中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: In recent years, much attention has been paid to the issue of elderly care with the changing structure of the population in modern Chinese societies. The purpose of this research is to explore how Taiwanese adult children deal with the demands of caring for their parents as they move into old age. We focused on 3 aspects: gender, marriage, and intergenerational relationships. Methods: For the purpose of exploration and theory building, a qualitative method was used in this study. We invited 34 adults age 30 to 55 to participate in this study. They were recruited through 3 channels: personal acquaintances, contacts of friends/relatives, and participant recommendations. Half of the participants were male and the other half female. Half were unmarried and the other half married. Results: Three themes in these adult children's experiences of caring for their parents were identified. The first was the direction of intergenerational care. Adult children seemed to ”accompany” their parents rather than ”care for” them. Aging parents instead provided assistance to their adult children in many ways. The second theme related to the change in family relations; there was a power-shift phenomenon in adult intergenerational caring experiences. The power and the capacity of adult children rose in the process of caring for their parents. Further, the parent-child relationship in childhood seemed to affect the adult children's caring relationship with their parents. The third and final theme generated was the boundary marking of gender and marriage. Our findings suggest that unmarried daughters seemed to be automatically considered a primary caregiver. On the other hand, unmarried sons were expected to continue the family legacy and provide financial support for their parents. In addition, unmarried daughters worried that the daughter-in-law role accompanying marriage would add the responsibility to care for their parents-in-law and cause them to lose their self-identity. Conclusions: This study revealed that the intergenerational care-giving relationship has a strong psychological implication and follows the reciprocity rule. A child's willingness and method of caring for elderly parents is affected by that child's gender and marital status. In addition, the power-shifting process of the evolving intergenerational relationship brings a lot of challenges to adult children.