Older Adults and Relationship

Introduction

Personal networks consist of close friends, family members and other trusted people (Wrzus, Hanel, Wagner & Neyer, 2013). Family relationships today, compared to pervious generations, are less duty driven and more focused around personal affection (Lowenstein, Katz & Gur-Yaish, 2007). In most people’s lives, young or old, they are communicating for affection. They are showing that they are concerned about one another and they’re showing that they care about what is going on in each others lives (Fowler, 2009). When older adults are coming from a low socioeconomic and low education background, they are more likely to have a stronger emotional bond with their family and less likely to suffer from some sort of chronic illness (Lowenstein et al., 2007).

Like mentioned before, when parents are coming from poor health, low education and no recent moves, they are more likely to have a close family bond with both their adult children and their siblings (Hank, 2007). The close relationships between the elderly and their family members helps improve their well-being but it also has an impact on the younger generations view on the relationships as well (Sener, Oztop, Dogan & Guven, 2008). In an older adults life, their relationships can be very important. Like sibling relationships, older adults benefit from intergenerational relationships, like with their adult children, for life satisfaction (Lowenstein et al., 2007).

Adult Children

As parents begin aging, they likely to need more support and assistance then what they believe they do (Kim, Zarit, Eggebeen, Birditt, Fingerman, 2011). It has been shown that when children were given both emotional and financial support from their parents when they were young adults, they were m...

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