After reading this article, I hoped to have had a better understanding of how the theory of intergenerational solidarity and how theories were developed. However, I found the article quite difficult to follow. I was not familiar with a lot of the terminology used and it wasn't helpful that the terms appeared to change throughout the article. I'll do my best to discuss this article and maybe by the time I'm done, I'll and those who read my blog will have a better understanding of it, too.
First, the authors define six constructs that appeared to have been already developed and tested. These six areas were theorized to be necessary if a child and a parent were to have a good relationship during their adult lives. Please see Table 1 page 857 for more details. The constructs are association (how often parent and child have contact such as holidays or Sunday dinners), affection (how the parent and child feel about each other such as closeness and respect), consensus (agreement on values and beliefs such as political or religious beliefs), resource sharing (exchanging of resources such as money, free childcare), strength of family norms (having the common belief that family is important) and, finally, the opportunity structure for interaction (how often can they interact, such as do they live in the same city or are the parent's home bound).
As stated above, these constructs were not new. They came from social theory, social psychology and family sociology. The initial attempt to predict interrelations was made in 1976. Bengtson, Olandaer and Haddad (1976) theorized that affection, association and consensus were interdependent or in order to have a good relationship you would have high levels of affection, association and consensus between the parent and the child. This theory was tested twice and each time the researchers did not find that affection, association and consensus were interdependent. However, they did find some correlation between affection and association. I think this makes sense. I have very different political and religious views from my two best friends. However, I still have a lot of affection and association for both of them. When you are eight years old, you don't pick your friends for their political or religious views and you can't pick your family at all.
Second, the authors change the initial theory based on the results of the two empirical tests. They added strength of family norms (normative), resource sharing (functional) and opportunity structure for interaction (structural solidarity). As you can see, they changed the names (new name in parenthesis) of the constructs. Why? Does this give them more of a sense of ownership? They make consensus independent and focus on individual levels of strength of family norms (normative integration), affection and resource sharing.
Their first proposition asked if a parent and a child both have the expectation that family is important it will increase their affection and how often they spend time together. They treat consensus independently, such as if a parent and child have different political views, it's not going to affect their affection or the amount of time they spend together. Their second proposition showed that if I were to take my mom to her doctor appointments and she were to watch my son (resource sharing), we would have more affection for each other, and this would increase how often we spend time together. Their third proposition in their new theory asked about opportunity structure, such as if a son or daughter live far away from their parents, will it affect how often they see each other and if they can share resources. The fourth proposition theorized if I have affection for my parents then I would spend more time with them.
The third step in developing their intergenerational solidarity theory was to test their revised model using empirical data. Please see their complete list of nine propositions they were able to test on pages 861 and 862. To test these propositions, they analyzed responses of 363 older parents and 246 middle-aged children who took part in a longitudinal study.
Lets jump to the interesting part or their results. Please see their new model on page 867 figure 4. The data from the longitudinal study supported some of their propositions. They found that if the parent and child both had the expectation that family was important the greater the affection felt by both of them (P1&P2) They found that if a parent had a greater expectation that family was important the more contact they had with the child (P2b). However, they did not find that a child would have more contact with their parents even though they had a greater expectation that family was important (P2b). They also found that if the child and parent were able to spend time together, such as living close to each other then they saw each other more often. (P3). Finally, if a child showed affection for their parent it had a greater influence on the parent's affection for their child. However, the affection a parent felt for their child did not affect how much affection a child had for their parent (P4).
The one finding I thought most interesting was P2b. Why did they not find an increase in a child's association (how often parent and child have contact such as holidays or Sunday dinners) if the child had a strong sense of family norms (having the common belief that family is important)? The authors try to explain this by saying the children may have felt so much guilt by not being able to have more association with their parents due to other obligations such as work and family that they put a higher expectation on family norms.
While reading this article, I thought of a daughter who has been caring for of one my clients with Alzheimer's Disease for over a year. She described to me a sense of family expectation that she is responsible to care for her mom because her mother cared for her grandmother. Unfortunately, there is not much affection felt by either of them and there never was. This daughter has sacrificed a lot over the last year and is extremely burned out. She is now looking at institutional care for her mom. I have to wonder if there were a little more affection between them whether she would be ready to put her in institutional care.
One more thought and then I will close. Regarding the finding that a child's affection for their parent was found to have a much greater influence on a parent's affection for the child than vice versa (P4). I think in our society a family norm is that a parent will always have affection for their child no matter what they do. Does this finding say that a parent has to earn affection from their child and that it is not an automatic given that your child will have affection for you because you are their mother or father?
Bengtson, V. L., & Roberts, R. E. L. (1991). Intergenerational solidarity in aging families: An example of formal theory construction. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, 856-870.
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