Question

If you were an older adult, what could you expect to happen to aspects of your social relations such as relationships with adult children and friendship?

Answer 1

Social relationship plays a very important role in an individuals’ life. As individuals keep growing, their emphasis also keeps changing. When as a young adult the emphasis is more on work and friends, as a middle adult it is more on family and as an older adult it is more on health. However, older adults do not compromise on the relationship with their adult children and friendship. Researches tells us that adult children are an important part of the aging parents’ social network. Older adults with children have more contacts with relatives than those without adult children.

Gender also play a very important role here. Adult daughters are more concerned than the adult sons in the lives of their parents. According to Fingerman et al 2011, relationships between aging parents and their children is usually characterized by ambivalence. Perception include love, reciprocal help and shared values on the positive side and isolation, family conflicts and problems, abuse, neglect, and caregiver stress on the negative side. Ambivalence exist when relationships involved in-laws, those in poor health, and adult children with poor parental relationships in early life. A recent study by Komter 2012, revealed that affection and support, reflecting solidarity, were more prevalent than ambivalence in intergenerational relationships. Thus, adult children play a role in the socioemotional development of the older adults which is an important requisite for the development of peace and harmony in the older adults.

Friendship is common across all ages. It is a genuine relationship between two or more people who share their experiences, happiness, sorrow and burdens. In early adulthood, friendship is the main emphasis. Friendship networks expand as new social connections are made away from home. In late adulthood, new friendships are less likely to be forged, although some older adults do seek out new friendships, especially following the death of the spouse. Aging expert Laura Carstensen 1998, concluded that people choose close friends new friends as they grow older. And as long as they have several close friends in their networks, they seem content. Since older adults lay more emphasis on family and health, friends are the secondary aspect of their lives. In friends, they experience less positive emotions with new ones and more intense positive emotions with close friends.

In a study conducted by Lansford et al 2001, on 128 married older adults, women reported to be depressed than men if they did not have a best friend, and those women who had best friends were less likely to have any depressive symptoms. Similarly, women who did not have a best friend were less satisfied with life than women who had best friends.

Therefore, in conclusion, it is seen that friendships than families in older adults play a significant role in predicting mental health. According to Rasulo 2005, older adults who had close ties with friends were less likely to die across a seven-year age span.