Do Positive Feelings Hurt? Disaggregating Positive and Negative Components of Intergenerational Ambivalence

Abstract

Ambivalence has become an important conceptual development in the study of parent–adult child relations, with evidence highlighting that intergenerational relationships are characterized by a mix of positive and negative components. Recent studies have shown that ambivalence has detrimental consequences for both parents' and adult children's psychological well-being. The underlying assumption of this line of research is that psychological distress results from holding simultaneous positive and negative feelings toward a parent or child. The authors question this assumption and explore alternative interpretations by disaggregating the positive and negative dimensions commonly used to create indirect measures of intergenerational ambivalence. Data for the analyses were collected from 254 older mothers and a randomly selected adult child from each of the families. The findings suggest that the negative component is primarily responsible for the association between indirect measures of ambivalence and psychological well-being. Implications of these findings for the study of intergenerational ambivalence are discussed.

Family Networks and Psychological Well-Being in Midlife

“…This absence of significant differences in the impact of these three ties is important considering that family scholars have greatly emphasized the spousal relationship in the adult family literature (Carr and Springer 2010;Fingerman and Hay 2002). Consistent with other studies, our findings indicate that, when examined separately, the quality of ties to spouses, mothers, and siblings predict psychological well-being (Cicirelli 1989;Gilligan et al 2015;Paul 1997); however, we go beyond these studies by showing little variation in the impact of these three relationships.…”

“…Further, although depressive symptoms, particularly as measured by the CES-D, is one of the most commonly used constructs to study psychological well-being (Fingerman et al 2008;Gilligan et al 2015;Suitor et al 2017), it is only one of many indicators that capture well-being. We hope that future studies will extend the study of the consequences of family ties on well-being using a wider array of such measures.…”

“…Research over the last several decades, however, has shown that parents and adult children maintain enduring ties across the life course, regardless of whether adult children marry ). Further, a growing body of research has demonstrated that relationships between parents and children have implications for the well-being of both generations in adulthood (Gilligan et al 2015;Polenick et al 2016;Suitor et al 2015b;Umberson 1992). In midlife, individuals often indicate that their relationship with their mother is very central in their lives, but they often rank this relationship below their relationships with their spouse and own children in terms of importance (Antonucci et al 2004).…”

Age norms, family relationships, and home leaving in Italy

“…Suitor and Pillemer (2000) point out that mothers report closer relationships with children that experience nonnormative status transitions when these events are perceived as involuntary, and the opposite effect is found when nonnormative transitions are perceived as voluntary. In addition, Gilligan et al (2015) argue that norm violations only have consequences for parents when they result in extreme deviant behaviors and formal legal sanctions. Since a violation of age norms is rarely perceived as voluntary or as an extreme deviant behavior, late and early homeleaving do not appear to be accompanied by interpersonal sanctions (Settersten and Hagestad 1996) or tensions in later parent-adult-child relations (Leopold 2012;Tosi and Gähler 2016).…”

Intergenerational ambivalence in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for depressive symptoms over time.

“…Thus, future studies should consider a scale with a greater number of negative items, which would likely improve internal consistency reliability. In addition, much of the literature suggests that negative feelings overwhelm ‘ambivalence’ and variability in negative feelings may actually account for much of the variability in ambivalence (Connidis, 2015; Fingerman et al, 2013; Gilligan, Suitor, Feld, & Pillemer, 2015). …”