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In the last three years I have been the director of Project
Retire, a research project which involves elderly married
couples from every state in the United States and their families
including their grandchildren. We have been following
approximately 700 three generational families for three years and will
continue to follow them for at least another 5 years. What I have
discovered is that elderly married people are anxious to tell their
stories and the stories of their children and grandchildren. What
I will share with you today comes from my experience as a researcher,
from my clinical experience as a marriage and family therapist and
licensed psychologist, from my own personal experience as a family
member, and from my experience as a lobbyist on family issues with state
legislatures.
Families are by their very nature intergenerational composed of
generations of family members, grandparents and aunts and uncles,
parents, and grandchildren and cousins, who continue to influence the
current and future generations even when they are no longer physically
present because of death. Any other combination of people that is
not intergenerational with generations of mutual influence cannot claim
to be family. A major criterion for being a
family is that it must be intergenerational. Prevalent attempts to
redefine family totally ignore this major criterion.
I would assert that the influence of generations in families is
more apparent and present today than ever before. In the decade of
the 1970's the older population of the world grew by 30% (Logino, Soldo,
& Manton, 1990). In the 1980's it was estimated that over 290
million people in the world were over the age of 60. Demographers
estimate that by the year 2025 over 761 million people on the earth will
be over the age of 65. They predict that one out of every seven
people will be over the age of 69 (United Nations Secretariat, 1998,
1989).
Some countries of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, do
much better in promoting intergenerational family ties. In
contrast, the numbers of multigenerational households in some countries
like the United States have never been very high and certainly not as
high as in some other countries (Treas, 1983). It is likely that
multigenerational households will increase during the early part of the
21st century creating a larger percentage of the total world population
than ever before.
If any century could labeled the century of the intergenerational
family it will be the 21st century. The growing number of elderly
throughout the world will mean that the emotional field for any
family member at any given moment will comprise at least three, and
possibly four or five generations. It will become increasingly
true that families will qualify as "aging families" whereas
our focus during the 20th century has been on the middle generations.
A myth about families holds that relatives of aging individuals
have little interest in and little contact with their elders. In
actuality, almost three quarters of the older population has regular
contact with their children (Shanas, 1980; Cicirelli, 1981).
Several studies have looked for a connection between the frequency of
contact and the well-being of aging parents (Blau, 1981; Denham &
Smith, 1989, Lee, 1979), and researchers (Franks, Hughes, Phelps, &
Williams, 1993; Dowd & LaRossa, 1982) suggest that contact
contributes to a greater sense of closeness and emotional wellness for
family members of each generation.
Another common myth about the bonds in the aging family concerns
the exchange of emotional and physical support between aging individuals
and their children. Many believe that elders are a strain on the
intergenerational family and take much more than they are able to give;
however, research indicates that older parents give more assistance to
their adult children than they receive (Riley & Foner, 1968; Veevers
& Mitchell, 1998). Exchange patterns work both ways in the
intergenerational family and are characterized best as mutual aid.
National Project Retire
I first became interested in what happens to marriage and families
at later life when clinical couples kept telling me what retirement was
like. You have probably heard similar stories. The one who
has worked for years, usually the husband, decides to retire.
At this point husbands and wives have a great deal more time to be
together, but the togetherness is often an irritant to them. As I
searched the literature, I discovered that most researchers pay little
attention to marriages and families at later life. Most of what I
could find about elderly people was either health related, largely
studies about dementia and Alzheimers, or studies about the stresses of
caring for the elderly. I had studied younger marriages and
families looking at processes of emotional bonds and closeness, conflict
resolution and family satisfaction. It was curious to me that
those who were studying the aged were not looking at these aspects of
relationships. We decided to randomly sample aging husbands
and wives in every state in the United States and follow them for
several years.
We are interested in their health, their marriage
relationships, their relationships with their adult children, the
relationships with aunts and uncles, their relationships with their
grandchildren, and their relationships with siblings and cousins in
later life. They are an interesting group of research
participants. They are excited to tell their stories. If
something of import happens in their lives between the times we contact
them they write to us to tell us of the experience. In some ways
it is like having a very large group of extended friends who want you to
understand the stories of their lives. I have been greatly
changed by the research. I would like to share with
you some of the important events of their lives in their own voices.
Regarding marriage. From a husband and wife who have been
married for over 65 years.
Wife: " I would say that
our marriage gets better with time. Oh, it has not always been
easy. At times we have fought and had some pretty bitter
disagreements. As we have gotten older, those disagreements have
faded. We are much more companions now. We like each
other’s company, and we help one another. I am so glad we stayed
together for all this time. I think we have done far better
together than we would have done apart. I believe we both have
better health because of each other."
Husband:
"Don’t get us
wrong. Things have not just been smooth and happy all the time,
but as we look back over the 65 years of our marriage, we are absolutely
positive that we have fared better facing life together than we would
have if we had been alone. Our marriage is the foundation of our
family. We have 5 children, 23 grandchildren, and 11 great
grandchildren, and it all started with our marriage. Actually, it
started long before that because we credit at least a part of our
marriage to our own parents.
Regarding their children (Voices from another couple different than
the above)
Husband: I measure my success as a father by how well my sons
do as fathers to my grandchildren. When I see them do something
right, I think, "Maybe I didn’t do so bad after all."
I see in my adult children some of my characteristics that I don’t
particularly like. I wonder if it is just in the genetics or what.
I wish that I could help them learn from my mistakes, and I have been
able to to some extent. The older I grow the more I realize how we
are connected together by generations. Did my father wonder why I
have some of the same characteristics that he did? I think the
longer I am a parent and grandparent and now great grandparent, the
better I understand my parents and my grandparents."
Wife:
"I realize how important it is
to support my children in being parents. When they were younger
children, I thought someday I will get even because you will have
children just like you are now. But as I watch them, as the core
of my heart and nature go out for them, I want them to feel my
supportive presence. The connection between us is so very
important, and it will last long after I am dead and gone."
Regarding their grandchildren:
Grandmother:
"I have 35
grandchildren. They often tell me how much influence I have in
their lives. But you know, they don’t realize how much
influence they have in my life. I have learned so much from having
grandchildren. They are the legacy that I leave, but they have
impacted me in ways that they will never know. Sometimes I think
it is the grandchildren that teach the parents and grandparents, not the
other way around. Having grandchildren and watching them
grow–that’s my greatest contribution to the world."
Grandfather:
"I worked as a
chief business executive for over 40 years. I made major
decisions. I worked side by side with powerful men and women.
But one grandchild has changed me more than any of those people I worked
with, and I have learned more from watching my children be parents than
I learned in all those 40 years in the work place."
Regarding Uncles, Aunts, and Cousins:
Adult Child:
"What I remember
the most from my youth is how much it meant to me to be with cousins.
It gave me a sense that my family was something important. Every
year on holidays my aunts and uncles and their children all came to our
grandfather’s house. I could hardly wait until that day came.
We played, ate, and had fun together. I can close my eyes and
still the joy of those times. My aunts and my uncles and my
cousins have affected my life in such positive ways."
Adult Children Regarding the Grandparent Generation:
Father:
"I raise my own
children, and my parents, the grandparents of my children observe.
It is so strange to me that they were such active and good parents to
me, and now they stand back watching me be a parent. Sometimes I
just want to turn it all over to them because they did a good job with
me. But then I realize that I have a part of my parents in me, and
I ask myself what would my father say to me if I were doing this.
Then it is as if I will always have my father with me, and I realize
that maybe he has his father with him in the same way, and so it goes
back generations to relatives I have never met but undoubtedly have
daily influence in my life."
Mother: "When we were
deciding where to live when my husband was looking for a job, a major
factor was wanting our children to be around their grandparents.
We could accept a job that pays more, but we could move closer to our
parents, and our children would be blessed because of that. The
extra money just was not as important to us. Have we ever
regretted that decision? Not for a moment! To see the
relationship my children have with my parents and to be able to continue
my relationship at a closer range with my parents has made so much more
of a difference than money would have."
Grandchildren regarding their Grandparents:
Granddaughter:
"My Grandmother is
so important in my life. She helps connect me with her parents and
her grandparents. I love to hear her tell stories about when she
was a child and what her mother and her grandmother were like. As
I listen to these stories I understand that I belong to a long line of
strong, compassionate women. It gives me hope and courage in my
life. When I have my own children, I hope I can pass on to them
what my relationship with my grandmother was like. Then of course
I will be a grandmother someday, and I will be telling stories about
generations of mothers and daughters, and grandmothers and grand
daughters. And in doing so we will tell the story of who we
are."
Grandson:
"My Grandfather is my
hero. When I am having a hard time he helps me understand my self
and my parents. He is able to understand me because he says he was
so much like me when he was my age. All I can say is that I love
him so much"
In this national research project we have discovered four outcomes
that individual family members receive from intergenerational family
processes. These are first, the development of values; second,
identity and relationship solidarity; third, family history, traditions,
and roots; and fourth, role conceptualization/modeling.
Value Development: Teaching values and heritage through
telling of stories is one of the major impacts that grandparents have
one grandchildren (Denham & Smith, 1989; Tinsley & Parke, 1984).
Conroy and Fahey (1985) described grandparents as "significant
others who have a great deal to do with the initial development of
one’s view of life" (p 205) Adolescent and young-adult
grandchildren report that their relationship with their grandparents is
of great importance to them in the development of their values.
Grandmothers are particularly influential in the value development of
their grandchildren (Roberto & Stroes, 1992). In terms of the
values learned, grandchildren report that they learned about how to
treat others, respect for elders, and religious orientation including
faith from their interaction with their grandparents.
Identity and relationship solidarity: One of the assumptions about
intergenerational families is that strong emotional bonds between the
generations contribute to strong personal identity and to preserving
future relationships of the children. Do the relationships with
parents and with grandparents affect the intimate relationships that
children develop as they reach adulthood? The answer appears to be
yes. Benson, Arditti, Reguero De Atiles, & Smith, (1992)
studied young adults between the ages of 18 and 23 to determine whether
their views about their relationships with their parents and
grandparents were related to their views about their current
dating relationships. They discovered that there is a definite
connection. The kind of relationship we have with our parents and
with our grandparents tends to influence the way we will deal in dating
and eventually in marriage. Wakschlag, Chase-Lansdale, &
Brooks-Gun, (1996) examined the quality of current African-American
mother-grandmother relationship and how this affected parenting of young
children. They concluded that the "quality of the current
mother-grandmother relationship is systematically related to parenting
of the next generation." (p 140). More specifically, they
discovered that when mother interactions with their own mothers were
open, flexible, and somewhat autonomous, these mothers were better able
to respond appropriately to the parenting of their children, regardless
of the age of these mothers, their education, or even their language
abilities.
Family history, traditions, and roots:
A popular view of grandparents has been that they are the historians for
their families. In families in which there is contact between
three and sometimes four generations, children and other family
members experience more family traditions and have a greater sense
of their family history and their roots. These characteristics
relate to having personal pride, historical embeddedness, and greater
social competence.
Individuals have great interest in learning who they are.
Peoples of all cultures desire to know more about their roots.
They want to know who their ancestors were and what they did. They
want to understand their values and their struggles. From the time
I was a small boy my mother told me stories about her grandparents, my
great grandparents. I saw pictures of them. I heard how they
influenced her life. The same was true for my father. It
gave me a foundation of who I am.
Peoples of the world have great interest in their ancestors. Simply take a look at the number of
sites on the world wide web that are genealogy related. There a
thousands. Of the larger ones some have as many as 7 million hits
per day. There are few other internet sites that can boast that
kind of activity. Youth seem to have an innate interest in hearing
stories about their ancestors. One of the benefits parents and
grandparent give to the children generation is the telling of stories
about their own relationships with their grandparents and even great
grandparents.
Role
conception/model: Franks, Hughes, Phelps, and Williams (1993)
interviewed young adults to determine what roles their grandparents
played in their lives. They identified four roles including
surrogate parent, friend, story-teller, and confidant. As
discussed earlier one’s relationship with grandparents and parents is
related to the quality of adult significant relationships such as
marriage. Family members observe the process of aging and may even
adopt ways they will respond when they are in a similar stage of life.
Many cultures have developed legends to explain how the
hearts of the children will be turned toward their fathers. One of
these legends explains that children came to Malachi and told him that
they had gone to God and asked Him to let their parents enter with them
into paradise. But God said, "Your parents have wounded you;
they have abused you, and I have heard your cries. How can I allow
them to come and be with you?" According to the legend when
Malachi heard this he instructed the children to go back to God and say,
"Our parents have hurt us. Yes, they have even abused us at
times. But it is precisely because they have done this to us that
we have the right to ask that they be allowed to enter into
paradise." When God heard this, he wept and could not resist
their plea and allowed the parents in.(Personal communication, Truman G.
Madsen, October 1999).
Turning the hearts of children to their parents and the hearts of
parents to their children also has implications for families and aging.
Aging should be a family affair. Too often, however, medical and
nursing institutions provide a way for families to lose touch with their
elderly. And the institutions are often not well equipped to deal
with families. They cater to individuals, and they often see
family members as getting in the way and creating inconveniences.
I understand that there are times when the aged need greater skilled
medical care than what families can provide. Certainly each case
must be considered individually. But I fear that societies are
working to disconnect families from the processes of care. Even
when aging family members need institutional care, there are numerous
ways to see the family rather than the individual as the consumer.
In our policies and approaches we simply must do better in involving
families in the care of the aging.
Aging: A Family Affair
Relational Ethics. Adult children have borne
and will continue to bear heavy responsibility for taking care of their
elderly parents (Choi, 1995). In thinking about intergenerational
families I like to borrow the concept of relational ethics from Ivan
Boszormenyi-Nagy (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986; Boszormenyi-Nagy
& Ulrich, 1981) and Terry Hargrave (1997), internationally known
family therapists.
Relational ethics deals with family members perceptions of the
balance of trust, justice, loyalty, merit and entitlement among members
of the intergenerational family. In the process of give and take
between family members, especially between generations, relational
ethics requires them to assume responsibility for consequences of their
actions and to strive to achieve fairness and over time, equity.
In other words, relationships in families can be all give or all take at
times, but over time they must have a fairly balanced distribution of
give and take. According to Hargrave (Hargrave & Anderson,
1997) "This is an instinctive contract among family members based
on trust that the family is committed to meet the individual member’s
needs and that the individual members will do what is necessary to
maintain the existence of the family" (p.63).
Basically we can think of a ledger for each person. On this
subjective ledger is kept the balance of giving and taking between
individual family members and between generations. When children
are parented well, they grow into adults who will want to balance the
ledger by nurturing and loving their own children and returning love and
care to their own parents.
Debates about sacrifice: Vice or virtue?
What would lead adult children to want to care for their aging parents?
Precisely the process of relational ethics in which adult children
recognize they can balance the ledger by giving. Yet some voices
in society frame serving and giving even among family members as
negative, even oppressive. Listen to these quotes:
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"Sacrifice is a traditional virtue that has been turned
into a personal defect in the interplay of individualism and feminist
theory. Sacrifice has been seen as behavior required more of
women, and especially of mothers, than of men" (Bahr & Bahr,
1997, p 7).
-
"The casting of service and sacrifice, especially the
sacrifice of mothers, in negative terms is a function of a body of
theory oriented not to describing the world but to changing it. It
is as if they assume that women’s oppression is in some way connected
to mothering" (DiQuinzio, 1993, pp3-4).
Those who advocate that sacrifice and giving among family members
is oppressive ignore developmental aspects of the family and its
members.
Listen to the voices of the developmental approach:
-
"Sacrifice is a component of mature love between family
members. It develops as love matures" (Noller, 1996, p 109).
-
"To care about someone does mean sacrificing one’s time and
energy for that person. It means devoting them to the person and
taking joy in doing so; in the end, one feels richer for one’s
efforts, not poorer. Sacrifice cannot be reciprocated." (Todorov,
1996, p 140).
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Religion generally teaches "that we have nothing better to do
with our lives than to share them with others...We shall thrive only if
we nourish our brothers and sisters" (Burtchaell, 1984, pp
118-119).
-
"An essential characteristic of sacrifice is that it is
not a consequence of conscious, rational decision-making. Its
voluntary nature is more reflexive than cognitive, more a matter of
community identity, intuition, and reaction, than a realistic weighing
of alternatives. It is a response to need, not an assessment of
possible damage to one’s personal projects" (Bahr & Bahr,
1997, p 30).
Many cultures in the world believe that sacrifice is the
predecessor of loving. They do not
understand or even have language to describe romantic love which western
thought sees so important before individuals marry. Such cultures
would say it is only when a husband and wife have helped each other when
they are sick; when they have suffered together to bear and to raise
children; when they have joined together to solve the daily tasks of
living; when they have seen their children on the very bed of death and
worked together to pull them through; it is then that love develops.
I once wrote in a magazine article that sacrifice usually precedes
commitment in relationships. We sacrifice for members of our
family, and in doing so we build commitment to them.
Those groups who in the name of individualism and individual rights
view service in families as oppressive fail to understand the power of
relational ethics. Arguing that family members should not serve
each other acknowledges only taking. Families are by their very
nature relational, and relationships do not tolerate individual members
to always be takers. When I have taken from you, my instinctive
sense of our relational ledger propels me to want to give to you at some
time as well. It does not matter that giving is inconvenient
or even requires me to sacrifice. According to Boszormenyi-Nagy,
this relational ethic is related to my own emotional health and the
emotional health of my family–not just my immediate family but the
generations of my family.
In the 1960's the value that behavioral and social sciences
sold the world was that of individualism and self interest. Needs
of individuals became paramount above other values. Since that time
individualism and self interest have dominated fields such as
psychology. It has gone so far that today therapists in the name
of mental health are encouraging individuals to leave their marriages
and their families in the name of individualism and individual needs.
They see nothing wrong in these encouragements. From their point
of view they do it to protect the people they advise.
Why do we continue to convince the cultures of the world that
personal growth and development of the self must take place away from
the home. Is the choice either I develop myself or I
take care of my family? Cannot service ever be given
willingly and when it is, does the person giving service even worry
about being oppressed?
Politics of care versus morality of care. If people,
especially family members, reject relational ethics between generations,
then is government care the answer? The debate is shifting from
issues of "morality of care" to "politics of
care" in which the "ultimate responsibility for care is borne
by the federal government" (Bahr & Bahr, 1997, p 19).
Those who argue for this political ethic of care would absolve
family members from any obligation to balance the intergenerational
ledger. Certainly spreading universal caring and
support for the aged is not in and of itself a bad thing.
But if arguing for an ethic of care reduces family members’
responsibility and intergenerational obligation, then we have done
something that will, in the end, harm the natural family. We also
will have placed an obligation on governments and their
constituencies in which there is no relational ethic, no give and take,
and even a discounting of the importance of aging as a family matter.
The record of governments being able to provide daily care does not give
me hope for any political ethic of caring.
Even the social and behavioral science literature from across
the world sees caring for elderly family members as a burden.
The reason the literature does not address the benefits of family
members caring for the aged is because they never ask the question.
Their pre-assumptions guide them to ask only about the burden. In
your life have you ever experienced something that is a burden but is
that the same time a benefit.
In my longitudinal study of three and sometimes four generational
families, those who have grandparent generations living in the
same household or those who are giving significant care to older family
members living outside their home, universally report that while caring
for elderly family members is stressful, there are significant other
positive benefits. What about the sense of value development,
sense of identity and relational solidarity, family history and story
telling, and the potential for role modeling? Boulding (1973)
stated, "A gift helps to create the identity of the giver, and a
gift either to an individual or to a cause of community identifies the
giver with the recipient. Thus, the gift builds itself into the
identity of the giver" (p 28). Where are these ideas
represented in the scientific literature on aging? Generally they
are absent. A discontinuity exists between what the
"scientists" report and what family members actually
experience. No family caregiver denies that caring for
elderly family members requires personal sacrifice, but family members
also see many benefits that the literature ignores.
Nagy’s concept of relational ethics requires that I respond in a
moral way to other’s needs in my family. I do not get to decide
whether the need will come at a time that is convenient to me.
My Personal Experience
Forgive me if I now become personal. When I was asked to give
this presentation my 88 year old mother was in fairly good health.
She lived independently and could care for herself. In August of
this year she was hospitalized in acute care for 10 days and was put in
a skilled nursing facility for three weeks after that. It was
apparent that she could not continue to live alone. She wanted us
to place her in a nursing home, but we wanted her to come to our home
where we cared for her. Adapting so that we could provide for her
care required each member of the family to make changes. It was
stressful. I had forgotten what it was like to care so intimately
for someone else’s personal needs. Changing diapers, keeping
track of medications, and spreading cheer and good morale competed with
time I had previously spent on other things. Our home changed.
Sounds were different; smells were different, and our routine was
different. Yet in the midst of all of this, I could wake up every
morning and have my mother there. That part was incredible!
Every morning my mother was there. That made up for all the
stress. With her being there each member of my family has been
able to have deep, meaningful conversations with her. My 19 year
old daughter talks about her grandmother’s presence in our house.
Hers, even in her ill state, is a presence that is instilling
values in my daughter, a sense of her self and a relationship
solidarity, family history and roots, and a great role model.
Approximately two weeks ago mom required acute hospital care
again. On one of my visits the nurses brought lunch. Mom was
bedridden and could not get up to eat. I watched as she attempted
to try to eat in a prone position. It was hard for her to even see
the food and even harder for her to get it from the tray to her mouth.
I asked how I could help, and she asked if I would feed her. As I
put each morsel of food into her mouth, I thought I am feeding the
person who fed me when I was dependent and needed care. Then my
mind wandered to times when I was ill. My mother had stroked my
head and desired with all her heart for my good health. The ledger
was being balanced, but the odd thing was I was still growing and
gaining from the experience. I thought how many people have
the close, intimate experience of being able to feed their mother?
When my wife and I return from this conference, we will again take her
into our home. I know that not all families are able to care for
their aged. There are many factors that affect this, but I speak
out against practices that would take families out of the aging process.
The patient needs to be the family, not just the aged family member.
Natural families are generational families. We must not allow
redefinitions of family to discount this crucial characteristic.
Those who seek to change what family has been ignore the
multigenerational aspect of families. It simply is not a part of
what they pay attention to because the forms of relationships they
propose will simply not be able to provide the benefits of generations
that the natural family does. Lets make this new century the
"century of the intergenerational family" and let’s make
aging a family affair.
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