This research focuses on the intergenerational relations among the older family members and their children who work together in family businesses. This business form meshes each member's major life roles into one context and firmly binds them together with the al solidarity, but as it strengthens family bonds, it also severely tests them. The P.I.'s preliminary study targeted ten key areas for investigation, including cohesion and conflict between the generations, retirement options and their impact, business-family career contingencies, and the special roles of women and children-in-law in the business-family. The sample will consist of 35 business-families with more than one second generation member involved in the business. A pool of such families will be generated by service organization officials, the pool stratified into broad categories most appropriate for small businesses; sample families will be selected at random from the strata. The following family members will be interviewed: father, mother, children (in and out of business) and children-in-law in the business. We expect five to six interviews per family (175-180). The primary source of data will be semi-structured interviews, supplemented by assessments of family consensus and ratings on relationship dimensions. The strategy of analysis is to examine data from each family as a set, then compare data across families on the bases of family position (e.g. generation, gender, kinship categories). Additional comparisons will be made on the relationship dimensions with equivalent data from the P.I.'s previous research on older fathers and their sons, using selected samples of sons who share no occupational interests or involvement in father's work, and sons who share occupational interests but have no involvement in fathers' work. Family support and solidarity are critical to the well-being of the elderly. This study of the most extreme case of continuous intergenerational involvement will clarify the sources of cohesion and conflict, and the nature of intergenerational family solidarity.
