地方小都市の高齢女性と別居子の関係

抄録

　This paper is designed to empirically investigate interchange between elderly women and their children. To gather empirical evidence, a sample survey of elderly women was conducted from 1 997 to 1 998 in Takahashi City of Okayama Prefecture, whose population was approximately 26,000. Five hundred and twenty-three women between 65 and 79 were interviewed. The data were analysed by making a social relationship between an elderly women and her separated adult child a unit of analysis. The analysis revealed the following;
　(1) The closer to his or her mother a child lived, the more frequently the mother not only could obtain instrumental social support from the child and socialised with the child, but also could gain emotional social support from her child. Because of this, the multiplexity of relationships of elderly women with their close children was greater than that with their distant children.
　(2) Elderly women tended to obtain social support more frequently from their daughters than from their sons. This is particularly true of social support which is regarded as women's role and which is usually obtained from people of the same sex. Accordingly, the multiplexity of relationships of elderly women with their daughters was greater than that with their sons.
　In the previous research Koyano et al. (1995) and Yokoyama ex al. (1994) conducted in a local middle-sized city and a large city, the closer to his or her parent a child lived, the more frequently the parent could gain instrumental social support from his or her child and socialised with the child. However, the geographical distance did not have effects on whether the parent could obtain emotional social support from the child or not. This result contradictory to the present study was brought about by the fact that elderly people in small local cities tend to be poorer than those in local middle-sized or large cities.