A Multigenerational Family

Although all those aspects, physical, social, emotional, and cognitive play a big role in defining someone as “old”, but it would very hard to set a concrete rule for classifying a person as “old”. As the textbook states, “there is no international standard for classifying someone as an older person”. When looking at the physical factors, one could say that you are old when you use a cane or use a wheelchair, but you could use a cane or wheelchair even when you are not old. But you could look at physical features such as wrinkles to say that someone is old. As for social aspects, I do not think there are differences in the way younger people socialize and older people socialize. Older generations and younger generations may have differing opinions

In China, parents are allowed to sue their children for not visiting them often. This is a very extreme example of how culture influences people to live in multigenerational families, but nonetheless, this shows that a close knit family structure is very important in China. From a personal standpoint, I believe that many Asian families have multigenerational household. I know this to be true because I come from an Asian background. In South Korea, males usually always live at home with their parents even after marriage. Often times, women have to go live with their husband’s family. This was and still is one of the reasons why people want sons instead of daughters. But there are other factors that influence the formation of multigenerational households. The Modernization theory may explain why there are so few multigenerational households in America. The theory suggests that people have a desire to transform from a relatively rural way of life toward an urban way. This means that young people in rural areas have dreams of leaving their families and being successful in urban cities. The textbook states that this is also occurring in India as well. This phenomenon leaves the elderly to take care of themselves with no one to assist