Aging processes and effects in research

¶ … human life, family is on of the most prominent and lasting relationships we will have. This is also why the idea of systems theory has been particularly applied to create what is now known as family systems theory. According to this theory, everybody has specific family connections that can be graphically presented. In other words, a diagram might represent the different family members, with arrows suggesting the specific connections, as in parent to child, aunt to nephew, siblings to each other, and so on. Regardless of the specific nature of these relationships, it remains true that human beings need relationships and family connections not only for physical and financial benefit, but also for emotional and mental well-being.

When one applies this idea to aging, the one main truth is change. Family and social relationships change with age. Concomitantly, although this is not something anyone can change, the way in which change and age are managed within the family and social relationship setup can dictate the level of well-being experienced throughout middle and old age.

When considering the life span, there is little surprise in the fact that change is part and parcel of age, especially concerning the parent-child relationship. As young children, for example, our main concern is getting through school without having our parents too disappointed in us. As young adults, we are concerned about getting a job. More complicated even than this is navigating through the mine field of relationships as we settle down and start families. Life complicates even more as we try to live both our lives while trying to help our children cope with theirs.

By this trajectory, one might assume that old age is probably the most complicated time in human life. Such an assessment would not be far wrong, especially when viewed from the care giving (and receiving) perspective, in which aging parents often fulfill multiple care giving roles while also increasingly being in need of getting some sort of care.

As parents become grandparents, further change is experienced as roles change. Greater longevity means that older generations are available for much longer than the case was in the past. One thing that this means is that parents who have become grandparents cold also experience a period of "second parenthood." In other words, many children make use of their support to care for young children. In situations in which children are very young, adult children may leave their offspring with their parents during work hours or when they go out for a night. In other words, grandparents provide care for their young children in lieu of more expensive options like formal childcare or baby sitters. Indeed, about 1 in 5 preschool children receive regular child care from their grandparents (Connidis, 2010). Many of these are cases in which grandmothers provide child care services for working mothers.

The effect of this on the relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren is extremely important from a variety of perspectives. Those grandparents who have retired, for example, have the opportunity to continue feeling that they are playing an important role in the lives of their children. Further, the care giving role provides a platform for grandparents and grandchildren to build a loving relationship, which could result in a reciprocal care giving relationship later in life. By association, grandparents who have frequent contact with their grandchildren can also cultivate a platform upon which to teach grandchildren the importance of both giving and receiving care within the family circle.

Older parents who remain able bodied may also experience a need to remain part of their adult children's lives (Fountain, 2013). This could cause some frustration for both parties, where children have their own schedules and lives, while parents may feel excluded, neglected, or even unloved. To handle this, Fountain suggests that adult children, and indeed society in general, need to be very sensitive about the needs of their elderly parents in this regard. Firm boundaries can be established with sufficient sensitivity to create a better platform of continued interaction between adult children and their older parents. Once care giving becomes necessary for older parents, the relationship established in this way will then create a sound platform for a sensitive and caring relationship on the parts of both older people and their children.

Interestingly, it is also an increasing phenomenon that older adults whose years have not yet placed them in need of care often act as support providers for their grown children. In such cases, children may return home or remain in their parental home for a variety of reasons. It is more common for adult children to return home after leaving, thereby "refilling the empty nest" (Connidis, 2010), than it is to delay leaving home. Some reasons for this phenomenon include unemployment and divorce as reasons for returning home, and higher education as a reason for leaving. This creates a situation in which older, able-bodied adults act as continuing care givers to their children for longer than the conventional social expectation. Children who have never married are also more likely to return to the parental home than those who have been married and divorced or those who are married.

On the other hand, increased longevity may also mean increased debilitation and an increased need for care. Age-related changes such as general physical decline and chronic disease are unpleasant in more cases than not. These contribute to a loss of personal control, which could affect the mental health of the older person (Hollis-Sawyer, personal communication, 3/20/2013). It could lead to late-life depression in the older person, and could also affect his or her care givers in various ways. In a relationship where the child becomes the care giver, for example, the offspring might experience a sense of helplessness and loss when observing age-related changes in an older parent who has previously been a constant care giver to the child. It is a kind of change that needs to be managed and negotiated carefully in order to ensure the optimal outcome for all parties involved.

Older persons may be in need of counselling regarding an increased sense of need and helplessness, while care givers within the family may also experience frustrations related to their new roles. Heffernan (2007) makes some specific recommendations for those with parents in need of care. The most important of these is not only open communication, but also the need for acceptance. Aging is a part of life, and a natural transition as the years progress. Accepting this by on the part of both aging parents and their children will make the transition somewhat easier.

In a more general sense, Stibich (2007) also suggests that aging is an easier process when it includes a continued sense of being needed. This does not need to be exclusive to family relationships. Indeed, the sense of being needed by both family and friends contributes to physical and emotional well-being, especially in older age. As the aging process progresses, the assumption by most people is that fewer functions and necessities can be continued. However, thee ironic truth is that the recognition of more such functions contributes to an individual's sense of physical and emotional health.

Even in cases where an older person does not have children or a living spouse, as circle of friends can prove vital to continued effective living. In other words, even changing trajectories of relationships, whether these are familial or not, are vital to the human sense of well-being. In fact, all relationships become even more important as we mature, since these continue to connect us with our own sense of humanity. For an older person, this means that his or her humanity continues to be important to others. For people in such relationships, life continues to have meaning on the basis of continued meaning in human relationships.

3.

As mentioned, aging changes our roles and relationships in life. In addition to the birth of children and grandchildren, as well as changes within external relationships, the relationship within a household can change with life changes such as marriage, old age, and age-related conditions. Retirement, for example, can create new roles for the partners in a relationships. The retired person no longer needs to work outside the house as breadwinner. On the other hand, this can also create stress on the relationship should the pension provision not be sufficient to ensure a level of living that is comfortable. This could create the necessity for both partners to take part-time work. This can change the dynamic of the couple, who now face new conditions and challenges that must be overcome together. For many, overcoming such challenges strengthens the bond.

Others, however, find that it creates extra tension that the marriage cannot necessarily survive. One of the partners, for example, might experience resentment that comes with the idea of having to rely on the other for survival. In other words, where a man has worked his entire life to care for his family, older age may bring a situation where his pension is no longer sufficient to maintain the standard of living the couple has been used to throughout their lives. Should his wife than take either part- or full-time work to compensate for this, the male idea of self-reliance and care for others may be affected negatively. Conversely, a woman who is required to offer her own resources to help make ends meet for the couple may resent not being able to rely on her husband as she is used to. From both sides, this could create stress and the possible end of the marriage.

Another stress factor can be age-related illness, creating a marriage condition in which one partner needs to become the other's carer rather than equal partner. This also creates a change in the relationship dynamic that can cause considerable stress and/or resentment for both partners. The caring partner, for example, can experience unwanted feelings of disgust for the incapacitated partner or emotional and physical fatigue as a result of the caring role. The ill partner, in turn, can experience feelings of self-loathing for a being a burden on the loved one.

Even without undue stress as a result of the above conditions, the marriage relationship necessarily changes as people change over he years. Research has shown that the most highly satisfactory time within the marriage is just after marriage and within the retirement years (Hollis-Sawyer, personal communication, 2013). In-between these two eras, the couple's lives are subjected to career stress and child rearing concerns. Just after marriage and after retirement, these stressors are no longer a concern within the relationship. Couples whose relationships do survive career and child rearing stress tend to become closer after retirement.

One major change in a close marriage relationship is when one marriage partner passes away. While it has been unusual in the past and remains somewhat so now, some remaining partners do choose to remarry. The factor of increasing human life expectancy has created a gradual change in this dynamic, where many partners who are left behind after a loss cannot face years and possible decades of loneliness. They would then choose to remarry (Hollis-Sawyer, personal communication, 2013).

Another interesting dynamic of intimate relationships, especially in modern times, is that they are not necessarily exclusive to marriage, even in later life (Chapter 3: Intimate Ties in Later Life, p. 54). The changing social position on intimacy today has created a dynamic among older single people, as it has among their younger counterparts. Dating may include intimate, sexual relationships, without being preceded by marriage. Indeed, marriage may or may not be part of such relationships at all. Again, this is somewhat less usual among aging people than the younger generations, but like remarriage, these are on the increase.

Another new trend is the tolerance for gay and sexual relationships. This has also created a platform for older people to be more honest about their sexuality and enter into relationships that are satisfying and available to them (Chapter 3, Intimate Ties in Later Life, p. 55). Some couples choose not to marry at all, but simply to live together in a long-term committed relationship. This occurs within both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Sexual activity also changes over the years, especially for couples who have been together in a long-term relationship. There is a general decline in this part of intimate relationships. Nevertheless, this does not mean it stops entirely. One major factor that impacts the possibility of sex in older age is the lack of access to a partner, such as after death or divorce. Further, the social and practical constraints of communal care often makes it difficult to engage in sexual relations, even when both marriage partners are still alive, together, and retain a certain appetite for intimacy.

Looking more closely at the dynamic of losing a partner, a myriad of feelings may be encountered after such a loss. According to Roy and Russell (2006), the void left by the loss could create a tendency to look for new intimate relationships to fill it. The new experience of such a relationship could also include a new and freer attitude toward dating and sex. Since there are no longer parental or social constraints regarding how far dating should go, it is usually the older person's responsibility to determine the set of values he or she will use when engaging in dating and new relationship activities.

Not everybody can, however, engage in a completely new mode of intimacy after years of marriage to one person. Some, for example, may feel that they are betraying the deceased partner by starting a new relationship or engaging in sexual activity. Others could adhere to the values they used when dating for the first time, waiting for marriage before having sex, and so on.

One important change when engaging in new relationships in older age is adult children and other younger family members, who necessarily become part of the new relationship. An older person who feels ready to date again after the end of a long-term relationship or the death of a partner should be aware of the family dynamics and how this may impact the decision. Adult children may feel it is inappropriate for their parents to engage in new emotional involvements, for example. Prejudice, ignorance, and unwanted interference may be part of this experience. When the older person is aware of this possibility, it can be handled either by counseling or simply by family communication. Mainly, it is important for adult children to understand that the parent who remains after the death of the partner does not need to suspend the rest of his or her life in honor of the deceased partner. On the other hand, there are ways to introduce new lifestyles and relationships tactfully and gradually so that no unnecessarily painful conflict arises.

Another interesting dynamic of older age and longer life expectancy is the increasing divorce rate among older couples. Even after 30 or 40 years of marriage, some older couples who find their relationship unsatisfactory make the decision to divorce in an attempt to find fulfilment elsewhere. According to Cravit (2012), for example, it is not necessarily the case that people in relationships grow closer with age. In the past, older couples may have avoided divorce because they did not have very long left to live and wanted to avoid the turmoil of divorce at such a late stage in life. Today, however, the increased life expectancy has created a sense of hope for better, more fulfilling lives and relationships, although navigating these can make life seem like a quagmire of choices to a certain extent.

4.

It is a simple fact of life that, if we are lucky enough to not be taken from our loved ones by accident or fatal illness, we will all grow old. This means that we need to think about the concerns of older age and what we will do to ensure that our needs are met later in life. One major component of older age is that today's medical technology and focus on healthy choices have enhanced human life to such a degree that we can remain active and lively for far longer than has been the case as recently as 50 years ago. This means that many older people today choose to retain their independence and even their working lives for as long as possible.

On the other hand, it is also true that nobody remains active and lively forever. As older age sets in, the body necessarily weakens to the point where we are reliant on the care and advocacy offered by others for our continued well-being until death. The dynamic of this phenomenon is also changing. Today's situation is one in which the rising costs of living, even for an average working person, presents significant challenges. In addition, the shrinking provisions offered by pension schemes has caused many older people to elect to move in with family rather than into a care home during their later years. In this way, they receive a significant amount of care based upon their family structure, which includes practical care such as providing meals and helping with basic daily routines, as well as related concerns such as advocating for support to elderly people living in the homes of their children or other family members (Hollis-Sawyer, personal communication, 2013). This makes the topic important to address in terms of policymaker and sociologist viewpoints. Specifically, questions around how older people can be helped to remain as productive and happy members of society for as long as possible can be addressed in terms of creating and maintaining community programs.

In this light, community programs are important to not only create a platform for older people themselves to connect with others in their community and participating in programs, but also for their family and caretakers. Caring for an older person can create a significant amount of stress for a household. Hence, such a household, including the older family member, can use as much support as possible in dealing with issues like boundaries, inclusiveness, care, and he like regarding the person being cared for. Community programs can play a very important role in this. Indeed, such programs can create a sense of well-being and connectedness not only within the family itself, but also among families in similar situations. Concomitantly, significant extended support and friendships can be created by offering such programs.

When studying aging and the relationship of older people with their peers, family, and society in general, it is also important to consider the viewpoint of families as care givers in a world where no two experiences of aging are quite the same and where no amount of needs is consistent. In other words, lending support to older people is important. It is, however, also important to provide support and relevant, helpful information to families of older citizens when it comes to decisions such as accepting elderly parents back into the household. Community programs can do his in a way that is not only non-offensive, but also in a way that is based on a sense of fun and informal connection.