Access to Sport Facilities, Social and Intergenerational ...
Intergenerational relationships in adulthood and aging: does attitude matter?
Transcript of Intergenerational relationships in adulthood and aging: does attitude matter?
Olga Y. Strizhitskaya, PHDSaint Petersburg State University, Russia
Faculty of Psychology
Supported by
Social ties are crucial for subjective well‐being of an aging person
Family relations are more important for older adult than nonfamily, though they still play their role
Perception of help and support given and received differs between older adults and their children
Need for autonomy and relatedness at the same time
Parent‐child relationships are studied in retrospective
Psychoanalytic approach: attitudes and relationships formed in childhood between parents and children impact almost all spheres of an adult life
Do we grow up? And do we mature? Do relationships with parents matter for an adult? And would the importance or effects of this relationships differ due to any factors?
Participants84 participants, 25 men and 61 women aged35‐50, describing their relationships with real(alive) parent at present time.
Based on attitude to future, sample was dividedinto optimistic and pessimistic groups:
optimists– 54 participants (18 men,36 women)pessimists– 30 participants (6 men,24 women)
Child-parent relationships: “Questionnaire of the parent‐child interaction” by
I.Markovskaya, modified for adults Personality characteristics: Semantic time differential by Wasserman, Ginsburg’s technique "The appeal of the past,
present and future", Life orientations test, Locus of control test, Self‐regulation behavior questionnaire by
Morosanova
Optimists:
Future hopelessness
Punishment 0.338
Pessimists:
Future structure
Sense of future
Future anxiety
Acceptance 0.502Cooperation 0.452Inadequacy of child's image 0.484
Optimists: Pessimists:
Punishment
Locus of control
Acceptance Cooperation Inadequacy of child's image
Cognitive future
Future anxiety
Self‐regulationn
Purpose in life
“Real‐time” relationships with parents maintain their role in adulthood
Perceptions of such relationships are closely related to components of time perspective, in particular, to emotional component.
Being included into time perspective system, we could assume that relationships with parents, their subjective estimation, could be a part of adults motivation.
Study results could be understood in two ways: Relationships with parents impact adult’s time perspective: while optimists reported their relationships as more close and supportive, pessimists showed stronger role of regulation, punishment and control.
The other way to interpret these data is that attributive and cognitive styles (such as positive information processing, type of time ambiguity attitudes), that are formed yet in early adulthood and remain significant in old age, lead to certain understanding of relationships with parents.
Relationships of adults and their aging parents are underestimated in modern psychology: though we can’t say they are more complicated than child‐parent relationships in childhood, teenage and adolescence, still this dyad has a longer history both personal and in common.
Being to some extent more mature, these relationships are more ambiguous and include two‐way mentorship.
Limitation of current study and future direction would be need for study of aging parent perspective in such relationships and value of the quality of such relationships for aging parent.