The Individual and the Family

Overview

The family is the greatest single source of support, and the center of activity, for most elderly persons. The family may be considered with regard to the elderly couple alone, or the elderly couple or person in relation to parents, children, siblings, and other relatives.

The growth of three, four, and even five-generation families under conditions of urbanization and industrialization produces unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The adaptation of families to these circumstances is poorly understood, and myths about family behavior persist from the past. Attempts to articulate the challenges and opportunities must first surmount these outmoded concepts. For example, characteristics attributed to the family in the past assumed several generations under one roof. This is true far more today than in the past, when extended families consisted not so much of children, parents, and grandparents, as of children, parents, and uncles and aunts. In the United States, only in the last 50 years has a ten-year-o d child had more than a 50% chance of having two live grandparents.

Another misconception is based on confusion with the term “household”. A two-generation household may be separate from, but have close ties to, a grandparental household. The separation does not necessarily indicate abandonment of the elderly by the young, but it may impede direct assistance.

Tomorrow’s elderly may be as different from today’s as these elderly are different from their forebears. In many countries, today’s elderly have more children than their children will have, assuming continuation of relatively low birth-rates. The “baby boom” elderly will have fewer children to turn to, but more siblings. This has policy implications, in that the family of a sick elder may have no relative but aged siblings to turn to.

Another impact on family role and support derives from the longer life expectancy of women. This differential is increasing, with the result that women face more years in widowhood than ever before, possibly without support of husband’s family. Other impacts concern divorce, informal cohabitational arrangements, and the ability of a younger family to share a household with elders, assuming the dwelling permits. Finally, severe chronic illness may make living with children or in their own household impossible for the elderly person or couple, and institutionalization of one spouse may make independent living impossible or complicated for the other. In some countries, middle-aged women have growing labor-force participation rates. They are no longer at home to give care to a sick elder.

To the extent that the family is unable or unwilling to support the elderly person, formal or informal assistance becomes necessary.

The elderly may have to depend on community services for care the family cannot give. The cost of formal services to replace care given by the family may be enormous in the aggregate, assuming the services are available. This possibility raises the issue of the extent and type of supports that should be provided to families to permit them to continue caring for their elderly. Would payments be made unnecessarily to families that need no incentive to continue providing support? How much saving would occur through family incentives? Would payments deter institutionalization when it is appropriate? How much would be saved in institutional costs through family incentives? What would be the psychological effect of such payments? The elderly tend to keep major family roles in rural areas of less developed countries. In urbanizing areas of those countries and in the more developed lands, the elderly play less structured roles. Little is known about family relationships in dynamic societies.

In traditional societies, the wisdom and experience of the older person are still considered pertinent to major family tasks. However, in societies undergoing relatively rapid socio-economic changes, the older person’s experience tends to be discounted.

In less developed countries and Japan, old religious emphases on honoring parents still h ld; by and large, caring for the elderly is seen as an important family duty. This pattern begins to break down, say experts from the Philippines and Brazil, as urbanization advances. And in more developed countries -such as Australia, Italy, the US, and the UK -older people prefer to live in their own households, but near a son or daughter. Since adult children may change residence for employment reasons, parents may be left behind. The older person is likely to have no formal role or function in the household headed by an adult child, and may end up in a very isolated and deprived condition.

Women seem to fare better than men with regard to a continued and valued role in the family, as so many of them have work patterns often of a household nature that can continue into their later years. Men, on the other hand, tend to retire, either formally or informally.