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Conflict in the

The article examines age as a possible group identity. It sets out to determine which age groups in society today have a stronger sense of identity and the source of that identity, while drawing on the tenets of social psychology and the theories of social identity and optimal distinctiveness. The latter two theories provide insight into the motives for identifi cation with social groups, but see different needs at the heart of this identifi cation, and thus offer alternative hypotheses of age as a source of status and positive self-image versus age as a source of distinctiveness and a 'substitute' source of identity. The analysis is based on representative data for the Czech population over the age of 20 drawn from the European Social Survey Round 4 and the International Social Survey Programme 2003. It shows that self-categorisation into the verbally defi ned age groups of young, middle-aged, and old is indeed common. It also reveals a much stronger level of peer group self-identifi cation among the youngest and oldest respondents, despite the low social status of these age groups. The article closes with a discussion of the varying signifi cance age has as a source of social identity and the invalidity of the hypothesis that age group identifi cation is dependent on the social status of its members.

The authors deal with the inter-generation solidarity under conditions of taking care of seniors who are not self-sufficient. They were particularly focused on studying one aspect of the family solidarity concept: solidarity of agreement. They tried to combine conflict and consensual attitudes to this problem and thus to characterize the nature of conflicts and harmony in families taking care of seniors. The target of the study was mapping of relationships between the life harmony and manifested conflicts between persons providing and accepting the care and finding differences in this field between families taking care of seniors under different conditions. After presenting basic terms, outlining the research targets and introducing the theoretical background, the authors present results of their empiric sociological research. Standardized interviews were performed with 405 respondents taking care of their own aging parents or aging parents of their partners. In the section Results, a general relationship between the degree of harmony and conflicts in the families inquired is first described and the families are subsequently compared depending on the method of taking care of the senior. For the comparison, families taking care of seniors at home, families taking care of seniors in a separate household and families transferring the senior to the institutional care were differentiated from each other. The results indicate that there are differences in the degree and nature of conflicts depending on different types of the family arrangement. Typology of families was established to facilitate the description of relationships between the concepts of the consent, conflict and method of taking the care. The results demonstrated that it is impossible to idealize the solidarity in families taking care of seniors in their own households and indicated requirements for supplementing the model of the family solidarity by an investigation of conflicts. During this, they may not behave as a barrier in the family solidarity, but they may rather serve as an indicator of the interest and mutual dependence reducing the personal autonomy.

Karlova univerzita v Praze, Fakulta sociálních věd, Institut sociologických studií Summary Within the framework of a research into the Family solidarity, which served as a basis of the article presented here, a questionnaire examination was employed to address more than 400 families taking care of seniors who were not self-sufficient. From these families, about 10% of seniors completed an independent questionnaire supplementing information by the point of view of the senior who experienced the care. The research was focused on dimensions of the family solidarity according to V. L. Bengtson, and in the present article, the emotional solidarity is dealt with, expressed by the degree of the reciprocity in the emotional relationship. In the first part of the article, the emotional solidarity is considered as one of basic components of the inter-generation solidarity with taking into account its importance in family relationships in the course of taking care of seniors. The second part is aimed at the emotional solidarity directed to factors affecting the relationships between the caregiver and the senior. For the analysis, the linear regression method was used and models based on it were independently established for different conditions: for home caregivers taking the care of seniors in households, and for institutional caregivers taking the care of seniors housed in institutions. Conclusions of the analysis suggest that the previous help and similarity of mutual relationships in the past are the most important factors affecting the contemporary emotional bonds in the relationship between the caregiver and the senior.