1992 Volume 43 Issue 5 Pages 371-382
Problems about aging and death are very important, especially in the aging society. We examined those problems from the point of view of how middle-aged couples treat aging and death of their parents focusing on the relationship between their own parents and them. We investigated perception of changes in the parent-child relationship and influence on the emotional tie as the result of death of a parent, and compared the difference of treatment of their parents between sons and daughters. Moreover, we explored the change of role definition in their parents and role expectation to their children. Parents of students in a high school and a junior high school were investigated. The 269 middle-aged couples were selected on condition that both of them had at least one parent alive and their parents were over 60 years old.
The results are summarized as follows :
Sons recognized less changes in their parent's life after death of their spouse than daughters. About 70% of daughters and 60% of sons were more worried about the health and life of their parents than before, while neither of them actually took care of their parents. Concerning the emotional tie, daughters did not necessarily take care of their parents more than sons, which was different from our hypothesis. There was no difference between a child having both parents alive and a child losing one parent. This seems to be related to changes in attitudes toward co-residence with a married child, remarriage, the type of care, living in institution and the necessity for a will.
