Companions are particularly important in old age. As socio-emotional theory predicts, the size of the social circle shrinks with age, but close relationships are crucial. Negative social relationships are destructive of mind and body (K. Rook, 2014).

For most of the elderly, however, negative relationships have been abandoned, and positive ones remain. Bonds formed over the years allow people to share triumphs and tragedies with others who understand and appreciate. Siblings, old friends, and spouses are ideal convoy members.

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For many of the current cohort of elders, their spouse is the central convoy member, a buffer against the problems of old age. Even more than other social contacts, including friends and children, a spouse is protective of health (Wong & Waite, 2015). All the research finds that married older adults are healthier, wealthier, and happier than unmarried people their age.

Mutual interaction is crucial: Each healthy and happy partner improves the other’s well-being (Ruthig et al., 2012). Of course, not every marriage is good: About one in every six long-term marriages decreases health and happiness (Waldinger & Schulz, 2010). But that is not the usual pattern.

A lifetime of shared experiences—living together, raising children, and dealing with financial and emotional crises—brings partners closer. Often couples develop “an exceedingly positive portrayal” (O’Rourke et al., 2010) of their mate, seeing their partner’s personality as better than their own.

Older couples have learned how to disagree, considering conflicts to be discussions, not fights. I know one example personally.

Irma and Bill are both politically active, proud parents of two adult children, devoted grandparents, and informed about current events. They seem happily married and they cooperate admirably when caring for their 2- and 4-year-old grandsons.

However, they vote for opposing candidates for president. I was puzzled until Irma explained: “We sit together on the fence, seeing both perspectives, and then, when it’s time to vote, Bill and I fall on opposite sides.” I can predict who will fall on which side, but for them, the discussion is productive. Their long-term affection keeps disagreements from becoming fights.

Outsiders might judge many long-term marriages as unequal, since one or the other spouse usually provides most of the money, or needs most of the care, or does most of the housework. Yet such disparities do not bother most older partners, who accept each other’s dependencies, remembering times (perhaps decades ago) when the situation was reversed.

One crucial factor is coping with challenges of child rearing, home ownership, economic crises, and so on. The importance of past sharing, rather than each living independent lives, is suggested by research that finds that older husbands and wives with mutual close friends are more likely to help each other if special needs arise (Cornwell, 2012).

Given the importance of relationship building over the life span, it is not surprising that elders who are disabled (e.g., have difficulty walking, bathing, and so on) are less depressed and anxious if they are in a close marital relationship (Mancini & Bonanno, 2006). A couple together can achieve selective optimization with compensation.

For example, I know a man whose memory is fading. He is married to a woman whose legs are so weak that she has difficulty getting out of bed. If either had been alone, he or she would need extensive care. However, the husband helps the wife move, and she keeps track of what needs to be done—working together they need only minimal outside help.

In past centuries, many adults died before their grandchildren were born. For 10-year-olds in 1900, only one in twenty-five had all four grandparents alive; in 2000 close to half (41 percent) did (Hagestad & Uhlenberg, 2007). In 2010 in China, 50 percent of 18-year-olds had four living grandparents (Jiang & Sanchez-Barricarte, 2011). Some contemporary families span five generations. Most families have intergenerational connections (Szydlik, 2012).

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Since the average couple now has fewer children, the beanpole family, with multiple generations but with only a few members at each level, is becoming more common (Murphy, 2011) (see Figure 15.8). Some children have no cousins, brothers, or sisters but a dozen elderly relatives.

INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS As you remember, familism prompts family caregiving among all the relatives. One norm is filial responsibility, the obligation of adult children to care for their aging parents. This is a value in every nation, with some variation by culture (Saraceno, 2010).

As a value, filial responsibility is strongest in Asia, but in practice, some scholars find Asians less likely to care for elderly parents than in Western cultures. For example, a survey in China found that half of adult children saw their parents only once a year or less (Kim et al., 2015).

Familism works down the generations, not just up. Many elders believe the older generations should help the younger ones. Specifics vary by culture. When the government provides more help for the aged (housing, pensions, and so on), the generations are more involved with each other, not less (Herlofson & Hagestad, 2012). The reason is that emotional support flows most easily when basic care is less crucial.

As you also remember, older adults do not want to move in with younger generations, doing so only if poverty and frailty require it. Especially in the United States, every generation values independence. That is why, after midlife and especially after the death of their own parents, elders are less likely to agree that children should provide substantial care for their parents and more likely to strive to be helpful to their children.

Complications and surprises regarding parent–child relationships appear in many nations. One example comes from Moldova, a new nation that was once part of the former Soviet Union. Many of the middle generation migrated, leaving aged parents behind. However, most of those adult children continue to write, call, and subsidize their parents, and the elder generation is healthier if their children left than if they stayed (Böhme et al., 2015).

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Although elderly people’s relationships with members of younger generations are usually positive, they can also include tension and conflict. In some families intergenerational respect and harmony abound; whereas in others, family members refuse to see each other. Each culture and each family has patterns and expectations regarding interactions between generations (Herlofson & Hagestad, 2011).

A good relationship with successful grown children enhances a parent’s well-being, especially when both generations do whatever the other generation expects. By contrast, a poor relationship makes life worse for everyone. Ironically, conflict may be more frequent in emotionally close relationships than in distant ones (Silverstein et al., 2010), especially when either generation becomes dependent on the other (Birditt et al., 2009).

Some conflict is common, as is some mutual respect. Indeed, both within families and within cultures, ambivalence is becoming recognized as a common intergenerational pattern (Connidis, 2015), with mixed feelings in every generation.

Extensive research finds many factors that affect intergenerational relationships:

GRANDPARENTS AND GREAT-GRANDPARENTS Eighty-five percent of U.S. elders currently older than 65 are grandparents. (The rate was lower in previous cohorts because the birth rate fell during the 1930s, and it is expected to be lower again.) Almost all grandparents provide some caregiving and gifts, unless the middle generation does not allow it. In most nations (less so in Asia), grandparents are more involved with their daughters’ children than their sons’.

As with parents and children, specifics of the grandparent–grandchild relationship depend partly on personality and partly on the age of both generations. The oldest grandparents tend to be less actively involved in day-to-day activities. Grandparents typically delight in the youngest children, provide material support for the school-age children, and offer advice, encouragement, and a role model for the older grandchildren. One of my college students realized this when she wrote:

Brian and Brianna are twins and are turning 13 years old this coming June. Over the spring break my family celebrated my grandmother’s 80th birthday and I overheard the twins’ talking about how important it was for them to still have grandma around because she was the only one who would give them money if they really wanted something their mom wasn’t able to give them. . . . I lashed out . . . how lucky we were to have her around and that they were two selfish little brats. . . . Now that I am older, I learned to appreciate her for what she really is. She’s the rock of the family and “the bank” is the least important of her attributes now.

[Giovanna, personal communication]

Grandparents fill one of four roles:

Currently, in developed nations, most grandparents are companionate, partly because all three generations expect them to be companions, not authorities. Contemporary elders usually enjoy their own independence. They provide babysitting and financial help but not advice or discipline (May et al., 2012).

As you remember from Chapter 13, in skipped generation families, grandparent health and happiness are sometimes sacrificed when the grandparent takes on the stresses and responsibilities of the parent role. Usually such grandparents are relatively young, far more often age 50 than 70. Often full parental responsibility ages them quickly.

A middle ground is best. Just as too much responsibility impairs health and happiness, too little may be harmful as well. One Australian study focused on grandparents whose children prevented contact with the grandchildren.

For example, one reported this conversation with her daughter:

She said: “You’ve never been a good mother, only when I was little”. I said: “now that is ridiculous and you know that is ridiculous”. She said: “you be quiet and listen to what I have to say, what I have to tell you now. . . I never want to see or hear from you the rest of your life” . . . I said: “I have fought hard. I have provided for both of your children. I’ve done all that I can to help you and [son-in-law].”

[Sims & Rofail, 2014, p. 3]

Another grandmother in the same study first was thrilled with her grandchildren and then despondent when she could no longer see them.

It was so enjoyable and now to think about it brings me to tears . . . this breaks our hearts , , , the consequence of this is that I have had issues of anxiety and depression, none of which I had previously and now I have been diagnosed with a severe heart problem, cardiomyopathy . . . this is more than I can bear—it breaks my heart to think of them.

[Sims & Rofail, 2014, pp. 4–5]

Sometimes past parent–child relationships provoke the middle generation to cut off grandparent–grandchild interaction. However, developmental research finds:

One of the realities of human development that appears in study after study is that family connections are pivotal for optimal growth, from pregnancy (when relatives help keep the expectant mother healthy and drug-free) to the end of life (when family members provide essential comfort). That is no less true in late adulthood, as the elderly benefit in many ways from connections to younger generations.

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Friendship networks typically are reduced with each decade. Emerging adults tend to have the most friends on average. By late adulthood, the number of people considered friends is notably smaller (Wrzus et al., 2013). Added to this normal shrinkage are two circumstances: Some older friends die, and retirees usually lose contact with work friends.

Family friends tend to be the most loyal. Elders are healthiest if some family friends are among their closest social circle. Yet if the circle includes only relatives, and not several non-family friends, that correlates with worse health (Shiovitz-Ezra & Litwin, 2015). Having at least some family friends is less problematic than it will be in later generations, because the current cohort of elders is the most married, and the most childbearing, in U.S. history, a dramatic contrast to the younger generations.

As explained in Chapters 11 and 13, each younger cohort is more often unmarried. In the United States, the never-married are 5 percent of those aged 65 to 74, 8 percent of those 55 to 64, and 12 percent of those 45 to 54. Rates continue to increase as age falls. The same is true for siblings, as family size decreased throughout the twentieth century.

Further, more middle-aged adults, married or not, have no children, and those with children often have no grandchildren. Accordingly, this next generation of the elderly will have fewer family members. Will they be lonely, lacking social support?

Not necessarily. Recent data find that elders who never married are usually quite content, not lonely. Some of them have partners, of the same sex or other sex, and are cohabiting or living apart together, seemingly just as happy as traditionally married people (Brown & Kawamura, 2010). Further, having a smaller friendship circle is not a problem if a person has at least a few close friends—as most of the aged do (Wrzus et al., 2013).

People who have spent years without a romantic partner usually have close friendships, meaningful activities, and social connections that keep them busy and happy. The crucial factor is having friends—some of whom may also be relatives, but not necessarily (Blieszner, 2014). Grown children who urge their distant parents to move closer to them may make a mistake if they do not appreciate the social networks—including consequential strangers as well as close friends—that surround most older people.

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