Adult Children's Attachment and Helping Behavior to Elderly Parents: A Path Model

Filial Responsibility Expectations Among Adult Child-Older Parent Pairs

“…Still others have discovered that if a child perceived the relationship as characterized by fairness, understanding, trust, respect and affection (Bengston, 1973), filial responsibility role enactment seemed more likely. Cicirelli (1983a) found that strong feelings of attachment --emotional or affectional bonds between parent and child --led to increased attachment behaviors and influenced children's commitment to provide future help. Other relationship quality variables cited as reasons for helping older parents included: love of parent, desire to respond to perceived parental need, and feelings of gratefulness for things parent had done for child (Cicirelli, 1987).…”

“…Some have proposed that filial responsibility norms and actual behaviors do not simply emerge from feelings of affection for one's aged parent (Finley et al, 1988;Jarrett, 1985). Others have found that long-standing intergenerational problems and conflicts such as a history of rejection, alienation or argument diminished the willingness of children to assist aging parents (Cicirelli, 1983a;Simos, 1973). Still others have discovered that if a child perceived the relationship as characterized by fairness, understanding, trust, respect and affection (Bengston, 1973), filial responsibility role enactment seemed more likely.…”

“…In many cases, care of aging parents is thwarted because of a number of other obligations and constraints on the adult child (Brody, 1981;Miller, 1981;Treas, 1977). For example, one researcher (Cicirelli, 1983a(Cicirelli, , 1983b(Cicirelli, , 1987 examined the effects of marital disruption on filial role enactment. Cicirelli (1983b) Stoller (1983) suggested that sons assumed greater parental caregiving responsibilities when daughters or daughters-inlaw were preoccupied with the care of young children.…”

“…So too, contingent circumstances of adult children modified the degree to which grown offspring could realistically assist their parents. Factors such as marital disruption (Cicirelli, 1983a(Cicirelli, , 1983b(Cicirelli, , 1987, employment status (Brody & Schoonover, 1986;Stoller, 1983;), marital status (Brody & Schoonover, 1986;Stoller, 1983), gender (Horowitz, 1985Houser et al, 1985), birth order (Houser et al, 1985;Wake & Sporakowskl, 1972), and affection (Cicirelli, 1983a;Bengston, 1973;Finley et al, 1988;Jarrett, 1985) have varying effects on filial enactment. …”

Parent care: the core component of intergenerational relationships in middle and late adulthood

“…This research focuses on the (coherence of the) internal representation of attachment rooted in the lifelong relationship with the parents and makes use of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (Mahieu 2004;Pearson et al 1993;Steele et al 2004). In still other studies of parent care, attachment is conceptualized as the strength of the current (secure) attachment to the parents (mother or father), and measured with the Adult Attachment Scale introduced by Cicirelli (1983Cicirelli ( , 1991Cicirelli ( , 1993Cicirelli ( , 1995Carpenter 2001;Datta et al 2003;Mahieu 2004). This variety of approaches might help to find out what are the most fruitful conceptualizations and the most adequate measures of attachment, and whose attachment to whom is the most relevant in adult childelderly parent caregiving research.…”