family members. Although orig-inally viewed as pathological, ambivalence inmore contemporary interpretations is viewed aspart of the human condition, of the give-and-take between autonomy and dependence andthe tension between eoneern and disappoint-ment. Indeed, dependence and the perception ofinequitable exchanges in intergenerational rela-tionships—whether induced by failing healthof older parents or by failure of ehildren tolaunch—is an important correlate of ambivalentfeelings and/or ambivalent behaviors. Whetherthe discomfiting nature of mixed feelings haspositive or negative implications for the sub-ject or object of ambivalence has only begunto be investigated. Many questions remain tobe answered. For example, to what degree doesambivalence depend on the family role positionof the reporting individual? Are adult ehildrenless able to hold conflicting feelings than theirparents? And to what degree can the concept ofambivalence be used to describe older siblingand marital relations?
We also discussed literature on complex fam-ily structures due to divorce and remarriage, andthe resultant families that include half-siblings,stepsiblings, former and new spouses, stepchil-dren, and stepparents. Given this complexity, it isimportant to know how “nontraditional” familyrelationships function, how they are emotionallyand normatively eonnected in service to olderrelatives, and how older family members formexpectations of others in these relationships. Theimplications of “new” family types—such asthose headed by single parents and by cohabiting
Aging and Family Life 1051
opposite-sex and same-sex partners—for agingfamily members have yet to be fully parsed.Blind spots certainly exist in the literature,for example, the almost complete inattentionto gay and lesbian couples in later life. Extendedfamilies of four or more generations and trun-cated childless families have to some degreebecome normalized in U.S. society, but knowl-edge about them remains sparse. Although Sunand Matthews (2006) estimated that one inthree Americans are currently part of a four-generation family, there have been few studiesof great-grandparents and their intergenerationalrelationships. In contrast, research has begun topay greater attention to in-law and step rela-tionships, filling gaps in knowledge by movingattention beyond the boundaries of the nuclearfamily. In general, however, family structureshave altered in ways that research on agingfamilies has not kept pace.
We note that the impact of social changes onfamily life—because they typically first manifestearly in the family life cycle—do not show up inlate-life families until years later. Such changesas increasing ethnic diversity; the proliferationof disrupted, step, and blended families; and thegreater legitimacy (and in some states, legal-ity) of same-sex unions, historically lag in theoverpopulation. However, there are several rea-sons it is prudent for scholars to examine socialchange in aging families before they are in fullbloom. First, older adults are interconnectedand interdependent with family members whosesocial milieux have changed in line with con-temporary patterns. Older parents may maintainrelationships with divorced, remarried, nevermarried, and cohabiting adult children that arequite different from those they maintain with sta-bly married children. Second, the direct impactof social change on the elderly themselves isnot far off, and studying the leading edgeof elders—those who are most likely to haveexperienced divorce, stepparenting, and moreegalitarian marriages—will provide a windowonto the wave of change to come and help antic-ipate concerns about care and support to olderrelatives in “new” family environments.
Interdependence among family actors, fam-ily relationships, and formal state systems wasa central theme in our review that includedconsideration of conjoint family roles, intergen-erational exchange, and variation in the politicaleconomy of nations. Research on aging fam-ilies has only begun to use person-centered
approaches that treat individuals as embeddedwithin a web of family affiliations and responsi-bilities. For example, middle-aged persons oftenoccupy several family roles simultaneously (e.g.,spouse, sibling, child of an older parent, par-ent to an adult child, grandparent to a younggrandchild); therefore, it is important to exam-ine these role demands in combination whenassessing their impact on individual well-being.In addition, cross-institutional demands needgreater attention to determine whether workstress that adult children experience is detri-mental to the quality of their intergenerationalrelationships and impedes their ability to pro-vide care to aging parents. In light of trendstoward multiple marriages of shorter averageduration, the mutuality between older husbands'and wives' marital satisfaction is another salienttopic in the study of interdependence in late-lifefamilies.
Cross-national studies have demonstrated thatsupport exchanges between generations aresensitive to the political economy of the nation-state. Comparative research among nations in thedeveloped world has been critical for identifyingstate-family trade-offs in how macrolevelgovernment structures influence microlevelfamily behaviors. Much work remains to be donein rapidly developing countries, where nascentpension and health-care programs for olderpersons are likely to reduce intergenerationalcoresidence and support. Government policiestoward dependents in the population may easethe demands imposed on family resources forneeded care and support but also may crowdin family members as supplemental providers.Specifying the correct causal factors at themacrolevel represents a great challenge in thisrealm of research. Explaining how contextmatters needs to be of greater concern, lestconclusions remain at the level of description.
The large volume of literature on caregiv-ing within and across generations has achievedsome degree of consolidation by virtue of severalmeta-analyses and a generally more inclusiveand balanced rendering of the caregiving pro-cess. The accumulation of evidence suggeststhat caregivers are embedded in a networklikestructure that adjusts in composition over timein response to the changing resources and con-straints of providers and the needs of recipients.Systemic and dynamic approaches to caregivingare most informative because they come clos-est to representing caregiving as it is actually
1052 Journal of Marriage and Family
experienced in families. A notable shift in theliterature has been that greater attention is paidto older adults as care providers to family mem-bers and not simply as passive recipients of filialresources. Research on older individuals as care-givers for their grandchildren and as economicproviders to their adult children has proliferated.The literature on inter- and intragenerationalcaregiving has also begun to question long-standing assumptions about caregiver burden inaging families by better balancing the psychicrewards of enacting a valued family role againstthe dire consequences documented in much ofthe literature.
Theoretical Issues
Although much of the literature on aging fami-lies continues to rely on established theories ofthe middle range, modifications to those theoriesand the emergence of new scholarly perspec-tives have energized the field. In particular, theambivalence perspective continues to provide animportant reminder of the emotional complexi-ties of intergenerational family relationships inlater life, whereas the intergenerational solidar-ity paradigm that has guided research in thisarea for some decades has expanded to includeconflict, thus making it more compatible withambivalence theory. Attempts at bridging thetwo paradigms may provide a theoretical synthe-sis that will strengthen the rigor and explanatorypurview of both. More theoretical work needsto be done to conceptually distinguish perceived(by the subject) and ascribed (by the researcher)forms of ambivalence, as well their unique ori-gins and consequences.
Exchange theory has provided a useful lensfor understanding sequential transfers of time,money, and emotion between generations. Asaging families increasingly include relationshipsthat are nonbiological and mixtures of biological,legal, and social affiliations, reciprocity andaltruism as social forces may weaken or changeshape in response to new family structures andintergenerational patterns of resource allocation.What this means for the viability of familysupport systems for dependent elders remains animportant topic for the future.
Although we are struck by the relative absenceof macrotheorizing (apart from the implicit useof modernization theory), we conclude that itis potentially healthier for the field to let manymiddle-level theories bloom than have a single
perspective dominate in a hegemonic fashion.However, feminist, class, and race theories—andtheir intersection—have achieved little tractionas central organizing paradigms in researchon aging families published in main familyand gerontology journals. Noticeable by theirrelative absence from the literature are scholarlyresearch articles in top-tier journals that focuson race and ethnicity in later life. Using theEBSCO search engine we found only threearticles published in JMF between 2000 and2009 that contained the terms age or aging andrace, ethnicity, or ethnic in their title or abstract.Although the majority of quantitative studiesinclude race and ethnicity as control variables,consideration of intergenerational, spousal, andsibling dynamics in aging families of color hasbeen tangential at best.
Methodological Issues
The development and ready accessibility ofadvanced statistical techniques have expandedthe quantitative toolbox available to researchersanalyzing longitudinal, hierarchical, and other-wise complex data sets. The analysis of trajec-tories of family relationships over long periodsof time has benefited from the application ofgrowth-curve modeling. Research studying howaging families vary across various social, polit-ical, and filial ecologies—where individuals arenested in larger aggregates—has increasinglymade use of multilevel modeling techniques.Application of structural equation and hierarchi-cal techniques have become increasingly com-mon, thus providing answers to questions relatedto change and context that were previously notanswerable and resulting in better specified mod-els and more trustworthy inferences.
At the same time, public availability oflarge, longitudinal, and nationally representa-tive data sets such as the National Survey ofFamilies and Households, Americans' Chang-ing Lives, Midlife Development in the UnitedStates, and the Health and Retirement Study(HRS) have greatly enhanced the scope andrichness of research on aging families. Harmo-nization of measures between the HRS in theUnited States and similar studies of older pop-ulations in Europe, Latin America, and Asiahas expanded opportunities for comparativeresearch on aging families on an unprecedentedscale. Together the data sets are valuable publicassets; they cover a wide array of topics from a
Aging and Family Life 1053
variety of diseiplinary perspectives, are nation-ally representative, typically oversample minor-ity ethnic groups, and are easy to access throughdata-archiving services. Although their scopeand accessibility have resulted in a remarkablesurge of theoretically informed and empiricallyrigorous research on aging families, we add anote of caution. The danger remains that theselarge data-collection enterprises have a homog-enizing influence on scholarship by narrowingthe spectrum of constructs available for anal-ysis. Thus, one may ask whether at times theavailability of particular measures in these well-used studies drives emergent research questionsrather than the other way around.
It is also our impression that quantitative anal-yses of large data sets may have crowded outfine-grained analyses and in-depth qualitativeinvestigations from the leading family jour-nals. Thick descriptions of microfamily envi-ronments, narrative analyses, and ethnographicapproaches are needed to provide deeper under-standings of social and behavioral processesin aging families that quantitative studies cansometimes only infer from correlational data.Qualitative research may best discover the cul-tural frames that the elderly and their relativesuse to negotiate the gap between expecta-tions and behaviors regarding help and support,tensions between dependence and autonomy,residential decisions, and resource allocationstrategies in aging families.
Our review suggests that research on agingfamilies still tends toward segregation basedon family position and the relationship underinvestigation. Such balkanization, for instance,prevents grandchildren from being considered inthe gerontology literature and grandparents frombeing considered in the adolescence literature.Such divisions no doubt come from disciplinaryboundaries that tend to divide families intosegmented life stages. For instance, until fairlyrecently, the long-running Adolescent HealthStudy asked no questions specifically aboutrelationships with grandparents.
Dynamic models are essential for understand-ing how and why families and relationshipschange over time and in response to norma-tive and nonnormative events. For instance,caregiving—whether between parents and adultchildren, grandparents and grandchildren, orspouses—is best understood as a career, withearly family antecedents, cyclical involvements,and short- and long-term impacts. Longitudinal
models are also best able to resolve questionsabout reciprocity between family members overthe adult life span, the long-term evolution ofsibling ties, the course of bereavement andrecovery among widows and widowers, tra-jectories of marital happiness and unhappinessfor husbands and wives, the persistence ofambivalence and conflict in intergenerationalrelations, and whether adverse seleetion or expo-sure to risk is more important in explainingthe poor well-being of caregiver grandparentsthan the caregiving itself. It is our impressionthat longitudinal analyses have become morecommon over the past 10 years but still areless represented than family science demands toanswer key descriptive and explanatory ques-tions about the aging of families as a life-long process. To adequately understand agingfamilies, research must study the process ofineremental change and stage-sequential transi-tions in family relationships and systems overtime, as well as their antecedents and long-termconsequences.
The Future of Research on Aging Families
In the middle of the decade we just reviewed, theNational Institute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment charged a prominent team ofscholars with setting the agenda for the demo-graphic study of family change and variationover the next quarter century (Seltzer et al.,2005). Their recommendations for the study ofaging families called for greater foeus on howflows of assistance, resource sharing, and kinshipobligations have been affected by the emergenceof new family forms caused by declines in fer-tility, and increases in divorce, remarriage, non-marital childbearing, and grandparent-headedhouseholds. In more general terms, they calledfor an integrated life-course approach that con-siders multiple family actors over the entire lifespan. We agree with their assessment, and inour broad reading of the literature, we note thatthe empirical literature in the first decade of the21st century has moved us closer, if perhapsmodestly, to achieving these goals.
An ambitious agenda lays ahead, one thatrequires data that do not yet exist and method-ologies still to be perfected. However, weare sanguine about the future of aging fam-ily studies given the innovative paradigms thathave gained footholds, the expanded use oflongitudinal data, and the ever-widening global
1054 Journal of Marriage and Family
lens over the past 10 years. The coming decadewill surely allow for direct tests of hypothe-sized scenarios at which we have only beenable to glimpse in the previous decade—namely whether baby boomers, with high ratesof divorce, remarriage, and childlessness (andas of late, poor retirement prospects)—will inlater life be adequately served by their familynetworks. We are cautiously optimistic aboutthe fate of aging families, given the historicalevidence showing time and again the resilienceof family life to altered environmental condi-tions, and we anxiously await the research tocome.
NOTE
This research was supported in part by Grant No. R56AG007977-26 from the National Institute on Aging. Wethank Linda Hall for her assistance in word processing andformatting this document.
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