Articles
The Process of Living Apart from their Adult Offspring with Mental Retardation for Ageing Parents
─ With Focus on Utilization of Residential Placements ─
2012 Volume 26 Issue 1 Pages 69-82
Details
2012 Volume 26 Issue 1 Pages 69-82
Late stage elderly parents have to make a choice between “living with handicapped children and caring for them as long as possible” and “making children live in an out-of-home placement”. Moreover, they have to confront with what will happen to their children “after parents' death”. In Japan, parents often feel guilty when they decide to make their children live in residential institutes because of the negative images generally held by the Japanese people about these establishments.
The purpose of this paper is to find explanations to the research questions; “what are the experiences of the elderly parents before using residential institutes and after?” and to explore the ways in which they make decision about “making children live out-of-home”. 11 parents of children with mental retardation have participated. Data collection has been conducted through semistructured interview.
The process of making children be out-of-home consists of 3 stages: ＜1. the preparation phase of residential placement utilization＞, ＜2. the early phase of residential placement utilization＞, ＜3. the stable phase＞. This study claims 3 hypothesis perceptions. First, the promotional factors for the parents to consider of their children- living away from home consists not only of negative thoughts but also of positive ones such as “calling up image that children would spend a good time in residential placement”. Second, after starting utilization of residential placement, the parents’ involvement with their child is not a problem behavior but a factor for prompting stable phase. Third, for elderly parents, evaluating how they have cared and related to their children so far has both positive and negative effects. Positive evaluations can be a support for these parents, but negative ones may become a psychological difficulty for them. To support these families, information provision, attentive hearing, and positive reframing of parents’ actions toward their child is needed.
