Middle-Aged Children’s Coping Strategies With Tensions in the Aging Parent–Child Tie

Abstract

Middle-aged children may cope in different ways with interpersonal tensions with their aging parents. This study examined coping strategies as a function of parent’s age and disability and children’s emotions (i.e., guilty feelings and worry). Middle-aged children ( N = 378) reported coping strategies when encountering interpersonal tensions with each of parents ( N = 482): engagement, acceptance, avoidance, and confrontation. Middle-aged children also indicated how guilty and worried they felt about each parent. Multilevel models indicated that middle-aged children were most likely to use engagement and acceptance strategies, followed by avoidance, and least likely to use confrontation. Results also revealed that middle-aged offspring were more likely to use engagement toward their parents who were older and acceptance toward parents with more disabilities. Furthermore, when middle-aged children had stronger feelings of guilt toward parents, they were more likely to be avoidant and less likely to engage with parents. Worries about parents were positively associated with the use of engagement strategies.

Intergenerational Proximity to Aging Parents and Depression Among Married Persons in China

“…Thus, in a sense, living with parents allows children to fulfill the obligation of taking care of elders; at the same time, it requires them to shoulder the burdens of finance, emotions (Wei & Zhang, 2011), and housework, while running the risk of arousing intergenerational tension (Liu et al, 2020). Adult children living separately may not experience the physical pressure of caring for older parents, but they may feel guilty because they are not providing the care their parents need (Wang et al, 2020).…”

“…Studies from the perspective of adult children are limited, especially for middle-aged married persons (Kim et al, 2011). Yet this is a critical period: people may reassess their marriages and their relations with aging parents when entering mid-life, as they are required to provide care to both older and younger family members (Silverstein et al, 2020; Wang et al, 2020). Most middle-agers in China can be called baby boomers.…”

Middle-aged adults’ daily sleep and worries about aging parents and adult children.

“…Thus, compared to worrying about parents, middle-aged adults may have more worries about their children. However, as their parents age, sometimes developing health problems and disability, middle-aged adults may have increased worries about the well-being of their parents and future caregiving needs (Wang, Kim, Birditt, Zarit, & Fingerman, 2019). Research indicates that worrying is a common theme in the aging parent-child tie (Hay et al, 2008); however, the implications for sleep remain underinvestigated.…”

Lasting impact of relationships on caregiving difficulties, burden, and rewards

“…It is worth noting that although individuals likely develop more severe disabilities as they age (Guay et al, 2014; Okoro et al, 2018), aging and disabilities do not always co-occur. The time left in life may become smaller with age, but research has considered health indicators (e.g., HIV, cancer, disabilities that often result from chronic health conditions) to disentangle age from closeness to death (Carstensen & Fredrickson, 1998; Sullivan-Singh et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2020). As such, we asked whether caregivers of care recipients who are older and who have more disabilities would be more buffered by positive relationships with these care recipients and less bothered by negative moments in their relationships.…”