The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of socio-historical change over almost four decades on intergenerational family relationships and, in turn, on the psychological well-being of family members. Specifically, it seeks to examine (1) whether increasing rates of divorce and step-family formation, increasing work-family stress, declining filial norms, increased family size among the baby-boomers, and healthy aging have reduced the willingness, capacity, and need of adult children to serve as resources to older parents in contemporary times, (2) whether the intergenerational transmission of values and beliefs across successive generations has weakened in strength from the 1970s to the 2010s, and whether this weakening is explained by historical changes in family structure and filial norms, and (3) whether time and money resources are reciprocally exchanged between generations as young-adult children become middle-aged and their parents become elderly during a historical period of increasing wealth in the parent generation and greater economic uncertainty in the child generation. To address these issues, we propose to extend the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), a study of more than 2,500 multigenerational family members that began in 1971 and has continued to 2005. By fielding additional surveys in 2010 and 2013 we plan to bring to fruition a series of cross-time, cross-historical, and cross-generational designs that allow historical-comparative and long-term sequential analyses. Of particular utility is the ability to apply a generational-sequential design that compares middle-aged children to their parents when both groups are chronologically similar in age but embedded in different historical contexts. This design feature allows us to better understand how macro-social trends have affected family functioning and address issues that have important implications for the well-being of family members in changing times. We also intend to publicly archive these rare longitudinal data on multigenerational families for use by the wider research community.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of socio-historical change over almost four decades on intergenerational family relationships and, in turn, on the psychological well-being of family members. To address these issues, we propose to extend the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), a study of more than 2,500 multigenerational family members that began in 1971 and has continued to 2005. By fielding additional surveys in 2010 and 2013, we plan to bring to fruition a series of cross-time, cross-historical, and cross-generational designs that allow historical-comparative and long-term sequential analyses. We seek to understand whether macro-social trends over the period have reduced the amount of care and support provided to older parents, compromised the well-being of adult child caregivers, limited the ability of parents to transmit their values to offspring, and disrupted reciprocal exchanges between generations. These issues have important implications for the mental health of family members in changing times.
| Min, Joohong; Silverstein, Merril; Gruenewald, Tara L (2018) Intergenerational Similarity of Religiosity Over the Family Life Course. Res Aging 40:580-596 |
| Silverstein, Merril; Giarrusso, Roseann (2010) Aging and Family Life: A Decade Review. J Marriage Fam 72:1039-1058 |
